Part of Apple’s education initiative, iTunes U is both a podcasting service for college lectures that’s available through iTunes as well as a free Apple App Store app for teachers to stream video of lectures and extend teaching beyond the classroom. In addition to having their lectures streamed to students, teachers of all levels (from kindergarten to grade schools to colleges and universities) can use the iTunes U app to post class notes, study guides, handouts and more for their students. Teachers can also send assignments and messages to students via push notifications from within the app.
iTunes U also complements the iBooks Author app, which can be used by teachers and publishers for creating interactive, dynamic iBooks Textbooks, and it integrates with Apple’s iCloud service, enabling students to keep their iTunes U class and course information synced between iOS devices like the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch as well as with laptop and desktop computers like the MacBook Air and iMac.
