It was only a matter of time before more British universities start offering free content; both Oxford and Cambridge universities, which rank amongst the world's most prestigious educational institutions, have announced that they will offer educational multimedia resources for free through iTunes's iTunes U section. Both universities will gradually put all their multimedia content in the public domain as part of a drive to reach out for a much wider audience; the content will include videos, podcasts, music tracks and other content from a wide variety of renowned contributors including some Nobel Prize winners. As well as being an educational tool, Oxford and Cambridge are also hoping that it will be a great marketing one as well as they are also providing background information for interested prospective students. iTunes U is a section on Apple dedicated to Education and the Open university and the University College of London are already part of the programme which has seen dozens of universities worldwide contributing content for free. Unfortunately, you will need to have access to iTunes (either on Mac or PC) to be able to get hold of the content although any media player that can play .mp4 videos or AAC audio files will work. This is in start contrast with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, OpenCourseware, which offer not only the lecture notes but also files in the more widely recognised MP3 and RM formats.
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