Tattoos Can Now Start Monitoring Your Medical Conditions: Harvard and MIT Researchers Innovate at the Intersection of Art & Medicine

Once reserved for rebels and out­liers, tat­toos have gone main­stream in the Unit­ed States. Accord­ing to recent sur­veys, 21% of all Amer­i­cans now have at least one tat­too. And, among the 18–29 demo­graph­ic, the num­ber ris­es to 40%. If that num­ber sounds high, just wait until tat­toos go from being aes­thet­ic state­ments to bio­med­ical devices.

At Har­vard and MIT, researchers have devel­oped “smart tat­too ink” that can mon­i­tor changes in bio­log­i­cal and health con­di­tions, mea­sur­ing, for exam­ple, when the blood sug­ar of a dia­bet­ic ris­es too high, or the hydra­tion of an ath­lete falls too low. Pair­ing biosen­si­tive inks with tra­di­tion­al tat­too designs, these smart tat­toos could con­ceiv­ably pro­vide real-time feed­back on a range of med­ical con­di­tions. And also raise a num­ber of eth­i­cal ques­tions: what hap­pens when your health infor­ma­tion gets essen­tial­ly worn on your sleeve, avail­able for all to see?

To learn more about smart tat­toos, watch the Har­vard video above, and read the cor­re­spond­ing arti­cle in the Har­vard Gazette.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Meet Amer­i­ca & Britain’s First Female Tat­too Artists: Maud Wag­n­er (1877–1961) & Jessie Knight (1904–1994)

Browse a Gallery of Kurt Von­negut Tat­toos, and See Why He’s the Big Goril­la of Lit­er­ary Tat­toos

A Daz­zling Gallery of Clock­work Orange Tat­toos

Free Online Biol­o­gy Cours­es 

MIT’s New Master’s Program Admits Students Without College and High School Degrees … and Helps Solve the World’s Most Pressing Problems


One of the cen­tral prob­lems of inequal­i­ty is that it per­pet­u­ates itself by nature. The inher­ent social cap­i­tal of those born in cer­tain places and class­es grants access to even more social cap­i­tal. Ques­tions of mer­it can seem mar­gin­al when the cre­den­tials required by elite insti­tu­tions prove inac­ces­si­ble to most peo­ple. In an admirable effort to break this cycle glob­al­ly, MIT is now admit­ting stu­dents to a grad­u­ate pro­gram in eco­nom­ics, with­out GRE scores, with­out let­ters of rec­om­men­da­tion, and with­out a col­lege degree.

Instead stu­dents begin with some­thing called a “Micro­Mas­ters” pro­gram, which is like “a method used in med­i­cine… ran­dom­ized con­trol tri­als,” reports WBUR. This entry­way removes many of the usu­al bar­ri­ers to access by allow­ing stu­dents to first “take rig­or­ous cours­es online for cred­it, and if they per­form well on exams, to apply for a master’s degree pro­gram on campus”—a degree in data, eco­nom­ics and devel­op­ment pol­i­cy (DEDP), which focus­es on meth­ods for reduc­ing glob­al inequal­i­ty.

 

 

Enroll­ment in the online Micro­Mas­ters cours­es began in Feb­ru­ary of last year (the next round starts on Feb­ru­ary 6, 2018), and the DEDP mas­ter’s pro­gram will start in 2019. “The world of devel­op­ment pol­i­cy has become more and more evi­dence-based over the past 10–15 years,” explains MIT pro­fes­sor of eco­nom­ics Ben Olken, who co-cre­at­ed the pro­gram with eco­nom­ics pro­fes­sors Esther Duflo and Abhi­jit Baner­jee. “Devel­op­ment prac­ti­tion­ers need to under­stand not just devel­op­ment issues, but how to ana­lyze them rig­or­ous­ly using data. This pro­gram is designed to help fill that gap.”

Duflo, co-founder of MIT’s Abdul Latif Jameel Pover­ty Action Lab (J‑PAL), explains the inno­va­tion of Micro­Mas­ters’ rad­i­cal­ly open admis­sions. (For any­one with access to the inter­net, that is, still a huge bar­ri­er for mil­lions world­wide): “Any­body could do that. At this point, you don’t need to have gone to col­lege. For that mat­ter, you don’t need to have gone to high school.” Stu­dents who are accept­ed after their ini­tial online course work will move into a “blend­ed” pro­gram that com­bines their pri­or work with a semes­ter on MIT’s cam­pus.

