iTunesU, a million downloads a year... hopefully!

It's been nine months now since the the CREATE Project team launched the colleges iTunesU site, and what a nine months it's been! After the initial success and recognition for the launch, we received front page recognition for our "Celebrity Chef Career Advice" followed by focused promotion from iTunes of the Adam Smith Lecture 2009 with Kofi Annan (promoted in the same space on iTunesU which is currently focused on The Beatles in iTunes Music Store). Since then the iTunesU site has gone from strength to strength, quietly driving away in the background and racking up international recognition for Adam Smith College.

Without getting too bogged down in stats, since launch the site has received 798'451 requests for downloads. Of these, Adam Smith Business Club has received a huge amount of recognition with over 8'000 downloads in the last month alone! We would like to draw attention to this as it's an excellent example of staff identifying quality, reoccurring delivery of information and taking initiative to contact us, request training in capturing the presentations and delivering them as a regular podcast, supported by the CreatED Team. Well done to all concerned, it's been a big hit!

And it's not just the UK which are interested in Adam Smith College podcasts. We've had requests from across the globe, as close to home as France and Denmark, as far away as New Zealand and Taiwan! And unlike Robbie Williams ever managed, we've broken the United States, our biggest international fan, with over 250'000 downloads since launch from across the pond alone.

So, why not have a look and see what excellent content is there yourself? You can direct your students to download via iTunesU on their home computers, or if you see anything you wish to use in the classroom all podcasts can be viewed via your web browser at:

www.adamsmithcollege.tv/rss

If you have a learning event occurring, once or regularly, get in touch with the CreatED Team to discuss capturing it and making it available on iTunesU. Lets get some more great content up and we'll looking at passing the million downloads mark within a year! (That's better than Oxford did in their first year!)