D’Arcy Norman points out that publishing content in iTunes U is better than not publishing it at all, and that in the end Apple doesn’t own exclusive rights to the content, so institutions are free to put the content up in any other way they want and in any format they want.
I respect D’Arcy, and I wouldn’t accuse him of being an Apple apologist. In fact, the non-exclusive nature of the deal is one of the arguments the team from Michigan offered at EDUCAUSE when I asked them about the dental school project. It’s a key point. Nevertheless, I stand by my alarm, and ask that skeptics peruse (again) the iTunes U announcement page. This is a commercial venture with clear designs on vendor lock-in. (As Jon Udell has noted, iTunes is a podcatcher with an axe to grind.) If we lock ourselves in voluntarily because the deal (for now) is so sweet–school logos and colors on the front page, volume discounts on music, revenue opportunities, cool factor–we’re still locked in. This is the path of least resistance. Higher education should be stronger than that. I expect Apple is gambling that we are not. And once we’re on that path, we will only get weaker.
Much of the buzz I see on Technorati about iTunes U is how cool and easy it is, how our development woes are over, how our work has been done for us. Will institutions, especially starved-for-cash public schools, be willing to fund home-grown open alternatives when they can make money on a home-branded, outsourced, turn-key operation like Apple’s? I doubt it. Apple doesn’t need de jure exclusive rights. We’ll essentially give them away, de facto. Much better PR that way, and the company gets to express its astonishment at any dissent, for after all no one forced us to put all our content in iTunes U.
I don’t mind persuasion, but coercion is another matter, and coercion takes many forms.
Perhaps Apple’s reasoning goes like this. Apple believes that they are in the best position to empower education. Therefore, what’s good for Apple is good for education. Q.E.D.
I remain unconvinced.
[...] As I stated previously Dave Winer and Kevin Yank aren’t. Martha isn’t. Brian isn’t. Gardner isn’t and still isn’t. D’Arcy says not so fast. [...]
Several quick, grim thoughts in haste:
-Will Apple apply the “report a content/copyright violation here” button to content downloaded through iTunes U, that it already attaches to podcasts? If so, will be learn what happens to those reports, and what actions follow?
-How will iTunes U structure enabling and blocking access to one campus’ content from other campuses?
-How does this compare with other Web-based, free, rich media hosting services, such as OurMedia (full disclosure: I’m on that group’s board)?
-There *is* an impact on campus IT, and it’s not a good idea to skip it. First, if iTunesU consumption takes off on a campus, there will be increased demands for storage and bandwidth. Moreover, despite the ancient claim of Apple products being so easy that manual aren’t needed, how many IT hours will be spent showing people how to navigate the interface, answering file formatting questions (cf Brian Lamb and D’Arcy on this), and above all setting up the physical, network, and training necessary for increased rich media (video ain’t easy, folks) production?
For ourselves, how come academia hasn’t come up with this on our own? (Discuss. Bluebooks will be collected at the end of the hour)
[...] Last week there was a healthy discussion about the pros and cons of iTunes U (here and here for a start) and after a bit of a think over the weekend, I’ve got some further thoughts. D’Arcy Norman in “iTunes U. Critiques – it’s not as simple as that” makes a number of positive points about Apple’s service. Probably the most important part of D’Arcy’s post is the last paragraph: I just talked with someone at Apple who would know – and iTunes U supports any file format that iTunes can grok – you can publish .mp3 (or .wav, or .aiff, or Apple Lossless) audio, .mp4 video, even .pdf files (that’s how album art is handled) as well as the “default†formats of .aac etc… This means there is no lock-in to having an iPod as portable playback device (and even the .aac files can be converted by iTunes to .mp3 now). Having cross-platform playable formats such as mp3 is, in my opinion, a huge plus because it does allow other players and platforms to handle the files (sure, you need iTunes to access those files initially, but having flexibility with them thereafter and no DRM is hugely important). Gardner Campbell, however, remains unconvinced by the service and in a “Postscript on iTunes U” makes the extremely important point that while there won’t be a technical lock-in to the service, financial realities may create a practical lock-in anyway: Will institutions, especially starved-for-cash public schools, be willing to fund home-grown open alternatives when they can make money on a home-branded, outsourced, turn-key operation like Apple’s? I doubt it. Apple doesn’t need de jure exclusive rights. We’ll essentially give them away, de facto. Much better PR that way, and the company gets to express its astonishment at any dissent, for after all no one forced us to put all our content in iTunes U. I think after consideration, I’m falling half-way between the two perspectives. I do think iTunes U has potential to be a very useful service, especially for publicly accessible university podcasts because the potential traffic charges could be