Santa left a new Kindle, iPad or other media player under your tree. He did his job. Now we’ll do ours. We’ll tell you how to fill those devices with free intelligent media — great books, movies, courses, and all of the rest. And if you didn’t get a new gadget, fear not. You can access all of these materials on the good old fashioned computer. Here we go:

Free eBooks: You have always wanted to read the great works. And now is your chance. When you dive into our Free eBooks collection you will find 300 great works by some classic writers (Dickens, Dostoevsky, Shakespeare and Tolstoy) and contemporary writers (F. Scott Fitzgerald, Philip K. Dick, Isaac Asimov, and Kurt Vonnegut). The collection also gives you access to the 51-volume Harvard Classics. Read these foundational texts, and you’ll be well on your way to giving yourself a proper liberal education.

If you need help loading files to your eBook reader, Project Gutenberg provides tutorials here, and one of our previous posts explains how to upload files specifically to your Kindle.

Free Audio Books: What better way to spend your free time than listening to some of the greatest books ever written? This page contains a vast number of free audio books, including works by Arthur Conan Doyle, James Joyce, Jane Austen, Edgar Allan Poe, George Orwell and more recent writers — Italo Calvino, Vladimir Nabokov, Raymond Carver, etc. You can download these classic books straight to your mp3 player, then listen as you go.

[Note: If you're looking for a more recent book, you can download one free audio book from Audible.com. Grab that new Steve Jobs biography, or pretty much any other audio book you want. Find details on Audible's no-strings-attached deal here.]

Free Courses: This list brings together over 400 free courses from leading universities, including Stanford, Yale, MIT, UC Berkeley, Oxford and beyond. These full-fledged courses range across all disciplines – history, physics, philosophy, psychology and beyond. All of these courses are available in audio, and roughly 65% are available in video. You can’t receive credits or certificates for these courses. But the amount of personal enrichment you will derive here is immeasurable.

Free Movies: With a click of a mouse, or a tap of your touch screen, you will have access to 435 great movies. The collection hosts many classics, westerns, indies, documentaries, silent films and film noir favorites. It features work by some of our great directors (Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles, Andrei Tarkovsky, Stanley Kubrick, Jean-Luc Godard and David Lynch) and performances by cinema legends: John Wayne, Jack Nicholson, Audrey Hepburn, Charlie Chaplin, and beyond. On this one page, you will find thousands of hours of cinema bliss.

Free Language Lessons: Perhaps learning a new language is high on your list of 2012 New Year’s resolutions. Well, here is a great way to do it. Take your pick of 40 languages, including Spanish, French, Italian, Mandarin, English, Russian, Dutch, even Finnish, Yiddish and Esperanto. These lessons are all free and ready to download.

Free Textbooks: And one last item for the lifelong learners among you. We have scoured the web and pulled together a list of 150 Free Textbooks. It’s a great resource particularly if you’re looking to learn math, computer science or physics on your own. There might be a diamond in the rough here for you.

Thank Santa, maybe thank us, and enjoy that new device….

Fill Your New Kindle, iPad, iPhone with Free eBooks, Movies, Audio Books, Courses & More is a post from: Open Culture

You can watch French in Action for free online at the Annenberg Learner website. (Scroll down the page to find the videos.) The program follows the adventures of Robert Taylor, an American student, and Mireille Belleau, a young French woman. And each 30 minute episode provides a context for learning new words and expressions. (A couple of episodes generated a little controversy, we should note.) The show is conducted entirely in French.

French in Action appears in our collection of Free Language Lessons, which now offers primers in over 40 languages, including Spanish, Mandarin, Italian and beyond.

French in Action: Cult Classic French Lessons from Yale (52 Episodes) is a post from: Open Culture

In 2010, the folks who publish the Macmillan Dictionary launched the ‘What’s your English?’ campaign. They then spent a good year traveling across the globe, visiting nations where English is spoken, and asking experts and everyday speakers to talk about their regional dialects. The United States, Australia, Ireland, Scotland and Canada were obvious stops. But the tour also swept through India, Russia, Brazil, China, Mexico and beyond. Now, to cap things off, Macmillan has posted a “rap battle” between British and Canadian English, featuring “Baba Brinkman” and hip hop emcee “Professor Elemental.” Get the lyrics/script here. H/T Metafilter.

