Oxford University on iTunesU

When I am out talking to teachers and school leaders I often describe Continuous Professional Development (CPD) in two ways:

1. Sheep Dip CPD this is more traditional CPD when a large group of people gather together to hear from an expert on a topic. When they leave we assume that they are all experts in the topic because we have immersed then in it for the length of CPD session.

2. Drip Feed CPD this is more about learning at any time and in any place. It empowers professionals to find the answers to questions on a need to know basis. Importantly, drip feed CPD is continuous and is on-going though a personal learning network. This means that you find out answers to questions that you didn’t even know you need the answers too!

iTunesU is a good example of one type of Drip Feed CPD. You can subscribe to a topic or course that you are interested in on iTunesU and if a new episode is up-loaded by the provider it will automatically download to your computer the next time that your fire up iTunes.

At Learning and Teaching Scotland we have made all of our on-line video content available via iTunesU and you can to subscribe to different courses. If you’re a Scottish Teacher its worth keeping an eye on this service as we will soon be up-loading exemplification of good practice for A Curriculum for Excellence and we will also be adding more Games Based Learning examples.

Anyway, when I was at the FOTE Conference last Friday I listened to an interesting presentation from Peter Robinson of Oxford University. He was talking about Oxford Universities new materials that are now available on iTunesU.

The Oxford University iTunesU Channel containes a huge amount of information and educational content that can be downloaded, listened to and watched for free. But what impressed me about their model was that academics still owned the content but they chose to donate it to the learners and make it accessible via iTunesU.

This idea instantly struck me as a model that would be appropriate to repeat for examination courses in schools.