Stanford on iTunes Expands in Content and Features
by Victoria Szabo and Scott Stocker
The Stanford on iTunes project has continued to grow on both the public-facing and restricted-access sites:
- The public-facing site, targeted primarily at alumni, includes Stanford faculty lectures, learning materials, music, sports, and more.
- The access-restricted site for students delivers course-based materials and advising content.
After the Alumni Weekend launch of Stanford on iTunes last fall, the public-facing site has continued to grow, with new materials being added every week.
The addition of Brent Izutsu as production manager for Stanford on iTunes has been a tremendous boon to the project's expansion. Brent has been encoding content for the public site and experimenting with newer features like the Enhanced Podcast production and playback. Enhanced podcasts are audio files that have images associated with them. Content creators can synch images to appear at specific points in the audio playback, which allows for a richer media experience with relatively small file sizes. Producing these tools has been made made substantially easier with the new version of Apple's audio-editing application, Garageband, which was released as part of iLife '06 at MacWorld this past January.
Current Academic Use
On the academic side, Kim Hayworth, manager of Academic Computing's Consulting and Multimedia Services (CAMS) in the Stanford University Libraries and Academic Information Resources (SULAIR), has been working actively with instructors who want to learn how to produce their own audio and video content for teaching. She continues to be available for consulting (kimhwrth@stanford.edu). (See also Multimedia Services in Meyer Library in this issue.) Jeremy Sabol (jsabol@stanford), Academic Technology Specialist for the Center for Teaching and Learning is also available to help instructors think about how audio and video might enhance their teaching practices.
Introduction to the Humanities and Introduction to Music courses continue to be the biggest users of the restricted-access site, with new courses in languages, writing, history, biomedicine, art and others on board for spring quarter. The Stanford on iTunes tool is being used to distribute course content as well lecture and seminar recordings, student assignments, and other student generated-content.
With the recent addition of video upload and playback capabilities, users in several departments are experimenting with uploading video content to the Stanford on iTunes space as well. Materials encoded as MP4 files in the new H264 compresssion format can even be played back on a Video iPod, which can be attached to a SmartPanel for in-class playback. This quarter, the Stanford on iTunes project team expects to start documenting best practices for "course capture" to make it easier for faculty to package their course content for online distribution. This is an exciting growth area, as students have responded positively to having materials available through the system.
All-Stanford Space Coming
The Stanford on iTunes project team is also planning the launch of an all-Stanford space where content owners who wish to share their materials with the whole campus will be able to do so. The Undergraduate Advising Program, the Creative Writing Program and the Center for Teaching and Learning are on board for developing content for these areas as well. This Stanford-only area will be distinct from the public-facing Stanford on iTunes site, which distributes material to the whole world without access restrictions. The project team anticipates being able share content of more local interest here, with access via a SUNet ID.
Future Development Plans
On board for future development is the integration of text tracks into audio recordings to facilitate universal access. The project team is meeting with partners in the Office of Accessible Education and in Stanford University Libraries and Academic Information Resources (SULAIR) to see how they might collaborate in developing this content effectively. In addition, the Stanford team, along with those at other institutions, is recommending to Apple that the next generation of the academic iTunes tool include Search functionality to make it easier to find content online. Presently, users can download files to their individual computers and search them that way, but the team hopes that Search can be extended to the academic store environment, dubbed "iTunes U" by Apple, and eventually into to metadata such as keywords and "lyrics" or transcripts.
See also Stanford on iTunes Project Debuts and Expands in the winter issue of this newsletter.
