ITunes in Classrooms

[enjay]

Other than the implications of broadcasting copyrighted music, can anyone offer any reason why I can't install iTunes in some classrooms?

[bishopsgarthstockton]

I think you would be opening your self up to all sorts of problems. Just not worth It. Why are you thinking about installing it?

[webman]

Resource hog?

[enjay]

Only local resources to the PC its being run on though, surely. If they want it, then they can put up with any slowdown while using it...

[tosca925]

I agree, i don't think its a good idea either. Can of worms is an under statement.

[enjay]

I think you would be opening your self up to all sorts of problems. Just not worth It. Why are you thinking about installing it?

The teacher has some podcasts on her ipod which she wishes to play the class.

What sort of problems did you have in mind that I'd be facing?

[TechMonkey]

Can't they just use Media Player/Winamp/VLC/MP3 software of choice? Podcasts are only MP3's so if they are on her iPod thats half the battle of actually getting them sorted. If she hooks her iPod into a new install of iTunes it will be wiped anyway so she would lose the podcasts anyway.
Hook into it like a pen drive, copy them out and play them over the network. Much easier and less problems

[enjay]

If she hooks her iPod into a new install of iTunes it will be wiped anyway so she would lose the podcasts anyway.

Didn't think of that, thanks!

Forgive the newbie question, but I'm not an ipoder - the podcast is just a standard MP3 file, so she can just copy it into her MyDocs and play it from there, right? Or possibly even play it straight from the ipod.

[Geoff]

iPods have a standard 3.5mm stereo jack. So no problem there.

IPods don't work like normal flash devices, you can't access the music with anything other than iTunes. Unless you use 3rd party firmware like Rockbox. It's probably easier to go back to the site the podcast came from and download it directly to the PC.

If you want to subscribe to Podcasts from a PC but don't want something heavyweight like iTunes, I suggest Juice.

http://juicereceiver.sourceforge.net/index.php

[Domino]

Or set up a mp3 streamer on the network and put them on there for her.

Try VibeStreamer

[enjay]

Juice looks like it might fit the bill - does it download the podcasts automatically, or will the teacher have to do that before the lesson?

[Geoff]

Its got a built in scheduler. You can manually tell it to check your feeds too.

[enjay]

Sweet, I'll definitely have a look at that, then. Thanks Geoff.

[elsiegee40]

If she hooks her iPod into a new install of iTunes it will be wiped anyway so she would lose the podcasts anyway.

Some mistake surely. With 3 iPods in this household... a fresh install of iTunes on a new laptop hasn't wiped any of them! It will only wipe if you set it up to automatically sync with iTunes. set it for manual and it's fine.

Lin

[TechMonkey]

If she hooks her iPod into a new install of iTunes it will be wiped anyway so she would lose the podcasts anyway.

Some mistake surely. With 3 iPods in this household... a fresh install of iTunes on a new laptop hasn't wiped any of them! It will only wipe if you set it up to automatically sync with iTunes. set it for manual and it's fine.

Lin

Sorry think I explained it badly. If you try and plug an iPod into iTunes that isn't the iTunes install that originally put the music on then iTunes will want to set up a new link. If you say yes then it will wipe the iPod to set up a new link. WEll this is my understanding. It may have changed recently but I wanted to have my iPod linked to home and work pc and it was a big no no.

@Geoff: I'm sure I have accessed the music section of an iPod using Windows. Some trick such as plugging the iPod in waiting for an error message and then opening my computer. With the error message up you get a removable drive that can be accessed as anyother.

I'll dig around.