Micro­Mas­ters cours­es are priced on a slid­ing scale (from $100 to $1,000), accord­ing to what stu­dents can afford, and costs are nowhere near what tra­di­tion­al stu­dents pay—after hav­ing already paid, or tak­en loans, for a four-year degree, var­i­ous test­ing reg­i­mens, admis­sions costs, liv­ing expens­es, etc. The cur­rent pro­gram might fea­si­bly be scaled up to include oth­er fields in the future. Thus far, over 8,000 stu­dents in the world have enrolled in the Micro­Mas­ters pro­gram. “In total,” Duflo says, “there are 182 coun­tries rep­re­sent­ed,” includ­ing ten per­cent from Chi­na, a large group from India, and “even some from the U.S.”

Stu­dents enrolled in these cours­es design their own eval­u­a­tions of ini­tia­tives around the globe that address dis­par­i­ties in health­care, edu­ca­tion, and oth­er areas. Co-designed by the Pover­ty Action Lab and the Depart­ment of Eco­nom­ics, Micro­Mas­ters asks stu­dents to “grap­ple with some of the world’s most press­ing prob­lems,” includ­ing the prob­lem of access to high­er edu­ca­tion. You can view the require­ments and enroll at the MITx Micro­Mas­ters’ site. Read fre­quent­ly asked ques­tions and learn about the instruc­tors here. And here, lis­ten to WBUR’s short seg­ment on this fas­ci­nat­ing edu­ca­tion­al exper­i­ment.

Find more Micro­Mas­ters sub­jects in our col­lec­tion: Online Degrees & Mini Degrees: Explore Mas­ters, Mini Mas­ters, Bach­e­lors & Mini Bach­e­lors from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence: A Free Online Course from MIT

MIT Is Dig­i­tiz­ing a Huge Archive of Noam Chomsky’s Lec­tures, Papers and Oth­er Doc­u­ments & Will Put Them Online

Intro­duc­tion to Com­put­er Sci­ence and Pro­gram­ming: A Free Course from MIT 

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

How to Win at Texas Hold ‘Em: A Free MIT Course

In 2015, we fea­tured a short MIT course called Pok­er The­o­ry and Ana­lyt­ics, which intro­duced stu­dents to pok­er strat­e­gy, psy­chol­o­gy, and deci­sion-mak­ing in eleven lec­tures. Now comes a new course, this one more square­ly focused on Texas Hold ‘Em. Taught by MIT grad stu­dent Will Ma, the course “cov­ers the pok­er con­cepts, math con­cepts, and gen­er­al con­cepts need­ed to play the game of Texas Hold’em on a pro­fes­sion­al lev­el.” Here’s a quick overview of the top­ics the course delves into in the 7 lec­tures above (or find them here on YouTube).

  • Pok­er Con­cepts: pre­flop ranges, 3‑betting, con­tin­u­a­tion bet­ting, check-rais­ing, float­ing, bet siz­ing, implied odds, polar­iza­tion, ICM the­o­ry, data min­ing in pok­er
  • Math Con­cepts: prob­a­bil­i­ty and expec­ta­tion, vari­ance and the Law of Large Num­bers, Nash Equi­lib­ri­um
  • Gen­er­al Con­cepts: deci­sions vs. results, exploita­tive play vs. bal­anced play, risk man­age­ment

You can find the syl­labus, lec­ture slides and assign­ments on this MIT web­site.  How to Win at Texas Hold ‘Em will be added to our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

MIT’s Intro­duc­tion to Pok­er The­o­ry: A Free Online Course

150 Free Online Busi­ness Cours­es

Learn Python with a Free Online Course from MIT

Free: You Can Now Read Classic Books by MIT Press on Archive.org

FYI. At the end of May, Archive.org announced this on its blog:

For more than eighty years, MIT Press has been pub­lish­ing acclaimed titles in sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy, art and archi­tec­ture.  Now, thanks to a new part­ner­ship between the Inter­net Archive and MIT Press, read­ers will be able to bor­row these clas­sics online for the first time. With gen­er­ous sup­port from Arca­dia, a char­i­ta­ble fund of Peter Bald­win and Lis­bet Raus­ing, this part­ner­ship rep­re­sents an impor­tant advance in pro­vid­ing free, long-term pub­lic access to knowl­edge.