huge, especially for well respected professors giving public lectures and the like. I also think that iTunes U could be a useful host for course content. However, it should not be the only host. If using iTunes U stops many universities exploring alternative services and developing their own, then Apple is pulling a Blackboard/WebCT. However, having recently learned from those lessons (and almost-done-mergers), I suspect many universities will using both iTunes U and in-house solutions for other formats/options. Along those lines, Burks Oakley pointed me to an important post by Michael Meiser whichs extends a post from Jon Udell both of whom focus on the difficulties of linking to and referencing material via the iTunes interface. As Jon Udell points out: It was an ironically circular exercise. I started at itunes.stanford.edu, which is just a web placeholder for the JavaScript code that launches iTunes and points it at the special Stanford area of the iTunes Music Store. Then I subscribed to some of the Stanford feeds in iTunes. Capturing the URLs of those feeds was way harder than it should be, because iTunes displays them but won’t let you copy them. Those feed URLs are, of course, extremely nasty-looking, e.g.: https://deimos.apple.com/WebObjects/ITCSBrowse.woa/wa/ Subscribe/Feed_StanfordPublic-1770144-1770152–1770196_visitor $40indigo.apple.com_1137336780-95c4e56efabeb87e7982db034895cbd2eb6312de You’d have to nuts to write something like that down. Well, I guess I am, because I did. My reasons were partly selfish. I want to be able to get directly to the audio URLs contained in those feeds so I can automate conversion to MP3. Why? I like to listen to long lectures while running, and my iPod isn’t the preferred device in that situation. My Creative MUVO is lighter, and when I drop it or get it wet I don’t have to worry so much. More broadly, I want these freely available lectures to be able to spark the sort of web discourse that I’m sure Stanford intends them to. URLs are the currency of that discourse. If I want to refer you to Robert Dunbar’s global warming talk I should be able to link you directly to it. Discussion about the talk should be discoverable on the web by way of that URL. Here’s what shouldn’t have to happen, but currently does: I heard an interesting talk about global warming by Stanford’s Robert Dunbar. I wonder what you think about it? To listen, make sure you have iTunes installed, and then go to itunes.stanford.edu in a browser. From there, click the link to open iTunes. Then click on Faculty Lectures. Then scan the list for “Is Global Warming Real” or “Robert Dunbar”. So anyway, after laboriously capturing those feed URLs and posting them to del.icio.us, I turned around and subscribed to them in … wait for it … iTunes. It’s a decent podcatcher, after all, and I’m technology-agnostic. I’ll use anything for its strengths, while working around its weaknesses. The workaround, in this case, was simply to expose the feed URLs, and through them, the individual lecture URLs, to public discourse: linking, tagging, blogging, playlisting. That is the kind of intellectual activity that Stanford wants to encourage, isn’t it? iTunes U is thus somewhat at odds with the ease that a lot of social software provides when having conversations across posts, podcasts and other digital flotsam. Sure, that might be a good thing for some people (I know that locking podcasted lectures behind a university-specific interface will ease the concerns of many academics about the intellectual property), but it’s also important for any university podcast system to be linkable and accessible for content that they want to make publicly available (also an important part of good university PR). iTunes U doesn’t cover all our needs, but it can be part of the podcasting solutions. Just not the only part. And, as always, we should be working toward finding/thinking/creating the next step… [...]
Mr. Udell’s article is sad from the standpoint of journalistic integrity. I would say that Mr. Udell has not checked the facts. After reading the article (more of a rant than journalism) I downloaded some of the Stanford content. I found that I was able to play the content in another player, contrary to his claim. That fact and his ability to re-encode the content would also refute is claim that Apple’s DRM was applied to the file. If the player that Mr. Udell uses supports standards like MP3, and MP4 he should have no problem playing the files. My guess is his uber lightweight MuVo (iPod Mini would also be a good choice) does not support all the Standards, does it.
[...] A nod here to Jon Udell and Brian Lamb, who continue to voice concerns, and to Bryan Alexander, whose perceptive comments on the “turn in a copyright violator” provision in iTunes awakens even more. I also think Bryan and Alan are right to point us to OurMedia as an emerging set of practices and a model for how higher education might forge ahead without an iTunes U, or at least make the shopping center less worrisome. [...]
[...] In a postscript to iTunes U Gardner asks and answers, “Will institutions, especially starved-for-cash public schools, be willing to fund home-grown open alternatives when they can make money on a home-branded, outsourced, turn-key operation like Apple’s? I doubt it.” In a comment to this posting, Brian Alexander asks a legitimate question: “how come academia hasn’t come up with this on our own?” [...]