iTunes free podcasts – Learn more about any subject

Posted on October 7, 2008 at 5:27 am

Did you ever feel the need to learn something new during your spare time? Recently I was touching up on my project management skills (I was given a bigger responsibility, woot!) and I was a little frustrated by how few good materials are written about it on the Net. The materials I needed are mostly sold as ebooks. Like other cost saving individual I ended up looking for a free alternative.

This lead me to discover iTunes U which consists of podcasts from several academic universities and organizations. Some of the podcasts are also provided by corporate groups like Microsoft’s Beyond Code and Oracle’s Database Podcast while some are funded by advertisement that comes in with the podcasts like the economics show Wall-Strip.

To go to the ITunes store, open your ITunes program and click iTunes store:

Then click the category called iTunes U:

You should see a screen where all of the top podcasts on iTunes U are displayed:

This first level display contains some of the newest and noteworthy (determined probably by subscription rate) podcasts. To dig into a more specific topic, choose from one of the categories under the category pane:

Since I am interested in topics under project management, I clicked on the “Business” category. The podcasts under “New and Notable” are displayed on the upper portion while the “Featured” are on the lower portion:

When I clicked FEATURED I got all of these amazing set of podcasts:

From this point the user can choose from any of the featured podcasts. Now to get a more specific list of podcasts, we can use the search capability of iTunes. To search for a specific keyword type in the phrase you want to search for (in this case I typed “project management”) and then hit enter key:

You should see a list of all podcasts with matching keywords:

To subscribe on a podcast, just click the SUBSCRIBE button under the Price column. Some of the items listed are not free so be cautious on the items you click. It is advisable to read reviews of the material first before buying it.

After searching for podcasts of some topics I am interested at, I now have a deep set of library of podcasts:

The ones with the blue dots at the side means it is already downloaded and you may play it on your computer or transfer on your iPod. The ones with the “GET” button means it is not yet downloaded, make sure to click this button if you want it to be queued on the download list.

Postcasts are also a great way to find new content and new ideas for your blog or website, if you have one.

You can find a lot of podcasted materials on every subject from iTunes Store. Some of the best training materials that I got for drumming and programming concepts came from this source. There are also podcasts wherein the materials is a videotaped classroom.