Since 2007, Apple has offered uni­ver­si­ties around the world a way to dis­trib­ute edu­ca­tion­al media via iTunes U. Fast for­ward to 2010, Har­vard has now set up its own iTunes U sec­tion, with more than 200 audio and video tracks cov­er­ing every­thing from the Har­vard Kuum­ba Singers to a course on Jus­tice with promi­nent polit­i­cal philoso­pher Michael Sandel. Oth­er high­lights include:

• Brief (one to two-minute) high-def­i­n­i­tion video tours of hard-to-see astro­nom­i­cal objects observed by the Chan­dra X‑ray Obser­va­to­ry — we’re talk­ing explod­ed stars and black holes. High­lights include: Galac­tic Cen­ter in 60 Sec­onds (there’s a black hole at the cen­ter of the Milky Way), Chan­dra’s Extra­or­di­nary Uni­verse (an overview of the Chan­dra project), and Best of the Beau­ti­ful Uni­verse (the pic­tures of galaxy clus­ters are stun­ning).
• A Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty Press pod­cast fea­tur­ing 10–20 minute long inter­views with authors of such titles as: Nam­ing Infin­i­ty: A True Sto­ry of Reli­gious Mys­ti­cism and Math­e­mat­i­cal Cre­ativ­i­ty; Hys­ter­i­cal Men: The Hid­den His­to­ry of Male Ner­vous Ill­ness; and The Anno­tat­ed Wind in the Wil­lows.
• Videos of John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum speech­es and pan­el dis­cus­sions fea­tur­ing promi­nent lead­ers, aca­d­e­mics, and artists. As a fol­low-up to Michael Sandel’s Jus­tice course linked to above, there’s a pan­el dis­cus­sion with him and Niall Fer­gu­son, Lani Guinier, and Peg­gy Noo­nan: JUSTICE: What’s the Right Thing to Do? There’s also a con­ver­sa­tion with Dustin Lance Black, screen­writer of the movie MILK.

For free cours­es from Har­vard and oth­er fine insti­tu­tions, vis­it our col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es.

via Mac­World

Wes Alwan lives in Boston, Mass­a­chu­setts, where he works as a writer and researcher and attends the Insti­tute for the Study of Psy­cho­analy­sis and Cul­ture. He also par­tic­i­pates in The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life, a pod­cast con­sist­ing of infor­mal dis­cus­sions about philo­soph­i­cal texts by three phi­los­o­phy grad­u­ate school dropouts.