iTunesU Does Not Graduate

Berkeley is the latest domino to fall along the path of least resistance leading seemingly well-intentioned colleges and universities to "share" their intellectual capital with the world through Apple's iTunesU. I put "share" in quotes because as a sharing mechanism, iTunesU walks against the wave openness that defines this era of the web.

This subject has been tackled thoroughly before so here is a summary of my beef -- and many web savvy educators' beef -- with iTunesU. Go to iTunes U and try to link directly to an audio file. Go ahead I dare you. You can't. The files are locked inside iTunes U. You can only access them through iTunes. You cannot send a link, you cannot comment on it, you cannot tag it or social bookmark it. So many tools exist to facilitate the sharing of knowledge -- what Berkeley, Stanford and others espouse -- yet these tools are locked out by iTunes podcast directory. Moreover you are tied into proprietary Apple software to access these feeds. You cannot use any other tool. Some of the media is in Apples M4A format that only play in iTunes or iPod software.

As Michael Meiser commented in his rant against Stamford on iTunes, "they've embraced the hype and ABSOLUTELY missed the point."

Podcasting is a wonderful thing. The iPod and iTunes are very cool and useful tools. If Columbus State goes down the road of syndicating our knowledge, information and stories to the wider public, we can do the job the right way and model an environment of knowledge sharing that grows in influence as more people consume it. Now that would be cool.

Technorati Tags: iTunes U, podcasting, Berkeley, Stanford