Okay, you may be wondering what gem you would find on The Point today. Look no further. This is worth your visit. Perhaps worth ten visits. Drum roll please.... My alma mater, Reformed Theological Seminary (RTS), has made its entire distance education curriculum available online for free. That means courses that you'd have to pay to audit or drive long distances to hear, you can now listen to as you drive, as you jog, as you do whatever it is you do. A lot of the material is really excellent and helpful. In particular, you might want to check out the various lectures on church history. Here’s the link (it should open inside iTunes).

More from the RTS newsletter:

Apple’s iTunes U program allows educational institutions to make course and other materials available online in Apple’s music store. All course lectures of the RTS virtual campus courses were made available for free download on the iTune U program in June. Before this time, we were averaging about 7,000 downloads, but after June 1st, over 38,000 downloads were recorded. Since that time we have registered 15,000-20,000 downloads per week. Another milestone occurred on Aug. 6th, when Apple selected RTS to be one of 20 institutions to be included on the main iTunes store page. This move put RTS materials alongside those from Berkeley, Stanford and Duke, to name a few. We are very excited about this program and the opportunity it provides for the gospel of Jesus Christ to be extended throughout the world through the use of the technology that Apple has made available to us.

Comments

[Sam]

Oh. My. Gosh. Thank you! I'm a complete nerd and will love the Church History stuff. :o)

[Laura]

That is so awesome! I am definitely going to check this out.

[Lee]

I subscribed two weeks ago, and got to listen to several selections last week. It was all extremely high-quality material. I'm looking forward to the rest of the classes.

[Sy Hoekstra]

I suddenly find myself wishing I had tons of free time. Thanks for sharing that. That's awsome.

[Darcyjo]

Thanks ever so much for posting this one. I am an avid podcast listener (I clean houses for a living while I attend school), and now I have some new things to listen to!

C.S. Lewis, hooray! :o)

[Brian Hollar]

Is it just me or would this not be a great way to try to supply theological training to pastors and lay-leaders overseas who might not be able to travel to get a seminary education? I can just see churches buying iPods and filling them up with a seminary education and sending them overseas.

For those working with the persecuted church, an iPod (or USB drive) full of theological training would be a snap to get into a closed country. Once inside, the data would be a snap to duplicate and pass on to others.

[Catherine Claire]

Brian, I think that's a fantastic idea. What a Christmas project! I think this fits in well with the $100 Challenge notion. I wonder if we could challenge our readers to each put aside $100 for an MP3 player, download some great courses onto it and send them to a missionary we support overseas!

[Anna]

Wow.

Brian and Catherine, love your ideas! Can chaplains start offering seminary classes or degrees for prisoners? Obviously, we couldn't give ipods to prisoners but how are other college courses done in prisons? Would RTS give a discount to prisoners so they could earn these college credits or could Prison Fellowship sponsor them?