I haven’t seen this out there much yet, but Stanford is on iTunes. This is organized podcasting on steriods… and it’s something we are all going to have to deal with. Professors putting lectures on iTunes… students downloading lectures (would anyone go to a 9:00 am lecture class ever again?) Students using their iPods to both download and deliver content.

But I also have a concern with all of this — and it’s this — I love the classroom. And I also think that learning is — as I’ve written dozens of times — a transaction. Where is the transaction in downloaded lectures? There are clearly huge benefits. Don’t get an idea? Rewind. Relisten.

But how isolating does this become? I still think we have to — as we consider this new world of education — remember the power of face to face collaboration and shared meaning making.

There are moments — and today when an Apple person showed me Stanford’s site was one — when I want to slow down and think about what we are gaining and what we are losing. Neil Postman wrote in Technolopy that the inventor of a new technology can never be the judge of its use — and that all innovation creates winners and losers.

We are clearly creating something new and innovative and — I truly believe — a more powerful way to look at learning. But what are we losing as we move forward? And how do we move conscientiously enough such that we don’t lose something we value in the process?