“These books rep­re­sent some of the finest schol­ar­ship ever pro­duced, but right now they are very hard to find,” said Brew­ster Kahle, founder and Dig­i­tal Librar­i­an of the Inter­net Archive. “Togeth­er with MIT Press, we will enable the patrons of every library that owns one of these books to bor­row it online–one copy at a time.”

This joint ini­tia­tive is a cru­cial ear­ly step in Inter­net Archive’s ambi­tious plans to dig­i­tize, pre­serve and pro­vide pub­lic access to four mil­lion books, by part­ner­ing wide­ly with uni­ver­si­ty press­es and oth­er pub­lish­ers, authors, and libraries.…

We will be scan­ning an ini­tial group of 1,500 MIT Press titles at Inter­net Archive’s Boston Pub­lic Library facil­i­ty, includ­ing Cyril Stan­ley Smith’s 1980 book, From Art to Sci­ence: Sev­en­ty-Two Objects Illus­trat­ing the Nature of Dis­cov­ery, and Fred­er­ick Law Olm­st­ed and Theodo­ra Kimball’s Forty Years of Land­scape Archi­tec­ture: Cen­tral Park, which was pub­lished in 1973. The old­est title in the group is Arthur C. Hardy’s 1936 Hand­book of Col­orime­try.

Through­out the sum­mer, we’ve been check­ing in, wait­ing for the first MIT Press books to hit Archive.org’s vir­tu­al shelves. They’re now start­ing to arrive. Click here to find the begin­nings of what promis­es to be a much larg­er col­lec­tion.

As Brew­ster Kahle (founder of Inter­net Archive) explained it to Library Jour­nalhis orga­ni­za­tion is “basi­cal­ly try­ing to wave a wand over everyone’s phys­i­cal col­lec­tions and say, Blink! You now have an elec­tron­ic ver­sion that you can use” in what­ev­er way desired, assum­ing its per­mit­ted by copy­right. In the case of MIT Press, it looks like you can log into Archive.org and dig­i­tal­ly bor­row their elec­tron­ic texts for 14 days.

Archive.org hopes to dig­i­tize 1,500 MIT Press clas­sics by the end of 2017. Dig­i­tal col­lec­tions from oth­er pub­lish­ing hous­es seem sure to fol­low.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Brew­ster Kahle and the Inter­net Archive Will Pre­serve the Infi­nite Infor­ma­tion on the Web

An Archive of 3,000 Vin­tage Cook­books Lets You Trav­el Back Through Culi­nary Time

Enter a Huge Archive of Amaz­ing Sto­ries, the World’s First Sci­ence Fic­tion Mag­a­zine, Launched in 1926

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Introduction to Python, Data Science & Computational Thinking: Free Online Courses from MIT

FYI: MIT has post­ed online the video lec­tures for an essen­tial series of cours­es. In the playlist of 38 lec­tures above, you can get an Intro­duc­tion to Com­put­er Sci­ence and Pro­gram­ming in Python. Record­ed this past fall, and taught by Prof. Eric Grim­son, Prof. John Gut­tag, and Dr. Ana Bell, the course is “intend­ed for stu­dents with lit­tle or no pro­gram­ming expe­ri­ence. It aims to pro­vide stu­dents with an under­stand­ing of the role com­pu­ta­tion can play in solv­ing prob­lems and to help stu­dents, regard­less of their major, feel jus­ti­fi­ably con­fi­dent of their abil­i­ty to write small pro­grams that allow them to accom­plish use­ful goals. The class uses the Python 3.5 pro­gram­ming lan­guage.” Find accom­pa­ny­ing course mate­ri­als, includ­ing syl­labus, here.

The fol­low up course, Intro­duc­tion to Com­pu­ta­tion­al Think­ing and Data Sci­ence, is again intend­ed for stu­dents with lit­tle or no pro­gram­ming expe­ri­ence. “It aims to pro­vide stu­dents with an under­stand­ing of the role com­pu­ta­tion can play in solv­ing prob­lems and to help stu­dents, regard­less of their major, feel jus­ti­fi­ably con­fi­dent of their abil­i­ty to write small pro­grams that allow them to accom­plish use­ful goals. The class uses the Python 3.5 pro­gram­ming lan­guage.” Find relat­ed course mate­ri­als here, and the 15 lec­tures on this playlist.

