Releasing OpenCourseWare: NTNU on iTunes

The university where I currently do my PhD has decided to release video recordings of several lectures as OpenCourseWare. I think it is a good move to join other more famous universities in providing content to the public.

The only problem is that they so far only provide the content through iTunes, see NTNU’s iTunes page. As a Linux user this means that I am not able to view the content. However, the Information Department assured me that they were going to start providing RSS feeds and their own channel on YouTube Edu. To me it is a bit strange that they did not do it right away because I see providing open content through a closed environment like iTunes as somewhat of a ironic move.

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2 Comments

  1. I totally agree. It’s a way to drive students from using open source software. Schools should demand support on all platforms before they contribute to apple’s iTunes promotion.

    As NTNU-student I don’t have access to these lectures because I prefer Linux. (Came over this site trying to find a workaround)

  2. As far as I know there are currently no workarounds. iTunes does not work on Ubuntu through Wine (I guess this is a good reason why we should ignore iTunes). I have seen people talk about VirtualBox but then you need some non-open source operating system for running your iTunes copy. Good luck in finding a solution though. Please let me know if you find one.

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