Beatle mania continues on iTunes: after the Fab Four launched on Apple’s store, selling some two million downloads in the first week, a course about them on iTunes U is also soaring in popularity.
Liberal Studies class “The Beatles: Popular Music and Society” from the University of Illinois Springfield has been available on iTunes in podcast form since 2005, but just this week it came in as the second most popular course on iTunes U. (Number one? Oxford’s “Critical Reasoning for Beginners.”)
Half a million people have downloaded the 39 podcasts – a crash course in 1960s music for people not born when John Lennon was killed in 1980? — and another two million have previewed it.
Professor Michael Cheney says the podcast format makes the materials more accessible.
“For a lot of students, it’s a way to connect with the material,” said Cheney. “They hear my voice, so it’s not just reading, and it’s done in a radio style.”
Source: Illinois Home Page
