Warwick iTunesU - One Year On
Warwick has hit the 800,000 downloads mark just as it celebrates one year of Warwick on iTunesU. Since January 2009 the University has firmly established its position as one of the leading content providers on the service.
At present, there are over 560 programmes available for free download on the Warwick channel. Content includes video footage and audio recordings from across the faculties covering a wide range of subjects including history, maths, arts and culture and science as well as content from the student body.
Professor Nigel Thrift, Vice Chancellor of the University of Warwick said:
iTunes U is an important resource for the University allowing us to share our outstanding academic research and teaching community with learners and academics worldwide. Warwick has always prided itself on the interplay between staff and students, research and teaching, academics, policy makers and the work place, the interdisciplinary environment in which new ideas and enquiries flourish and iTunesU is an important way for us to bring new communities of interest into the academic conversation.”
This free service allows users to access interviews with academics, programmes about research at the University, lectures, teaching materials and content from our student community. Many members from the Warwick community, both staff and students and beyond have been involved in this project and we look forward to highlighting more excellent work from the Warwick community in the future.
Shakespeare Found and a Chocolate Powered Racing Car
Shakespeare Found made in collaboration with the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, is the biggest success story so far, with over 20,000 downloads in one weekend in March alone. A film about WMG’s environmentally sustainable F3 racing car powered by waste from the chocolate industry became a worldwide success, hitting the Engineering top spot as well as the overall Top Downloads in June.
Subject highlights
Warwick also has a strong presence in the specific subject charts across iTunesU. In Literature, Professor David Morley’s Writing Challenges has proved to be an outstanding success, consistently making over 2000 downloads on average each week. In Health and Medicine, Peter Abraham’s anatomy films using plastinated specimens were for most of the year never out of the top 2 downloads and in Mathematics Ian Stewart’s Maths Challenges have proved equally popular. Recently the Complexity Science Conference, ECCS ’09 held here at Warwick has become the most popular download, not surprising considering how to solve the current climate crisis was their focus.
TEDx Warwick
Videos from February's TEDx Warwick '09 event are now available on the Student section of iTunesU. The event, licensed by TED and organised entirely by a team of students, was the first of its kind in Europe, featuring a collection of inspirational thinkers from around the world, challenged to deliver their ideas in just 18 minutes. Amongst the speakers were Professor Philip Zimbardo (famous for the Stanford Prison Experiment), Francois Grey (Head of IT Communications at CERN) and Solitaire Townsend (UN taskforce on Sustainable lifestyles), each delivering thought provoking talks around the general topic of "A Changing World".
Accessing Warwick on iTunesU
To access iTunesU you will need a version of iTunes installed on your computer. You can download iTunes from the Apple web site.
If you are not a registered user of iTunes you can access the content through the Podcast Browser on the University web site or by visiting Warwick YouTube EDU.
