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 March 2000, Yale economist Robert Shiller published Irrational Exuberance, a book that warned that the long-running bull market was a bubble. Weeks later, the market cracked and Shiller was the new guru. Fast forward a few years, and Shiller released a second edition of the same book, this time arguing that the housing market was the latest and greatest bubble. We all know how that prediction played out.

Unlike most of the financial industry, Shiller isn’t locked into a perennially bullish view, bent on pumping the market despite what the real numbers suggest. And that should give students, whether young or old, some confidence in his free course simply called “Financial Markets.” Available on the web in multiple formats (YouTube – iTunes Audio – iTunes Video - Yale Web Site), the 26 lecture-course covers the inner-workings of financial institutions that ideally “support people in their productive ventures” and help them manage economic risks. You can start with Lecture 1 here. Above, we present his introductory lecture on Stocks.

Finally (and separately) you can get Shiller’s thoughts on how to handle America’s big debt mess here. It was recorded in recent days.

Shiller’s course appears in the Economics section of our big collection of Free Online Courses. 385 courses in total. Don’t miss them.

Financial Markets Course with Yale Sage Robert Shiller is a post from: Open Culture

For Class Day 2011, Harvard had comedian Amy Poehler, and Yale had Tom Hanks — two figures who have a whole lot more entertainment value than the speaker at my graduation — the Assistant County Coroner. Dead serious! Pun only halfway intended. Anyway, I digress. Today, we’re featuring Tom Hanks, the two-time winner of the Academy Award for Best Actor, who starts funny, but then turns a little serious, reminding graduates, à la F.D.R., that essentially “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Not a bad talk overall, but we’re still most partial to Steve Job’s Stanford talk from 2005. Our hands-down favorite…

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Yale Rolls Out 10 New Courses – All Free

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Harvard Presents Free Courses with the Open Learning Initiative

Tom Hanks Addresses the Yale Class of 2011 is a post from: Open Culture

We have listed the new additions below, and added them to our ever-growing list of 350 Free Online Courses. As always, Yale gives you access to their courses in multiple formats. You can download lectures (usually in audio and video) from iTunes, or directly from the Yale web site. And then, of course, YouTube is a good third option…

• Capitalism: Success, Crisis and Reform – iTunes Video – iTunes Audio – YouTube – Web Site – Douglas W. Rae
• Cervantes’ Don Quixote - iTunes Video – iTunes Audio – YouTube – Web Site – Roberto González Echevarría
• Early Modern England: Politics, Religion, and Society under the Tudors and Stuarts – iTunes Video – iTunes Audio – YouTube – Web Site – Keith E. Wrightson
• Environmental Politics and Law - iTunes Video – iTunes Audio - YouTube – Web Site – John P. Wargo
• Epidemics in Western Society Since 1600 – iTunes Video –  iTunes Audio – YouTube – Web Site – Frank Snowden
• Financial Theory – iTunes Video – iTunes Audio – Web Site – John Geanakoplos
• Foundations of Modern Social Theory - iTunes Video - iTunes Audio - YouTube - Web Site – Iván Szelényi
• Fundamentals of Physics II - iTunes Video – iTunes Audio – YouTube - Web Site – Ramamurti Shankar
• The American Revolution – iTunes Video - iTunes Audio – YouTube - Web Site – Joanne B. Freeman
• The Moral Foundations of Politics - iTunes Video – iTunes Audio – YouTube – Web Site – Professor Ian Shapiro

Yale Rolls Out 10 New Courses – All Free is a post from: Open Culture

When you think Rome, you think the Colosseum. It’s one of the great structures of the Roman Empire, and it still dominates the landscape of the modern city. But how deep does your knowledge of the Colosseum actually go? Which emperor built the Amphitheatrum Flavium (as it was originally called)? For what purpose? And how, stylistically, was it originally built and decorated? All of this gets answered in an image-packed lecture by Yale professor Diana E.E. Kleiner, which forms part of her larger course on Roman Architecture. (Find it on YouTube, iTunes and Yale’s Open Course web site). I queued up the lecture at the 20 minute, when Kleiner starts talking about the Colosseum itself. But you can move back to the very beginning if you want to get some more political context.