Both cours­es will be added to our col­lec­tion of Free Com­put­er Sci­ence Cours­es, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Learn Python: A Free Online Course from Google

Learn How to Code for Free: A DIY Guide for Learn­ing HTML, Python, Javascript & More

Down­load 243 Free eBooks on Design, Data, Soft­ware, Web Devel­op­ment & Busi­ness from O’Reilly Media

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Artificial Intelligence: A Free Online Course from MIT

Today we’re adding MIT’s course on Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence to our ever-grow­ing col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties. That’s because, to para­phrase Ama­zon’s Jeff Bezos, arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI) is “not just in the first inning of a long base­ball game, but at the stage where the very first bat­ter comes up.” Look around, and you will find AI everywhere–in self dri­ving cars, Siri on your phone, online cus­tomer sup­port, movie rec­om­men­da­tions on Net­flix, fraud detec­tion for your cred­it cards, etc. To be sure, there’s more to come.

Fea­tur­ing 30 lec­tures, MIT’s course “intro­duces stu­dents to the basic knowl­edge rep­re­sen­ta­tion, prob­lem solv­ing, and learn­ing meth­ods of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence.” It includes inter­ac­tive demon­stra­tions designed to “help stu­dents gain intu­ition about how arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence meth­ods work under a vari­ety of cir­cum­stances.” And, by the end of the course, stu­dents should be able “to devel­op intel­li­gent sys­tems by assem­bling solu­tions to con­crete com­pu­ta­tion­al prob­lems; under­stand the role of knowl­edge rep­re­sen­ta­tion, prob­lem solv­ing, and learn­ing in intel­li­gent-sys­tem engi­neer­ing; and appre­ci­ate the role of prob­lem solv­ing, vision, and lan­guage in under­stand­ing human intel­li­gence from a com­pu­ta­tion­al per­spec­tive.”

Taught by Prof. Patrick Hen­ry Win­ston, the lec­tures can all be viewed above. Or watch them on YouTube and iTunes. Relat­ed course mate­ri­als (includ­ing a syl­labus) can be found on this MIT web­site. The text­book, avail­able on Ama­zon, was writ­ten by Pro­fes­sor Win­ston.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Com­put­er Sci­ence Cours­es

Hayao Miyaza­ki Tells Video Game Mak­ers What He Thinks of Their Char­ac­ters Made with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence: “I’m Utter­ly Dis­gust­ed. This Is an Insult to Life Itself”

Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Pro­gram Tries to Write a Bea­t­les Song: Lis­ten to “Daddy’s Car”

Two Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Chat­bots Talk to Each Oth­er & Get Into a Deep Philo­soph­i­cal Con­ver­sa­tion

Noam Chom­sky Explains Where Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Went Wrong

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Hear VALIS, an Opera Based on Philip K. Dick’s Metaphysical Novel

PKD

Image by Pete Wesch, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Philip K. Dick died in 1982. His dis­tinc­tive, some say vision­ary brand of psy­cho­log­i­cal sci-fi lit­er­a­ture, how­ev­er, has lived on, prov­ing its endurance in part by tak­ing new forms. Blade Run­ner, Rid­ley Scot­t’s huge­ly influ­en­tial adap­ta­tion of Dick­’s Do Androids Dream of Elec­tric Sheep?, pre­miered just three months after the author’s depar­ture. More films fol­lowed over the years, includ­ing Paul Ver­ho­even’s Total Recall (an adap­ta­tion of “We Can Remem­ber It for You Whole­sale”), Steven Spiel­berg’s Minor­i­ty Report, Richard Lin­klater’s A Scan­ner Dark­ly, and many oth­ers.

Dick­’s work has also pro­vid­ed the basis for radio dra­mas, tele­vi­sion shows (most recent­ly Net­flix’s The Man in the High Cas­tle, with an ambi­tious anthol­o­gy series com­ing to Chan­nel 4 this spring), and stage pro­duc­tions.

Typ­i­cal­ly, these adap­ta­tions use the sto­ries and nov­els in which Dick wrote the set­ting, plot, and char­ac­ters with rel­a­tive straight­for­ward­ness. Oth­er, lat­er works found him plung­ing as deep into phi­los­o­phy and auto­bi­og­ra­phy as into sci­ence fic­tion. The change hap­pened around the time he saw a mys­te­ri­ous pink light and met God in 1974, or claimed to, and it pro­duced a final set of nov­els known as the VALIS tril­o­gy.

