I just finished uploading the first pieces to my iTunes U sites. On Tuesday in my next classes, I’ll be able to unveil the site to my students. I did encounter one small glitch, which I was able to circumvent, but I figure we’ll have that fixed before then.

But here’s some of the good news:

1. As I figured, iTunes U is very easy to use. It’s easy to edit your course page and add tabs (categories in which you can upload material). It looks like just another iTunes Music Store page.
2. You can set permissions individually for each tab. They can be set so students can download only or upload only (as a drop box for assignments), but there is also a "Shared" permission, which allows student users to upload AND download. This one interests me the most as I want to use iTunes U as a way to distribute media files across the classroom.
3. For Cortland, students and faculty access iTunes U through their Banner accounts. However once you are in and subscribe to a course podcast, you don’t need to re-authenticate to update. That makes things a little easier.

I’ve also volunteered to do course casting, which I’m going to do with the grad course that I am team-teaching with my colleague, Karen Stearns. In thinking about that I’ve also figured out something else I’d like to do. I’d like to get some screen capture software that I could sync with the audio. I do a fair amount of demonstration in class. It would be great if I could capture my screen movements and my audio, put them together, and include them as well.

I’ll see how it goes, but this first step is exciting.