Introduction
Contents:
Who Should Read This Guide?
Organization of This Document
Using Onscreen Help
Getting Additional Information
iTunes U puts the power of the iTunes Store 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?
All iTunes U site administrators, instructors, and course managers 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 the following parts of this guide: “Planning, Administering, and Customizing Your iTunes U Site,” “Designing, Managing, and Expanding Your iTunes U Site,” and “Advanced Administrator Features.”
Instructors and course managers 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 and course managers should read the following parts of this guide: “iTunes U Overview” and “Designing, Managing, and Expanding Your iTunes U Site,” as well as “Defining Track Preferences.”
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 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:
Really Simple Syndication (RSS) 2.0 Podcast Feeds
XML-based Web Services
Programming Tools and Languages such as PHP, Perl, Python, Java, .Net
Identity Management
Media Metadata Specifications
Organization of This Document
This guide is organized as follows:
“About iTunes U” provides an overview of iTunes U and describes iTunes U system requirements and supported formats.
“About iTunes U Content” provides background information and details on how to prepare and create content for use with iPod and iTunes and explains how you can share files by adding content to your iTunes U site, as well as a brief understanding of iTunes U localization.
“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.
“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 Your iTunes U Site” 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 Your iTunes U Site” 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.
“iTunes U in the iTunes Store” describes some of the features your site can take advantage of when included in the iTunes U area in the iTunes Store.
“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.
“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.
“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 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 may be somewhat different from the images you see on your screen.
Using Onscreen Help
You can view instructions and other useful information by using onscreen help. From the Help menu, you can choose one of the following options:
iTunes Help displays the iTunes application help, including information on playing and organizing music, videos, and podcast, using iPod and other music players, and more.
iPod Help displays the iPod application help, including information about transferring music and data files to iPod, automatically updating iPod, using playlists, changing settings, viewing file types supported by iPod, and more.
iPhone Help displays the iPhone application help, including information about use, accessories, troubleshooting, safety, and more.
Apple TV Help displays the Apple TV application help, including information about use, accessories, troubleshooting, safety, and more.
Apple Service and Support displays the Apple - Support webpage, which contains tutorials, discussion boards, how-to information, where to find more information on the iTunes Store and iTunes U, and more.
To see the latest help topics, make sure your computer is connected to the Internet while you’re using Help Viewer. Help Viewer automatically retrieves and caches the latest help topics from the Internet. When not connected to the Internet, Help Viewer displays cached help topics.
Getting Additional Information
For more information about iTunes U, see the following documents:
iTunes U User’s Guide, which describes how to prepare a course for iTunes U, log in to an iTunes U site, customize iTunes U Course page, create groups, upload files, use an iTunes U site, and more.
Creating Your iTunes U Site, which describes Apple’s design recommendations for creating an iTunes U site. It is important to review and follow these guidelines before applying for inclusion within iTunes U in the iTunes Store.
For access to all iTunes U documentation, frequently asked questions, and support and discussion groups, see the iTunes U support site at http://www.apple.com/support/itunes_u/.
© 2009 Apple Inc. All Rights Reserved. (Last updated: 2009-05-27)