Podcasts and iTunes U
Good evening folks!
I uploaded a podcast to iTunes U earlier with modest success. Tooling around in Audacity and producing an mp3 file wasn’t any problem, and uploading the file itself wasn’t any problem. Unfortunately, following directions was in this instance a little problematic, as the ‘course content’ directory to which the mp3 was to be uploaded wasn’t available as an option to me. Instead, I had to opt for either the ‘Drop Box’ or ‘Shared’ directories. A screenshot of what I saw:
My thinking at the moment is that the ‘course content’ directory is available only to the instructor, which hopefully I’ll be able to test out tomorrow in class by asking Dr. O’Bannon to log in and see what her upload options are, and then logging her out and then logging one of the students in on the same machine to see whether the options differ.
In other news, linking to podcasts, when they’re on iTunes U, is a little interesting. In iTunes U, you can opt to have course materials either viewable by the public, or private and requring authentication to access. Our course materials require authentication. If you wanted to put up a link to a podcast, you can right click on it in the ‘course contents’ tab, and then select ‘copy iTunes store URL’. Then in your blog post, select your text and create a link by using the address for your podcast on iTunes.
What’s going to happen is this: if you’re not already logged into “My UTK on iTunes U” the link isn’t going to fully work. What will happen is you’ll be diverted to the login page on the UT website, and once that’s verified, you’ll be brought into the iTunes program and put on the UTK homepage – not at the location of the podcast itself. From there, you have to browse manually to the correct course and podcast.
However, if you *are* already logged in to “My UTK on iTunes U”, the link address will work – it’ll bring you straight there.
So, if you want to put a link to your iTunes U podcast on your blog or somewhere, just do this. Also in your blog post, make a note that you need to log in first in order for the link to the podcast to work. The address to log into ‘My UTK on iTunes U” is:
https://itunesu.utk.edu/cgi-bin/login?where=UTK
Oh, and for example, here’s my podcast about uploading podcasts to iTunes U.
Happy podcasting!