25 July, 2008

iTunesU: Worlds of Wordcraft at Vanderbilt

I've been exploring iTunesU a bit more recently, since British Universities started appearing on there, to see what resources institutions are releasing.

The course that I've enjoyed looking at most has been Worlds of Wordcraft that ran at Vanderbilt. This is a first year English module exploring narrative and how it changes moving from novels, to movies or to games.

The technology used to support this course feels so well integrated into the course. Their video 'Narrative forms in the Digital Classroom' explains it well, but from the point of view of looking at these materials after the course has run through the class blog and the recordings available via iTunesU, the wide variety of technologies used, feel like they are being used as an important and relevant part of the course.

Looking at iTunesU, I was wondering what use it could be to us at Edge Hill University. Basically it's wouldn't supply us with anything that we don't already have, as it is just hosting videos and linking to your course blog or web site. I could see it being used for marketing (i.e. look we're using iTunesU), and if management saw that as a positive thing, it could bring the neccesary investment needed to record more teaching sessions.

1 comment:

Rob said...

Great stuff, Peter. As the module leader for a new first year course on narrative, this is very interesting...
When will EHU get on iTunes U?