I offered my opinions on last week's Apple Education announcement on the Macreach podcast. Although I felt the things announced were okay, I saw a lot of holes that needed to be filled. The big thing that I missed was something that was not explicitly stated during the announcement. It was hinted at, but not a lot of detail was given.
That thing was the change in how content can be provided to and through iTunesU. The change in this process is the earth shaking thing to me. When iTunes U was first opened up to K-12 only state agencies could sign up. If a district or school wanted to publish through iTunesU they had to go through the state LEA. Now with only 13 or so states participating that left a lot of educators with no chance to publish on iTunesU.
That all changed last week though with the announcements and this is the filler for many of the holes I saw. Now any district can set up their own iTunesU site to publish content and courses. It can serve as an LMS for districts.
I am very excited about this as we have been struggling to get content onto iTunesU for 3 years. This will make it much simpler to do, and give us more for serving content to and from our schools.
Here are links to the pertinent information. Get your district and school going on iTunesU.
The All New iTunesU
http://www.apple.com/education/itunes-u/
iTunesU Support
