Apple has announced its education-focused content store, iTunes U, has surpassed one billion downloads.
Apple says there are more than 1 200 universities and colleges and 1 200 K-12 schools involved in iTunes U. "Leading universities, including Duke, Yale, Cambridge, MIT and Oxford, continue to extend their reach by enrolling more than 100 000 students in single iTunes U courses, with Stanford University and The Open University each surpassing 60 million content downloads," says Apple.
According to Apple, it is the largest online catalogue of free educational content and it hosts over 2 500 public and thousands of private courses. The iTunes U app is available in over 155 countries.
Apple's senior VP of Internet software and services, Eddy Cue, says: "It's inspiring to see what educators and students of all types are doing with iTunes U. With the incredible content offered on iTunes U, students can learn like never before - there are now iTunes U courses with more than 250 000 students enrolled in them, which is a phenomenal shift in the way we teach and learn."
iTunes U was initially introduced in 2007 as part of iTunes. Apple then released a standalone iTunes U application in 2012 along with the free iBooks Author app which allows writers and publishers to create original multi-touch books.
The release of the iTunes U app appears to have ramped up engagement with the service, with 300 million downloads in the last nine months alone (iTunes U had notched up 700 million downloads in the five years before the app was released).
TechCrunch reports that Apple has said it has sold over eight million iPads directly to educational institutions worldwide (over 4.5 million of those have been to US-based institutions).
According to local Apple distributor, Core Group, there are over 100 public and private schools using iPads in the classroom in SA. Core recently released ZA Books, a digital bookstore with curriculum-relevant textbooks for South African schools and learners available exclusively for the iPad.
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