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Home / News / Apple launches iTunes U app

Apple launches iTunes U app

You can't run away from your coursework anymore, it's sitting in your pocket – all of it

Apple’s on an education spree today – and having announced iBooks 2 and iBooks Author, it’s graduating to university with the new and improved iTunes U. If you haven’t heard of it before, it’s iTunes as we know and love it – but in place of music and movies, you get course notes and lecture slides. No moaning please, it’s character-building.

The all-new iTunes U is getting a dedicated app with redesigned tabs on the right hand side of your course notes – which will include Info, Posts, Notes and Materials.

Posts is the area where teacher can bug you to hand in work or send updates to students, plus assignments sync nicely with iBooks 2 so you know exactly what to read.

The Notes tab in iTunes U pulls in anything you’ve highlighted for re-reading. Materials is where you can buy books, video, audio or apps – if you’re a student with money to burn, that is.

Students can easily see links to videos or apps outside iTunes U – no cats or FPS games though, remember – you’re here to learn. Unless you’re learning about cats or FPS games, in which case go to town.

Enrolling on the course and giving feedback also happen entirely in-app – we just hope the ratings comments match the calibre of the App Store.

It’s clear where Apple’s headed with this – iPad in hand, in theory you’ll be able to sit down and crack on with learning just about anything. And it’s not just a US knowledge frenzy, the app is headed for 123 countries – and of course it’s free.

The big question is, can Apple make online learning cool? Hand your answers to the teacher, and show your working.

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Profile image of Dan Grabham Dan Grabham Editor-in-Chief

About

Dan is Editor-in-chief of Stuff, working across the magazine and the Stuff.tv website.  Our Editor-in-Chief is a regular at tech shows such as CES in Las Vegas, IFA in Berlin and Mobile World Congress in Barcelona as well as at other launches and events. He has been a CES Innovation Awards judge. Dan is completely platform agnostic and very at home using and writing about Windows, macOS, Android and iOS/iPadOS plus lots and lots of gadgets including audio and smart home gear, laptops and smartphones. He's also been interviewed and quoted in a wide variety of places including The Sun, BBC World Service, BBC News Online, BBC Radio 5Live, BBC Radio 4, Sky News Radio and BBC Local Radio.

Areas of expertise

Computing, mobile, audio, smart home