Introduction

Contents:

Who Should Read This Guide?
Organization of This Document
Getting Additional Information

iTunes U puts the power of iTunes to work for colleges, universities, and other education organizations, so users can easily search, download, and play education content just like they do music, movies, and TV shows. This guide describes how to set up an iTunes U site and manage, distribute, and control access to your institution’s content, as well as how you can organize and manage iTunes U courses and course content.

Who Should Read This Guide?

iTunes U site administrators, instructors, and other users who edit and manage existing iTunes U private sites should read this guide.

• Site administrators should read this guide to learn how to activate and organize their institution’s iTunes U site, including how to control user access to site content, integrate their site’s authentication and authorization services, and design and customize pages.

  Site administrators should read this entire guide, paying special attention to “Administering and Customizing Sites,” “Designing, Managing, and Expanding Sites,” and “Advanced Administrator Features.”

  Site administrators need to understand content types, file-compression tools, and metadata requirements. Using your institution’s tools, you also need to be able to manage storage, perform backups, and utilize RSS and Atom feeds to notify iTunes U about your updated content. Depending on your site setup, you should also know how to write scripts, manage server-side applications, and integrate with authentication systems. As an iTunes U administrator, you should be familiar with the following technologies:

  • RSS 2.0 Podcast Feeds

  • Atom Syndication Format Podcast Feeds

  • XML-based Web Services

  • Programming Tools and Languages such as PHP, Perl, Python, Java, .Net

  • Identity Management

  • Media Metadata Specifications

• Instructors and other users who edit and manage iTunes U private sites should read this guide to learn how to organize and manage iTunes U courses and course content in their institution’s iTunes U site, including how to design and customize pages.

  Instructors, editors, and managers should read “iTunes U Overview” and “Designing, Managing, and Expanding Sites,” as well as “Defining Track Preferences.”

Organization of This Document

This guide is organized as follows:

• “iTunes U Overview”

  • “About iTunes U” provides an overview of iTunes U and describes iTunes U system requirements and supported formats.

  • “Getting Started” provides ideas for how you should think about setting up your iTunes U site, examples of how you can configure and organize your site and its content to meet your needs, and describes the steps you must take to initially activate and set up your site.

  • “About Content” provides background information and details on how to prepare and create content for use with iPod and iTunes, as well as a brief understanding of iTunes U localization.

• “Administering and Customizing Sites”

  • “Administering Site Access” explains how you can use an Apple ID account, your institution’s existing authentication and authorization services, or both to ensure secure access and administer your iTunes U site.

  • “Customizing iTunes U Sites” describes how to define track preferences for your iTunes U content, edit site settings, define additional administrative users, use basic and advanced access controls to administer your site, define page access, and create credentials and assign access levels to control a user’s actions and permission to iTunes U pages and groups.

• “Designing, Managing, and Expanding Sites”

  • “Designing iTunes U Sites” describes how you can customize the look and feel of your site to use your institution’s colors, logos, and graphics and make your iTunes U site appear familiar to instructors, staff, students, and alumni. This section describes how you can create themes and templates, and add and edit iTunes U pages.

  • “Managing iTunes U Course Pages” explains how you can customize your site by designing a specific look for each Course page within your site. This section also describes how to create groups within Course pages.

  • “Adding Content” explains how you can share files by adding content to your iTunes U site.

  • “Linking to iTunes U” explains how to link content within your iTunes U site, how to obtain an iTunes U URL, and what happens when your session times out.

  • “Using iTunes U Search” explains how you can search your iTunes U site.

• “Advanced Administrator Features”

  • “Understanding iTunes U Reports” describes the data provided in your weekly iTunes U report, and how you can obtain a daily report log.

  • “iTunes U Web Services” provides details and examples of how you can use iTunes U Web Services to view and modify your iTunes U site.

  • “Debugging Site Access and Integration” describes the iTunes U Access Debugging page, which helps you debug any problems you encounter while setting up, activating, and integrating your iTunes U site.

• “Understanding Icons Used in iTunes U Pages” details the icons used within iTunes U pages.

• “Glossary” defines terms you’ll encounter as you read this guide.

In addition to the parts and sections listed above, a revision history and index are provided for your reference.

Note: Because Apple periodically releases new versions and updates to its software, images shown in this guide might be somewhat different from the images you see on your screen.