Last week at the National Educational Computing Conference in San Antonio, Apple Computer unveiled that newest component of its iTunes Store, iTunes U, providing free access to over 50,000 educational audio and video tracks. This content is available to everyone, not just students, using a Mac or PC and an internet connection.

iTunes U is being populated with podcasts and movies from museums, universities, PBS stations, and educational institutions from across the country. Michigan is one of seven states currently participating in this project to share resources for K-12 educators around the world.

MACUL (Michigan Association for Computer Users in Learning) is a proud partner with the Michigan Department of Education in identifying and developing content for Michigan’s MI Learning, a part of the iTunes U site.

There are several ways to explore this new content after clicking on iTunes U from the iTunes Store window:

• Check out the top download
• Choose a category
• Browse New and Noteworthy
• Find an educational provider or featured providers
• Choose specifically from K-12 resources
• Use the Search Feature in the iTunes Store.

Once you locate the content you would like to see or hear, download it into iTunes on your computer. You’re then able to listen to it on your computer or sync your iPod or iPhone and take it with you. Learning is no longer confined by the four walls of the classroom!

Check out this podcast from Bruce Basinger that introduces the use of game shows to motivate students to learn. If you don’t have time to listen to the entire podcast, the script is provided on the page. In this podcast, he points to this web site that includes nine game templates created in PowerPoint. These include, Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader?, Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, Twenty Questions, Guess The Covered Word (four block and vocabulary words), Hillsborough Squares (a.k.a. Hollywood Squares), Weakest Link and Concentation. What’s cool is that Basinger provides a couple of ideas that reduces the amount of time you need to create a show and involves the students. Once created, they can be used year and year with little or minor tweaking.