Will time reveal that we’ve entered an age of private, institution-mediated educational podcasts hosted by Apple? Perhaps, and it wouldn’t be surprising, but at the moment there seems to be a bit of mystery surrounding what I’m about to relate.

This piece about a University of Michigan Dental School podcast from The Ann Arbor News came via one of my alerts earlier this week. By now many of you have probably already seen it. Anyway, I was waiting to write about it until I’d had a chance to verify that in fact there is a podcast. I emailed the author and also left a voicemail asking for a URL, or to be pointed to the right place in iTunes–but no response so far in more than 36 hours. The story explains that the podcast is available through the iTunes online music store, but try as I did, I couldn’t find it there.

As it turns out, this article on the school’s website leads me to think that the podcast may be hidden in the iTunes store, accessible only to those having the special iTunes interface (possibly not the standard iTunes client?) to which this piece alludes. The piece reads:

Using a special iTunes Music Store interface from Apple Computer, students will use their Macs or PCs to download classroom lectures, transfer the information onto an iPod or an MP3 player, and then listen to the lectures in their apartments, walking around on campus, or even while jogging or working out. Access is for students with valid University of Michigan names and passwords. Future collaboration with Apple may result in new study aids, such as videos, photos, and other educational material, being added to the School of Dentistry’s iTunes Store.

This development raises some interesting questions. Is a podcast a podcast if it’s only available via the iTunes online store? Is there a way to add syndicated programming to the iTunes store without an RSS feed with enclosures? Is this special iTunes interface, which apparently enables the school to lock the podcast behind a login tied to the student’s university account, going to be made available more broadly? Will any aspect of the school’s apparently private store be made available to the general public?

I just sent an email to the contact listed with U-M’s piece; will keep you posted on what I hear.

P.S. Readers of this blog will note how strongly this model contrasts with some of the more open models of podcasting in education that are out there, such as Drexel’s.