The Remixable Textbook

in e-books, Education | February 22nd, 2010

This morn­ing, Macmil­lan announced a new kind of text­book — a remix­able elec­tron­ic text­book that will give pro­fes­sors, accord­ing the New York Times, the abil­i­ty “to reor­ga­nize or delete chap­ters; upload course syl­labus­es, notes, videos, pic­tures and graphs; and per­haps most notably, rewrite or delete indi­vid­ual para­graphs, equa­tions or illus­tra­tions.” Essen­tial­ly, Macmil­lan pro­vides the core text, and then pro­fes­sors get to cus­tomize the book to their lik­ing. This remix­ing is a def­i­nite plus. But what’s even bet­ter? This new line of text­book, dubbed Dynam­ic­Books, will reduce costs for stu­dents, bring­ing a book tra­di­tion­al­ly priced at $150 down to a much san­er $47. Per­fect for the lean years. For more details, read this longer piece in Pub­lish­ers Week­ly.

See our young and grow­ing col­lec­tion of Free Text­books.

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Stanford Online Writing Courses – The Spring Lineup

in Education | February 22nd, 2010

A quick fyi: Start­ing this morn­ing, Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies opened reg­is­tra­tion for its spring line­up of online writ­ing cours­es. Offered in part­ner­ship with the Stan­ford Cre­ative Writ­ing Pro­gram (one of the most dis­tin­guished writ­ing pro­grams in the coun­try), these online cours­es give begin­ning and advanced writ­ers, no mat­ter where they live, the chance to refine their craft with gift­ed writ­ing instruc­tors. As you will see, there are a cou­ple of cours­es offered in con­junc­tion with The New York Times. The idea here is that you’ll learn writ­ing from a Stan­ford writ­ing instruc­tor and then get your work reviewed by a New York Times book critic/writer. Quite a perk. And the cours­es sell out quick­ly. For more infor­ma­tion, click here, or sep­a­rate­ly check out the FAQ and the tes­ti­mo­ni­als.

Caveat emp­tor: These class­es are not free, and I helped set them up. So while I whole­heart­ed­ly believe in these cours­es, you can take my views with a grain of salt.

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Deep Thinking on the Web

in Education | February 17th, 2010

This morn­ing, a New York Times edi­to­r­i­al is help­ing get the word out. Deep think­ing is alive and well on the web:

There is a lot of talk about how the Inter­net is dri­ving cul­ture ever low­er, but it also makes a wealth of seri­ous think­ing avail­able. From the com­fort of home, one can down­load free audio books by authors like Jane Austen and Joseph Con­rad and free pod­casts of uni­ver­si­ty lec­tures (openculture.com has an assort­ment of both).

The rest of the piece right­ly focus­es on a BBC pod­cast called In Our Time (iTunes — Feed — Web Site). It’s list­ed in our Ideas & Cul­ture Pod­cast Col­lec­tion, along with many oth­er thought­ful pro­grams that make mean­ing­ful sub­jects rel­e­vant to a broad­er, glob­al audi­ence. (For some­thing sim­i­lar in video, see our col­lec­tions of Intel­li­gent Video Sites and Smart YouTube Chan­nels.)

Yes, intel­li­gent media does­n’t dom­i­nate the web. But, it’s flour­ish­ing in the nich­es and crevices, and we want to bring it to the sur­face. Per­haps you’ll want to join us? If you’re inter­est­ed in con­tribut­ing to Open Cul­ture, we’re always look­ing for your sug­ges­tions. I have put togeth­er a page that out­lines our edi­to­r­i­al approach. Take a look, and if you find great pieces of intel­li­gent media while surf­ing the web, please send them our way. We thank you in advance.

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What Teachers Make

in Education | February 4th, 2010

Great mes­sage. Give it a minute to get going. Per­formed by Tay­lor Mali at the Bow­ery Poet­ry Club on Novem­ber 12, 2005. Thanks Thomas for shar­ing.

This clip is now added to our YouTube favorites.

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A Vision of Students Today

in Education | October 15th, 2009

Anoth­er video brought to you by cul­tur­al anthro­pol­o­gist Michael Wesch, who pre­vi­ous­ly brought you Infor­ma­tion R/evolution and The Machine is Us/ing Us. You may also want to see his talk, An Anthro­po­log­i­cal Intro­duc­tion to YouTube.

