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Cerritos College, along with other colleges, has become a part of iTunes U.

iTunes U is a service delivered by Apple that will facilitate the school to allocate digital videos and audio recording into the Internet or Apple products.

This means that students can sync course content into their iPads or iPhones and look over a professor’s lecture over their devices.

Dean of Academic Affairs Nick Real explained that he used iTunes U while he was instructing a class about computer-assisted inspection using verisur.

“iTunes was there to help us publish the videos we created for the class, ” he said.

Real mentioned that some of his students were not actually able to use iTunes U.

“One thing that we did because not every student was able to connect to iTunes U, we also posted them [the videos] on YouTube. They’re still on YouTube right now,” he explained.

He also mentioned that some students didn’t like logging in to iTunes U because they weren’t comfortable with setting up an account, which is why he also moved some of his videos to Youtube.

“They were supplements so that students can watch it over and over again to help them learn,” he said.

Students like Manuel Rodriguez, electric engineer major, thinks iTunes U is a good idea for when he’s on the go.

“If I had no way to get into a computer at the moment, I’ll be able to download [the lecture] pretty quickly onto my phone,” he said.

The iTunes U tool was designed to lengthen faculty’s instructional presence.

English major Alonso Lamas sees a negative side effect as far as class attendance to the iTunes U app.

“It might hinder the students, they might not show up knowing that they could possibly just go online and listen to it [the lectures],” he said.

Lamas explains why going to class is much beneficial than just going over lectures on your own time and device when he said, “There is some things that you cover in class that you just can’t learn just by just hearing it on your iPod.”

Communications major, Samantha Cardona will agree with Lamas about class attendance.

“Going to class is still a big part of being a student, but it will still be beneficial to be able to have it on your iPod for in some cases when you’re not able to make it to class,” Cardona said.

Real’s class didn’t have much of an impact as far as attendance.

“It didn’t really affect because my class was a night class and most of them commute from work since it’s a technical class, but for day classes, those students might be affected,” he said.

Assistant professor in the English department, Kolleen Higgins also thinks that the attendance subject would always be a big impact.

“I don’t really think you can replace the classroom face-to-face experience, which is one of the problems we have with online courses,” she said.

Higgins continued with, “the online classes are only successful as the students want to be.”

Higgins doesn’t think iTunes U is right for her class but thinks it would be good for a lecture based class.

The iTunes U is just one of the ways that Apple is trying to make to benefit people in the educational side and not just for entertainment.

Apple app, iBook is a similar app that some colleges started using to make textbooks easier to get and less heavier to carry for students.

With the amount of people who have Apple devices on campus, English major, Katherine Grijalva sees the big factor that the iTunes U app can benefit the students.

“They’ll [students] have more access to their homework, videos or even music on the go,” she said.

With iTunes U, undecided major Adolfo Rodriguez explains that there won’t be much of an excuse for students to miss lectures and homework thanks to the app.

“I do see a lot of students that have iPods and iPads that way you won’t have an excuse just because you weren’t able to use a computer,” he said.