Skip to main content

Inside GIA Education

In this Bonus episode - Inside GIA Education . . .

Eureka - “I found it!" The original “Inside GIA Education” CD our team at the Gemological Institute of America (GIA) produced for its Alumni celebration at the Tucson Gem Shows for 2006 (and it contains some fun gems).

This MP3 file was the first episode of our podcast series, launched in 2006, and introduced our bi-monthly education updates. As the Director of Education Training, I had the privilege of visiting Apple's headquarters in Cupertino, CA, and participating in the beta testing phase of iTunes U. This platform was instrumental in helping GIA take the first steps towards transitioning from print to digital delivery.

In 2007, Apple launched iTunes U, a dedicated area within the iTunes Store that offered free educational content from prestigious universities such as Stanford University, the University of California, Berkeley, Duke University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the Gemological Institute of America (GIA). Initially, GIA was the platform's only "trade school" hosted. The content included course lectures, language lessons, lab demonstrations, sports highlights, and campus tours in audio, video, or eBook format.

Many universities worldwide embraced this opportunity to share their content, and hundreds of thousands of courses were uploaded and downloaded by millions of users. One of the most popular courses was Stanford University's iPhone Application Programming course, which was downloaded one million times in under seven weeks in 2009.

In 2012, Apple introduced a separate iTunes U app with new features that enabled instructors to offer full courses to students, complete with homework assignments and quizzes. The app aimed to provide a new learning experience for students with iPhones, iPads, or iPod Touches, primarily in K-12.

For many years, iTunes U content was accessible on desktop computers through iTunes. However, in 2017, Apple removed the iTunes U section, making full courses available only through the iTunes U app on Apple mobile devices. At the same time, Apple moved standalone lectures and content in iTunes U that didn’t make up full courses, known as collections, to the Apple Podcasts app.

In June 2019, Apple announced that it would be discontinuing its iconic iTunes music platform and replacing it with separate music, podcasts, and video apps in response to changing user preferences.

I'm excited to share this exclusive podcast episode. Although the email addresses, phone numbers, and website links mentioned in the episode are no longer available, you can still listen to this audio episode and get the flavor of what our "on-demand radio" program, Inside GIA Education, was like. I hope you enjoy it!

I'm Patrick Ball; thanks for listening. See you in the next episode.

Comments

Most Popular of All Time

Mom Was Right

In this episode: Mom Was Right (Again!) . . . Remember that old saying, "Mom knows best?" Well, this week, it resonated profoundly. I vividly recall my mother's steadfast remedy for the common cold, which was ingrained in my 1960s childhood: "Rest in bed, drink plenty of fluids, and take aspirin to reduce pain and fever." . . . Or now that I think about it, this may have been a Bayer aspirin commercial–Simple . . . Fast-forward to the age of AI and endless medical information at our fingertips, and guess what? Not much has changed. Yet, somehow, this week, Lori and I were blindsided by a cold—the first in over five years. My incredulous "How could this be?" quickly morphed into a dawning realization. Our company's annual meeting, a melting pot of colleagues from Illinois, Texas, Vietnam, Colorado, Northern California, and the Central Valley, was a veritable petri dish of germs. And, oh, the germs found me! Getting sick, especially after a long str...

Whispers of Spring

In this episode, Whispers of Spring . . . Spring has a way of sneaking in when you’re not looking. One day, you’re shaking off the last chill of winter, and the next, you realize the light has shifted, stretching shadows just a little longer. It didn’t make a big fuss about it—no dramatic entrance, no trumpets—just a quiet unfolding, like an old dog settling into a sunny spot on the porch. Last week, Daylight Saving Time kicked in, which meant we all fumbled with our clocks, grumbled a bit, and then, like frogs taken aback by a warm rain, leapt forward into longer evenings. The sun now lingers, in no rush to set, hanging in the sky like a tossed coin that refuses to fall. With the extra daylight, we find ourselves drawn outside once again, migrating to the back patio like folks are drawn to a warm campfire. The lawn chairs are right where we left them, waiting like old friends. The air hums with wind chimes, their tuned cylinders catching the breeze and weaving together something that...

Special April Fools' Edition: Did You Fall For It?

In this episode: Special April Fools' Edition: Did You Fall For It? (And a Little Baseball Nonsense) Welcome, fellow baseball aficionados and purveyors of the peculiar, to a very special, dare we say unpredictable, issue of On the Fly! Today, the air is thick with . . . well, probably just regular air, but a specific mischievous something is buzzing around. Can you feel it? Does that tingling sensation make you double-check your shoelaces and suspiciously eye any unusual packages? Yes, dear readers, it’s April 1st! A day steeped in mystery, shrouded in playful deception, and frankly, a day where you shouldn't believe anything you read (except maybe this . . .maybe). But before we descend into a whirlwind of whimsical falsehoods (don’t worry, we’ll mostly keep it light!), let’s take a quick, slightly wobbly, historical flight through the origins of this most unreliable of holidays. Whispers from the annals suggest a few intriguing possibilities for why we dedicate this particula...

At 92–Don's Digital Daydream

Listen to the audio here. In a world of his own–lives, ole' Doctor Don, Not one world, but three, 'til the setting of the sun! There’s his Blog-World , so bright, with words all a-whirl, And Book-World , with stories of boy and girl! Then, Day-World , where legs didn't leap, didn't run, Just shuffled and creaked 'til each day is done. But his brain, oh, his mind, it’s zippy and keen, A most curious fellow that ever was seen! At ninety and two, with a twinkle so bright, He met Chatty and said, "What a strange delight!" This box with the answers, so quick and so bold, Of theology and stories, new truths to unfold!" "Integrity, relationships, where do they fit? This thing makes me wonder, bit by bit!" He ponders and pokes with laughter and a grin, "Til POOF! he has gone to a world from within! A world made of words, a fantastical place, Where limits of the body, left not a trace! He Soares, and he zooms, with a thought and a rhyme, Trans...