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• How to Learn Arabic for Free
• How to Learn Chinese for Free (mostly Mandarin)
• How to Learn English for Free
• How to Learn French for Free
• How to Learn German for Free
• How to Learn Italian for Free
• How to Learn Japanese for Free
• How to Learn Russian for Free
• How to Learn Spanish for Free

Learn a New Language in the New Year is a post from: Open Culture

A Master List of Free Language Learning Resources is a post from: Open Culture

I have been watching TEDTalks for nearly three years. I originally found them by serendipity on iTunes. The very first few talks (notably from Al Gore, David Pogue and Sir Ken Robinson) grabbed me like a magnet, and I couldn’t resist watching them again and again. There were quite a few sentences and phrases in each of these talks that fell on a deaf ear for me, as I couldn’t quite understand some slang English. I worked with the TED videos at home with a computer and a notebook. And yes, I’ve got to admit that I am taking each TED screening as a valuable learning experience, and they did help me in broadening my horizons and enriching my understanding of the world.

Then, in the summer of 2008, I decided that merely watching was not enough, at least not enough in coming to a full understanding of the talks, as many of the meanings are hidden in the semantics. Thus I embarked upon a project to translate TEDTalks into Chinese. I started with some familiar ones, like Erin McKean’s talk on redefining dictionaries, and Alex Steffen’s talk on a bright green future. It proved to be a mind-enriching experience. Before making any attempt to translate a talk, I would probe into the depth of the background of the speaker and relevant concepts and ideas. This was a great learning process. It helped me build up a clear picture of the talk and its significance, and also reshape my understanding of many ideas across the whole spectrum of arts and science.

As I was pushing forward with my endeavor, I found that it would be better if we can have more people joining in this joyful journey of intellectual mining through translation. So I posted the message on a community website for translators. Then it started to get kicked off. People jumped in the boat and offered help. It was a most gratifying experience to know that your efforts in spreading the idea of TED generated so much energy and so rich a welcoming response.

We then decided to run a dedicated fan site around the idea of TED, and we called it TEDtoChina. The idea is to bring the most mind-blowing talks and inspirations to Chinese readers through the simple act of translation. The site went online in November 2008. It is run by the community and loved by the community. We hope that we can do some translations from Chinese to English, and to bring some of the dynamics of contemporary China to the rest of the world by showing its local innovations and stories. This will be a long-term project, and we hope that through these efforts, a bridge of understanding between the east and the west can be created, and a global reservoir of shared knowledge and insights can also be made possible.

Some of the TEDTalks have huge resonance with the Chinese people, most notable among which are Dave Eggers’ talk on one-on-one tutoring, Jose Abreu’s talk on music education, and Sugata Mitra’s talk on the possible future of “outdoctrination”. You might have noticed that all of these videos are related to the theme of education. Then you are right. TEDtoChina is more of an initiative to bring the insights and ideas from the US to China, and not a mere translation effort. In the past, great ideas were either blocked or it took a long time for these ideas to arrive and take root in China. Now, with the help of Internet, this process can be shortened, with efforts from social translation. It is hoped that people can come to a clearer understanding of the whole picture by taking in more than one unified channel of opinion, and TED is just the perfect example of this.

Tony Yet is a native of China. He speaks Mandarin Chinese, Cantonese, English, German, and a little bit of French. He is currently a senior student majoring in English language and literature in Sun Yat-sen University. He lives in the coastal city of Guangzhou.

TED To China: An Inside View is a post from: Open Culture

If you want to learn a good 40 languages with your iPod, see our Foreign Language Lesson Podcast Collection.

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iPods in Iraq is a post from: Open Culture

After attending the spectacular closing ceremony at the Beijing Olympics and feeling the vibrations from hundreds of Chinese drummers pulsating in my own chest, I was tempted to conclude two things: “Holy mackerel, the energy coming out of this country is unrivaled.” And, two: “We are so cooked. Start teaching your kids Mandarin.”

