AMAZING!: I-Tunes Goes Intellectual

Seems as if sweet beats aren’t the only thing Stanford students are downloading off of iTunes lately. Our brethren over on the west coast have just launched a program that allows students, faculty, and alumni to download academic and nonacademic materials from Stanford for free off of iTunes.

Instead of watching lectures at library consoles, Stanford students will be able to sunbathe while listening to lectures “podcasted” to their iPods.

Harvard may lack a beach, but it still hopes to catch up with Stanford, at least technologically.

Erin Nettifee, supervisor of residential computing at Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) Computer Services, says a similar program is definitely feasible at fair Harvard.

“Podcasting is very popular right now,” says Nettifee. “FAS has been putting multimedia on the web for eight years now and quite a few course materials are available for download.” Nettifee cites Harvard@Home (athome.harvard.edu) as one such site. “There are lectures, videos, and it’s all free and available to anyone with a computer,” Nettifee says. “But I think an extension to podcasting is on its way.”

After all, as Senior Manager for Instructional Computing Paul F. Bergen says, podcasting adds mobility and personalization to the equation. “iTunes isn’t a requirement for podcasting, but we’d want to incorporate iTunes into whatever scheme happens at Harvard,” says Bergen.

A for such development at Harvard, Bergen says there is a “very active discussion” concerning it. For now, we can only dream of a day when we will be able to listen to Justice lectures through our white ear-buds while strolling through the Yard.