Finally, let me mention that Google also lets you revisit Ancient Rome. Google Earth offers a nice 3D view of the Colosseum and other important Roman monuments, while Google Street View you tour the ancient ruins of Pompeii. It’s all free, of course.

Please visit our collection of Free Online Courses to learn more about history, literature, philosophy or whatever else piques your interest. You’ll find a good 250 free courses in the collection.

Building The Colosseum: The Icon of Rome is a post from: Open Culture

• Introduction to the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible) – Download Course – Christine Hayes, Yale.
• Introduction to New Testament History and Literature - YouTube - iTunes - Download Course - Professor Dale B. Martin, Yale

Note: Unlike most Open Yale courses, the Old Testament course is not available via YouTube and iTunes. But you can download the course in multiple formats (including audio and video) from the Yale site.

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Introduction to the New and Old Testaments is a post from: Open Culture

www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3aHciiVdvQ

Robert Shiller, who predicted the stock market crash earlier this decade and the bursting of the housing bubble in 2008, has a unique understanding of the financial markets and behavioral economics. In this free course provided by Yale University, Shiller demystifies the financial markets and explains “the theory of finance and its relation to the history, the strengths and imperfections of such institutions as banking, insurance, securities, futures, and other derivatives markets, and the future of these institutions over the next century.” It’s a course for our shaky financial times. The first lecture appears above, and the full course can be accessed on YouTube, iTunes and Yale’s web site. The course is also listed in our meta collection of Free Courses and our targeted selection of Free Economics Courses.

Understanding Financial Markets is a post from: Open Culture

www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMgWGA5z0p0

After he left office in 2007, Tony Blair went across the pond and spent time teaching at Yale. Exit Prime Minister Blair. Enter Professor Blair. During the 2008-09 academic year, Blair and Miroslav Volf co-taught “Faith and Globalization,” a course designed to help students understand the two intertwined forces shaping our world. In some ways, religion is the real focus here, and it is Blair’s argument (above, for example) that “If you cannot understand the world of faith, whether you are in business, or in public affairs, or in politics, then you actually cannot understand the world.” The full course can be accessed on Yale’s YouTube Channel, and we have also added it to our large collection of free courses from top universities. (Just look under the Politics and Religion sections.) For more information on this course, please visit Yale’s Faith and Globalization website and also be sure to access Yale’s Open Course initiative.

Faith and Globalization: Tony Blair Teaches at Yale is a post from: Open Culture

www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyVAU5iGe0k

The talk above is the first of 26 lectures making up a free Yale course called “The American Novel Since 1945.” Taught by Amy Hungerford, the course introduces you to the novels of America’s finest post-war writers -- Nabokov (émigré), Salinger, Kerouac, and Pynchon, and also Philip Roth, Toni Morrison, Cormac McCarthy and Jonathan Safran Foer. You can watch all lectures in the following formats: YouTube – iTunes Audio – iTunes Video. Yale also offers the files as mp3s/movs here. For more full-fledged courses from other top universities (including many others from Yale), visit our collection of Free Online Courses whenever you want, wherever you want.

Contemporary American Literature: An Open Yale Course is a post from: Open Culture

• Dante in Translation – iTunes – YouTube – Download Course – Giuseppe Mazzotta
• European Civilization, 1648-1945 - iTunes – YouTube – Download Course - Professor John Merriman
• Freshman Organic Chemistry – iTunes – YouTube – Download Course - Professor J. Michael McBride
• Global Problems of Population Growth – iTunes – YouTube – Download Course - Professor Robert Wyman
• Introduction to New Testament History and Literature – iTunes – YouTube – Download Course – Professor Dale B. Martin
• Introduction to Theory of Literature – iTunes – YouTube – Download Course – Professor Paul H. Fry
• Listening to Music – Download Course – Professor Craig Wright
• Principles of Evolution, Ecology and Behavior – iTunes – YouTube – Download Course – Professor Stephen C. Stearns
• The Psychology, Biology and Politics of Food – Download Course – Professor Kelly D. Brownell
• Roman Architecture – iTunes – YouTube – Download Course – Diana E. E. Kleiner

Yale Adds New Batch of Free Open Courses is a post from: Open Culture