Apple iTunes U Downloads Surpass 1 Billion

Apple's iTunes U, home to free educational content, today topped an impressive one billion downloads, according to Apple.

The service features what Cupertino calls the world's largest online catalog of free educational tools from schools and libraries, museums and other organizations aimed at helping teachers create courses and lesson plans with lectures, assignments, books, quizzes, and other content from global users.

"It's inspiring to see what educators and students of all types are doing with iTunes U," Eddy Cue, Apple's senior vice president of Internet Software and Services, said in a statement. "With the incredible content offered on iTunes U, students can learn like never before — there are now iTunes U courses with more than 250,000 students enrolled in them, which is a phenomenal shift in the way we teach and learn."

More than 2,400 universities, colleges, and K-12 schools host over 2,500 public and thousands of private courses about the arts, sciences, health and medicine, education, business, and more. Ohio State University's Matthew Stoltzfus has done his part to expand iTunes U's reach by enrolling more than 100,000 students in his General Chemistry course in its first year.

"The interest in my iTunes U course receives from non-college students is overwhelming," he said in a statement. "I've been working with high school teachers who use my iTunes U material to prepare to teach their own classes, high school students all over the world who are leveraging the course to tutor their fellow classmates, even retirees who download my iTunes U course to stay intellectually active."

Apple's educational multimedia store topped 300 million downloads in August 2010, three years after it launched. At the time, institutions like Harvard, MIT, Cambridge, Oxford, the University of Melbourne and Université de Montréal participated in the service, distributing their content for use around the world.

Last year, Cupertino and Stanford University partnered with startup Piazza to make iTunes U more social, temporarily turning the school's iPhone and iPad Development class into a collaborative effort between students.

"I see success unfolding before me on a daily basis," Mansfield Independent School District teacher Chrissy Boydstun said in a statement. The Texas district provides each of its 10,000-plus high school students and faculty with an iPad — a procedure Boydstun praised, saying that students are more engaged with the technology.

"I love the way iTunes U provides a roadmap to take students beyond what a typical lesson or lecture could achieve," she said.

Educators can create iTunes U courses in 30 countries, including recent additions Brazil, South Korea, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates.

Earlier this month, Apple announced that music lovers had purchased more than 25 billion songs from the iTunes store.

For more, see PCMag's review of the iPad mini and the fourth-gen iPad.