Stanford Classes Now Available on iTunes 274
Chowser writes "Forbes is reporting Stanford University is now offering a wide range of content on iTunes. From the article: 'In an unprecedented move, Stanford University is collaborating with Apple Computer to allow public access a wide range of lectures, speeches, debates and other university content through iTunes. No need to pay the $31,200 tuition. No need to live on campus. No need even to be a student. The nearly 500 tracks that constitute "Stanford on iTunes" are available to anyone willing to spend the few minutes it takes to download them from the Internet.'" Talaper noted the Official Apple Page on the program is up as well.
Re:MIT OpenCourseWare (Score:5, Insightful)
"Now, as you can see in this equation" (Score:5, Insightful)
A good project: develop an open-source way to transmit and store presentations in a useful and navigatable form. Lectures need three streams - the audio, the presenter's face, and the graphics. The graphics need to be at much higher resolution, and should be sent as clean still images when possible. One output should be a web page, with thumbnails for the graphics and clickable audio segments. Then you can find something in the lecture when you need it.
The presentation should be run through a voice recognition system, to make the voice searchable. It doesn't have to be perfect, just good enough for search. Similarly, OCR the graphics and pull keywords from them.
Further proof (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:"No need to be a student" is overstating it (Score:5, Insightful)
a solution to a problem that doesn't exist (Score:1, Insightful)
The only reason I can think why they would want to do this is if they are getting a bunch of $$$ from apple somehow because this is almost forcing college kids to go out and buy apple compliant hardware if implemented on a mass scale...slippery slope people...we don't want our educational institutions to lock up knowledge in a proprietary service like this.
My professors can figure out how to post lecture slides as pdf files on the class web page. Surely they could post an mp3 or ogg if they so desired. It's probably less hassle than dealing with this itunes u service. It just baffles me that this even exists because all a podcast is is audio and an RSS feed, both things that any university could roll on their own if they wanted.
MIT's open course ware is a step in the right direction because it's available to everyone and is platform independent. Why lock in to itunes when you can get the freedom of posting things yourself?????
I can see it now...10 years from now a new iPod paired with a "trusted computer" will be included in the tuition price of every college student entering university to ensure that they can became drones of Apple, inflate Apple's stock price, and kill any chance that a student would use some sort of open operating system....er umm, i mean... listen to required lectures..yes children, this is to make it easy for you to listen to lectures...not so we can control your purchasing habits....yup.
Re:Pretty Useless (Score:5, Insightful)
The commoditization of education as your (+3 Informative!) comment implies is one of the larger factors [in my opinion] in the steady decline of the US as a knowledge leader.
Re:Pretty Useless (Score:4, Insightful)
You pay for credentials, not education (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:a solution to a problem that doesn't exist (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, these are hosted on Apple's domain. So Stanford isn't storing the content or paying for the bandwidth.
this is almost forcing college kids to go out and buy apple compliant hardware if implemented on a mass scale
How so ? You can access the iTMS from a Windows PC or an Apple PC and I'm pretty sure there are hacks to get at it from Linux, though those are unsupported... what hardware do you have to buy ? You don't need an iPod to listen to these, and they're easily transcoded into MP3s; they aren't copy-protected, and you could transcode them even if they were FairPlay DRM'd.
Why not just have directories of MP3s ? There's a fine question. I think the answer is probably because Apple is offering this service for free, and most users will find it easier to use than a directory of MP3s. It's great, serious, sneaky hardcore marketing, but you're making it out to be evil... which I'm not sure it is.
I feel like I just responded to a troll... is the lack of Linux/Unix iTMS client support what's bugging you about this? Because I think that's probably the only justifiable complaint a person could have- otherwise, this is very, very cool.
Re:Pretty Useless (Score:3, Insightful)
Learning and Education (Score:3, Insightful)
Holy generalizations. And bad ones at that. (a state of what?)
No longer do people pursue degrees for the love of the subject, they just want a nice piece of paper to wave in front of possible employers.
The point of college *is* to make yourself more employable.
It's a shame that for many personal achievement is now a distant second to what other people think of the letters after your name.
I'm proud of both my education and the fact that I provide well for my family. I was smart enough to do both, and not just one.
If I am learning for the sake of learning - and I do it regularly - I don't sit down and listen to a recorded lecture. I explore. My degree is in aerospace engineering. My interests also lie in other fields. Like robotics. I program AVR's. I play with digital image processing. I read papers by professionals, who I can then get in contact with regarding questions. I attend graduate school. I attend **real classes** and conferences (even unrelated to my field of work) where I can experance interactive education. Communing with people is where it is at.
Listening to recorded lectures is stupid. It is a one-way communication. Learning is a two-way street both for the student and the professor.
Re:Commoditizing teachers (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:college is obsolete (Score:3, Insightful)
An example: Computer Science. Sure you can teach yourself to program, nothing terribly difficult about programming. In fact many of us were doing it as soon as we could reach a keyboard. This however does not teach you other concepts. What a state machine is, why it is useful? What a B-tree is, why is it useful? Programming in a group, and what tools you might use. These are the most basic concepts that you get.
Further most of a job involves communication, writing memos, writing emails, and attending meetings. Things that a liberal education provides.
Further if you finish you have learned all this plus how to plan, accomplish tasks on time, and completed to a your bosses or clients requirements.
Lastly, this is not the end, you should continue learning formal learning. Why? Because reading a book is great, but only a formal environment provides goals, and incentive to get things done.
Education isn't about education (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Learning and Education (Score:2, Insightful)
And a telephone with only an earpiece is called a radio.
Re:MIT OpenCourseWare (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This is impressive (Score:3, Insightful)
Not in the Vatican, it's not.
Yes it is. If the people there consent to be ruled by their government, then what is the problem? It is up to them to say what they can and cannot do, not any of us.
Re:Free as in beer? (Score:2, Insightful)