U of M offers Podcasts
The University of Michigan has become the only professional school in the country to offer Podcasts of their material to students. In a pilot project with Apple Computers, the U of M School of Dentistry plans to offer certain materials to registered practitioners in continuing dental education courses. Unfortunately, students must use a private store within iTunes to get to the content.
I think podcasting lectures and so forth is a great step forward! However, I dont think Napster or iTunes is a good solution. Is there such thing as an open standard for DRM (assuming that’s why U of M turned to Apple)? What if I don’t want to use iTunes? Why not offer a standard RSS feed with HTTPS/SSL encryption and HTTP Authentification? Many current RSS readers already support private feeds (and I suspect more will in the future). They could easily link that into school’s directory for authentication, and it would allow students to use various software on various devices and platforms, not just iTunes.