There’s probably a good deal of truth to his last point. So to keep your kids (or yourself) competitive in the global marketplace, we’re highlighting a series of free Mandarin podcasts, all of which can be permanently found in our Foreign Language Lesson Podcast Collection. And, as a quick aside, I should note that Rosetta Stone is currently running a sale (through the end of August) that will let you get 10% off their audio products, which includes instruction in Mandarin and many other languages. (Click here for more info)

• Chinese Lessons with Serge Melnyk iTunes Feed Web Site
  • Weekly lessons in Mandarin that get very strong reviews from iTunes users..
• Chinesepod.com iTunes Feed Web Site
  • A series of well-reviewed lessons that will let you learn Mandarin on your own terms.
• Survival Chinese iTunes Feed Web Site
  • Learn the phrases you need to get by while traveling in China.
• Chinese Learn Online iTunes Feed Web Site
  • A dialogue-based introduction to Mandarin Chinese. Load them on your iPod and get up the Chinese curve.
• iMandarinPod.com iTunes Feed Web Site
  • A more advanced podcast, this series of lessons teaches Chinese by talking about Chinese culture or what is happening today in China.
• Mandarin Chinese Conversation iTunes Web Site
  • A language series put together by TimesOnline.
• Mandarin Chinese Feed Web Site
  • 10 Lessons by the US Peace Corps. Make sure you visit the site and download the PDF that accompanies the lessons.
• World Learner Chinese iTunes Feed Web Site
  • Another in the mix of possibilities.

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Teach Your Children Mandarin … They’re Going to Need It is a post from: Open Culture

Learning Spanish today is as easy as sitting in front of your computer and downloading online audio to your MP3 player. If you’re motivated, you can learn a great deal of Spanish at little to no cost without ever leaving the comfort of home. A tremendous range of instructional Spanish language podcasts, from the beginner level to advanced, are widely available on the internet and many of them are free. (Some charge for accompanying transcripts and written practice exercises.)  So whether you are a raw beginner or a seasoned language study veteran, there is a podcast out there to suit you. Here are the details on a handful of educational Spanish language podcasts that are worth a closer look:

Coffee Break Spanish (iTunes – Feed – Web Site), whose slogan is “language learning with your latte,” is undoubtedly king of the instructional podcast hill, with a large and loyal fanbase. It is ideally suited for beginners and other students seeking a review of basic Spanish grammar and phrases. Mark Pentleton, the producer and instructor, and Kara, his student, are Scottish, so while you won’t be hearing a native Spanish speaker’s pronunciation in the initial episodes, that seems to add to the charm of the program for some listeners.

Another popular instructional series is Notes in Spanish (iTunes – Feed – Web Site), produced by Ben Curtis and Marina Diez, a husband-and-wife team out of Madrid, Spain. Ben is British and Marina is Spanish, and they too have built quite a large following for their conversational Spanish podcasts (for beginners, intermediates and advanced students), which promise to teach listeners “real Spanish” the way it is actually spoken every day in Spain.

LingusTV (iTunes – Feed – Web Site) is a unique entry into the instructional language podcasts arena. It’s an educational video podcast done in the form of a television sit-com (situation comedy), laugh track included. While the actors speak solely in Spanish, subtitles are provided and explanations of vocabulary and grammar points are provided on the web site.

SpanishPod101 (iTunes – Feed – Web Site) distinguishes itself from other currently available instructional podcasts by providing lessons that feature different accents from around the Spanish-speaking world. Dialogues are repeated multiple times and an English translation is provided, to further aid learning.

For advanced language students seeking a change of pace and a break from grammar drills, there are my two podcasts: Voices en Español (iTunes – Feed – Web Site), which contains interviews and literature readings with native Spanish speakers from all walks of life, and Cody’s Cuentos (iTunes – Feed – Web Site), a Spanish-language podcast of classic fairy tales and legends. While Cody’s Cuentos isn’t a conventional instructional podcast, the fact that you probably already know the story in English will aid your comprehension of understanding the tale in Spanish. Transcripts for the stories are available on the Cody’s Cuentos blog so that you can read and follow along in the text while listening to the audio.

This is just a small sample of the kind of  Spanish language programming currently available online. Several more Spanish learning podcasts are listed here in our collection of Free Language Lessons.

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Learning Spanish with Free Audio Lessons: The Lay of the Land is a post from: Open Culture