The best free cultural & educational media on the web
The best free cultural & educational media on the web
≡ Category: Film | ≅ Leave a Comment
In 2006, documentary filmmaker Jehane Noujaim (Control Room) made a wish at the TED conference (see below) — for world peace. For Noujaim, peace starts with cultural exchange, with getting to know one another. And since we all can’t travel, another way to achieve this is through film and its ability to “take you into [...]
≡ Category: YouTube | ≅ Leave a Comment
Last week, Alexandra Juhasz contributed a guest piece reviewing her experimental efforts to make YouTube an effective teaching tool. And it didn’t take long for the web to take notice. Soon after we posted her review, The Wired Campus (Chronicle of Higher Education) took an angle on the piece. Next, the venerable Ars Technica used [...]
≡ Category: Science | ≅ Leave a Comment
The University of Pennsylvania has done it. They’ve created a robot that you can kick apart, and it knows how to reassemble itself. Eerie stuff. Give it a few decades, and these guys (the robots and the students) will be running the show. (Video added to our YouTube playlist)
via Marc Andreessen’s blog
For lots of good [...]
≡ Category: Apple, Television | ≅ 2 Comments
Across the pond, Apple is running a series of ads fashioned after the “Mac v. PC” commercials that have run so successfully in the States. Although the vocabulary and accent are naturally different, the gist of the British ads is essentially the same. Yes, Apple’s schtick translates well, and I’m declaring the third one [...]
≡ Category: Current Affairs, Film | ≅ Leave a Comment
On the American home front, the Iraq war has entered its apathetic phase. The war continues to grind on, but the mission gets far less news ink than before, and the debate over the war’s merits and tactics rarely gets hashed back through. That’s perhaps because many have decided to mentally park the issue until [...]
≡ Category: Art | ≅ Leave a Comment
The New York Times is running an interactive feature that will give you the backstory behind Ansel Adams’ iconic photos taken at Yosemite National Park. Just click on the individual images on this page, and you’ll get a different story. (Also see the Times’ accompanying piece: What Adams Saw Through His Lens.)
Related Content
Learn the Art [...]
≡ Category: Music | ≅ Leave a Comment
Surviving members of the Grateful Dead announced Thursday that they will be donating their archives to UC Santa Cruz. This podcast (Feed – Web Site), featuring Bob Weir and Mickey Hart (among others), gives you insight into the thinking behind this move…
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≡ Category: Audio Books | ≅ 2 Comments
Horror/sci-fi fans, here you go… Scott Sigler’s new and very well-reviewed thriller, Infected, can be downloaded for free via podcast (iTunes – Feed – Web site). Or you can get it in hardback for $16.47, which I’m not discouraging you from doing.
With the links above, you can download more free books from Sigler. But, I [...]
≡ Category: Current Affairs, Stanford | ≅ Leave a Comment
Speaking at Brown University earlier this week, Thomas Friedman had to deal with some unfortunate extra-curricular activities. As he took the stage, two students calling themselves the “Greenwash Guerillas” launched pies (video here) at Friedman and largely missed. But they did leave behind some pamphlets spelling out their motives. According to The Brown Daily Herald, [...]
≡ Category: Language Lessons | ≅ Leave a Comment
Here is a quick “lifehack” for you. You can now learn foreign languages and stay current on politics all at once. How so? By taking advantage of a smart podcast concept being used by French and German broadcasters. Radio France Internationale (RFI) issues a daily podcast called Le Journal en français facile (iTunes – feed [...]
≡ Category: Most Popular, YouTube | ≅ 8 Comments
Today, we have a guest feature by Alexandra Juhasz, Professor of Media Studies at Pitzer College, in Claremont, CA. This piece consolidates lengthier blog entries about a course she ran on YouTube, called “Learning from YouTube,” in Fall 2007. The whole goal was to better understand this new media/cultural phenomenon, and how it [...]
≡ Category: Media, YouTube | ≅ 1 Comment
It’s perhaps a stretch to call this a piece of “open culture,” except that the footage, using time-lapsed video to show a man stuck in an elevator for 41 hours, accompanies a piece printed in the latest edition of The New Yorker — Up and Then Down: The Lives of Elevators.
Then, there’s this noteworthy fact: [...]
≡ Category: Media | ≅ 2 Comments
Thanks to a new program called Britannica Webshare, web publishers — be they bloggers, webmasters, or writers who post frequently on the web — can now get free online access to Britannica and its 65,000 articles. Normally, this service runs $70 per year. For more info, read TechCrunch’s scoop on the new initiative. To sign [...]
≡ Category: Life | ≅ 3 Comments
By now, many of you have probably seen (or at least heard about) the last lecture by Randy Pausch, a computer science professor from Carnegie Mellon University, who is dying from pancreatic cancer. Entitled “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams,” the lecture (see video below) is upbeat and uplifting without being the slightest bit morose. And [...]
≡ Category: Science | ≅ Leave a Comment
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≡ Category: Online Courses, Stanford | ≅ 5 Comments
Today we’re highlighting for you a new course posted on Stanford University’s iTunes site. Originally presented by Stanford Continuing Studies (where I happily spend my days), Global Geopolitics is taught by geography expert Martin Lewis, and “examines the global political situation from a geographical perspective. Topics include: how the countries of the world were formed [...]
≡ Category: Books | ≅ 1 Comment
Penguin is presenting six stories, by six authors, over six weeks, in a series called We Tell Stories. And they’re using the web to tell these stories in original ways. One story, The 21 Steps, gets told over Google Maps — an approach that scores points for creativity, but also tires a little quickly. You [...]
≡ Category: Apple, Film | ≅ Leave a Comment
The folks at Apple have rolled out an intriguing new podcast that takes you inside the world of moviemaking. The Set to Screen Series (get it on iTunes here) follows Baz Luhrmann, the Oscar-nominated director (Moulin Rouge! and William Shakespeare’s Romeo+Juliet) as he works on a new film. And every three weeks, from now through October, [...]
≡ Category: Literature | ≅ 1 Comment
Can you bear it? If not, here’s a version by Christopher Walken.
(This video has not been added to our YouTube playlist.)
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≡ Category: Books, Business, Language Lessons, Media, Technology | ≅ Leave a Comment
The New York Times has a great article on a professor of management science who has founded an almost completely automated publishing company. The 200,000 books he’s published sound, well, terrible, and terribly overpriced: “Among the books published under his name are ‘The Official Patient’s Sourcebook on Acne Rosacea’ ($24.95 and 168 pages long); ‘Stickler [...]
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