Infotech Lead Asia: Apple’s iTunes U content downloads have reached one billion.
iTunes U — that features free educational content from schools and libraries, museums and organizations — helps educators create courses including lectures, assignments, books, quizzes and more for iOS users around the world.
More than 1,200 universities and colleges, and 1,200 K-12 schools and districts host over 2,500 public and thousands of private courses.
Universities including Duke, Yale, Cambridge, MIT and Oxford have enrolled more than 100,000 students in single iTunes U courses.
Stanford University and The Open University each surpassed 60 million content downloads.
Apple says over 60 percent of iTunes U app downloads originate from outside the US, giving schools to share their content with a worldwide audience.
iTunes U enabled professor Stokols, whose Environmental Psychology course enrolls over 170,000 students on iTunes U, to introduce students and colleagues in China to research on the links between chronic multi-tasking, information overload and stress.
Stokols also discuss research publications and degree programs with students in Europe; and exchange information about the influence of neighborhood design on community levels of physical activity and obesity with students in Australia.
Moreover, educators can create iTunes U courses in 30 countries including recent additions: Brazil, South Korea, Turkey and United Arab Emirates.
Apple says thousands of individual iTunes U learning materials, over 75,000 educational apps are available for iOS devices on the App Store.
Additionally, with the free iBooks Author app on the Mac App Store, writers and publishers continue to bring ideas and stories to life sharing more than 10,000 original Multi-Touch books with the world.
