I'm in college. I own an
So imagine my shock and delight: iTunes U is as incongruous as it is completely and shamelessly awesome. Through iTunes, and accessible via internet or cellular connection, Apple and partner Universities (which is to say, any University that wishes to participate, or any museum, or any public media organization, etc.) offers, basically, free college in the form of more than 200,000 downloadable lectures, presentations, audiobooks, language lessons, and more.
Click here to launch iTunes and marvel at the resources available, from the Ivy Leagues to Oxford to many of the top schools worldwide, including Australia, Canada, Ireland and New Zealand. Or, from my beloved prior alma mater, distinguished in both football and, apparently, cutting-edge necrology: "Zombies! The Living Dead in Literature." (Cue Auburn fans joking about how we all wish Bear Bryant would rise from the grave. Go on. IT'S TRUE AND OUR SCIENTISTS ARE WORKING ON IT)
Ahem. FREE. COLLEGE. If I have to explain to you why this is a good thing, you should... well, go get some free college. The haves in the world (those of us whom a college education is feasible, despite myriad financial or societal barriers) may now have so much more, but the have-nots? Well, they gain access to some of the finest educational resources from some of the most exclusionary institutions in the world. And it can live in your pocket. This is the sort of revolutionary deployment of information that reminds us how the internet can, in fact, fundamentally change the world for the better.
Now, to get iPods in the hands of the have-nots. Maybe the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will help! They love to support educational technology initiatives!
...
Oooooooohhhhhhhhhhhh, right. Zunes, anyone? Please, take a Zune?
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You are Zuny! No Zany! No funny! You should write a humor column for newspapers. Great audiences! Me and you! Well, maybe one or two more.
ReplyDeleteSeriously, as a commodity moves from scarcity to abundance the price is bound to move toward free. If only we could abolish the degree granting power of universities (all schools for that matter) and football teams (make them commercial entities), we might see the FREE university actually arise. Might see, I say.