iTunes U app | ourinspiredclassroom

I have been playing around with iTunes Course Manager and I am so excited about the potential applications that it is going to have on my class and beyond. Before I get into the process and my experience with creating a course, I’ll start off by saying that I have always thought that iTunes U was one of the most underused brilliant resources available to teachers. I have worked with people, who I would classify as quite IT savvy, who haven’t heard of iTunes U at all! This is where things usually get a little awkward as I somehow morph into an almost Evangelical iTunes U fanatic and go on and on with my spiel about “how amazing iTunes U is” and “how there is so much amazing content available literally sitting there waiting to be downloaded and integrated into classrooms. The content ranges in complexity; from Ivy league universities such as Yale, Oxford, Harvard etc to a grade 3 student’s reflection about a ball game they played in PE. It’s awaiting you!” This is roughly about the time that they are backing away from me with a slightly freaked out and bewildered expression on their face…

So back to iTunes U. My tale starts back in 2010. At the time the only issue I had with iTunes U is that after scratching the surface and being completely blown away, I instantly wanted to begin creating and sharing content to my students by creating a school channel or profile. This is where I hit a snag! I couldn’t work out how to apply to become a representative or a content creating organisation. I contacted Apple and found out that Australian Government funded schools could not become content sharing schools, this had to be done through your particular state educational body. In my case, it was The Department of Education and Early Childhood Development in Victoria. For teachers in Australia, you will understand my dilemma without having to go into detail too much, for those overseas, let me just say that you would be better off trying to train your dog to speak and cook you breakfast rather than have The Department of Education and Early Childhood Development assist you in any way… This was in the days before iTunes Course Manager.

iTunes U Course Manager allows you to create your own media rich courses that are delivered directly onto your students’ iPads. Your students are presented with all of the teaching content, resources such as weblinks, videos, images, apps etc as well as lesson plans and the ability to take detailed lesson notes all within the one neat and well organised place. They are then able to access this information 24/7.

The first thing you need to do is login https://itunesu.itunes.apple.com/coursemanager/
Once you have filled in the required online forms, including an instructors bio, you are ready to begin creating your own course.
Your students will also need to download the free iTunes U app on their IOS device.

Before you create a course and start adding content to that course, you must first create a course outline and a course overview. The overview is a brief statement about the course and what it will encompass. The outline can be a list of the different lessons/activities within your course. The outline is needed to structure your course and allows you to create a detailed post fro each item in the course outline.

Students can take detailed notes directly within the iTunes U app

The main body of the course is created in the form of posts. Each post can be allocated within a topic or a part of an entry within the course outline. When you create a new post, you can choose the section in which you want the post to appear. You can then add a lesson overview or instruction for students and attach material such as audio, video, books, documents, apps or images or weblinks. So when a student opens that post, they are presented with your lesson and all of the digital material required for that lesson. They are then able to use a check box to show that they have completed the work set for them. Furthermore, they are able to take detailed lesson notes within the iTunes U app. These lesson notes are automatically categorised for quick and easily reflection.

Courses can be as simple or as detailed as you wish. Once you have finished adding content to your course, you can share your course by creating a unique enrolment code that can be delivered to your students via email as a direct url. Students simply open the email and enrol into the course. An email is then sent to you requesting approval for that student’s enrolment. You can also provide a short, 9 character, code to your students for them to enter in the Enrol form within their iTunes U app should you wish not to choose email as a form of delivery.

As stated above, I am so excited to be creating courses for my students. I love the idea that all of the digital resources that are required for my lessons can be distributed within the one app. More than that, I love the fact that my students will have access to course content on demand. I have started creating a bunch of courses. One of the courses that I created is a beginner’s guide to The Pinnacle Studio app for iPad which is an absolute killer of an app. I will be creating a post solely about this app shortly but for those who wish to join the iTunes U course about this app, simply open the link below on your iPad. Enjoy.

https://itunesu.itunes.apple.com/enroll/HFV-4MK-7A3

It’s no secret that Apple have been keen to strike up publishing deals with major textbook companies for the last couple of years now.

Unleashing the power of the iPad on the digital publishing world was always on the cards for Steve Jobs, the News Stand app was the first delivery tool for selling digital magazine subscriptions. As we know, Apple always have a more than a few aces up their sleeves and selling magazines is only the beginning.

Apple held a keynote presentation in New York a few days ago to unveil three new apps that will transform the way students and teachers will utilise textbooks.

The first app is iBooks 2 is a free update for the original iBooks. This update has totally beefed up the original versions features to include a really elegant and simple way to organise and study your notes. The interface looks and feels the same but it’s only when you start to play around with the features that you notice the extraordinary differences between the new and old versions. The beauty of this app is not what it can do but more so the promise of what’s to come. This app has been completely primed to allow for the influx of beautiful, high def, interactive textbooks that publishers are working on right now to offer students.

And it doesn’t stop there. You are now able to make your own ePubs with Apple’s next great app for mac, iBook Author.

iBook Author has the power to completely revolutionalise the way digital publications are made and how they are distributed. This app is a free download for mac and can be downloaded via the mac app store. The interface is similar to Pages or iWeb, in that you are able to simply import digital content and move and place it to any position on the page, allowing for complete freedom and control of the look and feel of your book. It comes pre loaded with 6 beautiful designed templates that you can totally customise to create your own document. You can import video with a simple drag and drop but the files must be m4v files to suit the ePub standards. I can wait to create and share these documents with my students, more importantly, I can wait to see what they come up with using this awesome technology. I’ll keep you posted.

Finally, the last app that Apple unveiled was the iTunes U free app for iPad and iPhone. This app has been a long time coming and, in my opinion, is totally worth the wait. For years, iTunes U was a completely untapped resources for lots of teachers, particularly K-12 teachers. The content is amazing and produced to a very high quality by some of the leading universities all over the world. It allows students to download resources such as study notes, handouts, reading lists and even download podcast of entire lectures that have been recorded and uploaded by the universities. Previously, you needed to access all of these resources through iTunes on your mac, but not anymore. The new app gives you complete access to all of these resources at the tip of your fingers. It also allows you to subscribe to the RSS feeds, enabling you to auto download new content as soon as it is published. No more can students use the old “I lost the handout” excuse ;-). But this isn’t the best part about the new app. With the new app comes a whole world of new possibilities. Universities are currently offering student with entire online courses for free via the new iTunes U app. Students are able to subscribe to the courses, download the required content and work through the course work. It also allows for simple communication between students and teachers through the “posts” feature. When you open the app, it looks and feels very much like iBooks. The courses are positioned in the a mahogany bookcase and open up like a book binder. The amount of complete online courses are set to increase in the very near future as more and more universities and schools are writing material to share on the iTunes U app. Apple have also announced that the iTunes U store will be open for K-12 schools very soon, allowing teachers to share content with their students using this amazing app. Stay tuned for more details about that.