Campus News
December 13, 2010
iTunes U nears 10 million downloads
Top downloads from Emory on iTunes U as of Dec. 13
Emory has carved out a niche in the iTunes U universe, where about 2 percent of all downloads are language instruction materials produced in-house at the University, primarily through the Emory College Language Center. Emory on iTunes U is rapidly approaching 10 million downloads in just over two years, and of these, more than 90 percent are foreign language materials.
Chinese and Kanji represent the bulk of downloads, especially for individual characters. Emory offers distinctive character material that shows the stroke order as done by an actual human hand instead of the animation found with most other related content found online.
And for those who would like to learn some Twi, Amharic, Urdu or Swahili, there is a trove of materials on rare and less commonly taught languages produced by the Structured Independent Language Study (SILS) program. Only about a dozen students take part in SILS each semester, but materials from the program reach thousands of people.
