„Think outside the classroom“ – is the slogan of a service lunched by Apple in May 2007 – iTunesU. It provides free education materials from top universities from the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Ireland to everyone, thus finally creating a platform for universal and easily accessible eLearning.

Observed from a global perspective, the service may increase the efficiency of human capital overall, for providing people around the world with such information will certainly have a huge impact on learning, professionality and ideas all over the world.

For the users it means, they can hear great lectures and read interesting papers, independently from what are they doing and where are they living, thus enabling them to learn faster, from great sources, everywhere and anytime.

Young people will be able to find out early enough, what exactly they are interested in, thus providing a brighter range of well informed individuals for future universities and employers.

For lecturers it would set the bar higher, for now they will be able to compare their teaching methods and techniques to other professionals, thus creating an atmosphere of higher challenge and increased teaching efficiency and professionallity.

Essential in this sense will be the number of users and the information’s distribution, categorization and accessibility – the right infos should go to the right user!

Other critical thoughts may be bundled and targeted in the context of the monopoly of Apple over the platform – will the eLearner be the one, who gains the most?

Ivan – E-Learning Team