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PBS and NPR Launch the Forum Network, Offering Free Online Lectures

in Education, Media, Television | October 6th, 2009

News from the Wired Cam­pus Blog:

PBS and NPR are now post­ing taped inter­views and videos of lec­tures by aca­d­e­mics, adding to the grow­ing num­ber of free lec­tures online.

Their site, called Forum Net­work, says it makes thou­sands of lec­tures avail­able, includ­ing the Har­vard pro­fes­sor Michael Sandel’s take on cal­cu­lat­ing hap­pi­ness in a lec­ture called “How to Mea­sure Plea­sure,” and a dis­cus­sion by a North­east­ern Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor, Nicholas Daniloff, about the dif­fi­cul­ties of report­ing in Rus­sia in a lec­ture called “Of Spies and Spokes­men: The Chal­lenge of Jour­nal­ism in Rus­sia.”

The Forum Net­work is now hap­pi­ly added to our col­lec­tion, Intel­li­gent Video: The Top Cul­tur­al & Edu­ca­tion­al Video Sites. (You will find about 50 intel­li­gent video sites here.) For more free edu­ca­tion­al con­tent, be sure to vis­it our col­lec­tion of Free Uni­ver­si­ty Cours­es. It now fea­tures 200 free cours­es from lead­ing uni­ver­si­ties, and you can down­load them all to your com­put­er or mp3 play­er.

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YouTube Edu Releases Version 2.0, Goes International

in Education, YouTube | October 1st, 2009

A quick bit of break­ing news. YouTube.EDU has released Ver­sion 2.0 today and has gone inter­na­tion­al. The site, launched six months ago, now fea­tures aca­d­e­m­ic con­tent from the UK, France, Spain, Italy, the Nether­lands, Rus­sia, and Israel. As part of this glob­al effort, the YouTube team has brought 45 new uni­ver­si­ties into the fold, includ­ing Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty, Open Uni­ver­si­ty, Boc­coni Uni­ver­si­ty, the Open Uni­ver­si­ty of Cat­alo­nia, to name a few. In total, YouTube.EDU now works with over 200 col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties, and serves more than 40,000 videos. When you vis­it, make sure you have some time to spend. For more details on this glob­al effort, you can read this handy blog post.

For more smart con­tent from YouTube, see our big list: Intel­li­gent YouTube Video Col­lec­tions.

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Should You Give to Harvard?

in Education, Harvard, Philosophy | September 29th, 2009

That’s the ques­tion that The Ethi­cist asks in The New York Times. Below, I present the issue and part of the answer. Read through it all and tell us where you stand on the issue.

The Issue

The fis­cal year for major uni­ver­si­ty endow­ments end­ed June 30, and schools have been report­ing their results: not good. In the Har­vard-Yale port­fo­lio game, the lat­ter was down 24.6 per­cent, while its rival lost even more, 27.3 per­cent. If you are an Ivy alum, this might seem a good moment to donate to your alma mater, to help rebuild its bat­tered port­fo­lio. But should you, giv­en the pow­er of edu­ca­tion to improve people’s lives?

The Argu­ment

Do not donate to Har­vard. To do so is to offer more pie to a port­ly fel­low while the gaunt and hun­gry press their faces to the win­dow (at some sort of metaphor­ic col­lege cafe­te­ria, any­way). Even after last year’s loss­es, Harvard’s endow­ment exceeds $26 bil­lion, the largest of any Amer­i­can uni­ver­si­ty, greater than the G.D.P. of Esto­nia. By con­trast, among his­tor­i­cal­ly black col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties, Howard has the largest endow­ment, about $420 mil­lion, a mere 1.6 per­cent the size of Harvard’s. (Donors gave Har­vard more than $600 mil­lion just this fis­cal year.) The best-endowed com­mu­ni­ty col­lege,Valen­cia, in Orlan­do, Fla., has around $67 mil­lion, or 0.26 per­cent of Harvard’s wealth. This is not to deny that Har­vard does fine work or could find ways to spend the mon­ey but to assert that oth­er schools have a greater need and a greater moral claim to your benev­o­lence…  More here.

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