The frac­tured tale of an autho­r­i­al alter-ego named Horselover Fat, VALIS (short for “Vast Active Liv­ing Intel­li­gence Sys­tem”), the first book in the tril­o­gy, involves an alien space probe, Water­gate, the Mes­si­ah, lasers, and a range of ref­er­ences to reli­gions like Chris­tian­i­ty, Gnos­ti­cism, Bud­dhism, Gnos­ti­cism, Zoroas­tri­an­ism, and the Red Cross Broth­er­hood; phi­los­o­phy from the ancient Greeks to Pla­to, Pas­cal, and Schopen­hauer; and cul­tur­al fig­ures like Han­del, Wag­n­er, Goethe, and Frank Zap­pa. It would take an ambi­tious mind indeed to adapt such a thing: specif­i­cal­ly, it took the mind of Tod Machover, com­pos­er and direc­tor of MIT’s Media Lab, who turned it into an opera in 1987.

“We live in a world that is becom­ing in fact more and more frag­ment­ed, more and more com­plex,” says Machover on the rel­e­vance of VALIS at an inter­view at the Philip K. Dick Fan Site. “You don’t have to have a pink light expe­ri­ence to real­ize that there is too much infor­ma­tion to not only be aware of but to make any kind of sense out of.” He describes this “incred­i­ble feel­ing of the world being not only too com­plex for any one per­son to make sense out of but also dan­ger­ous­ly com­plex, to the point where peo­ple will not only not under­stand each oth­er but end up hat­ing each oth­er and being absolute­ly crushed under the bur­den of just try­ing to make sense with how much there is to know.”

In his VALIS opera, which pre­miered at Paris’ Cen­tre Georges Pom­pi­dou with instal­la­tions cre­at­ed by video artist Cather­ine Ikam, Machover tried to get that feel­ing artis­ti­cal­ly across, and you can hear it free on Spo­ti­fy. (If you don’t have Spo­ti­fy’s soft­ware, you can down­load it here. There’s a Youtube ver­sion right above.) Back then in the 80s, he says, it “seemed like through our media and com­mu­ni­ca­tions there’d be a kind of facile way of con­nect­ing peo­ple, a sort of pas­siv­i­ty and turn­ing on your cable TV and see­ing what’s going on today in Tokyo or in Europe and you sort of feel like you can take all this stuff in. But in fact I think what we’re see­ing now is exact­ly what Dick pre­dict­ed, which is that it ain’t that easy.” And it sure has­n’t got any eas­i­er.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Philip K. Dick Takes You Inside His Life-Chang­ing Mys­ti­cal Expe­ri­ence

Hear 6 Clas­sic Philip K. Dick Sto­ries Adapt­ed as Vin­tage Radio Plays

Philip K. Dick Makes Off-the-Wall Pre­dic­tions for the Future: Mars Colonies, Alien Virus­es & More (1981)

The Penul­ti­mate Truth About Philip K. Dick: Doc­u­men­tary Explores the Mys­te­ri­ous Uni­verse of PKD

33 Sci-Fi Sto­ries by Philip K. Dick as Free Audio Books & Free eBooks

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Free M.I.T. Course Teaches You How to Become Bill Nye & Make Great Science Videos for YouTube

If I had my way, more aca­d­e­mics would care about teach­ing beyond the walls of the acad­e­my. They’d teach to a broad­er pub­lic and con­sid­er ways to make their mate­r­i­al more engag­ing, if not inspir­ing, to new audi­ences. You can find exam­ples out there of teach­ers who are doing it right. The heirs of Carl Sagan–Bri­an Greene, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Bill Nye–know how to light a spark and make their mate­r­i­al come alive on TV and YouTube. How they do this is not exact­ly a mys­tery, not after M.I.T. post­ed online a course called “Becom­ing the Next Bill Nye: Writ­ing and Host­ing the Edu­ca­tion­al Show.

Taught at M.I.T. over a month-long peri­od, Becom­ing the Next Bill Nye was designed to teach stu­dents video pro­duc­tion tech­niques that would help them “to engag­ing­ly con­vey [their] pas­sions for sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy, engi­neer­ing, and/or math.” By the end of the course, they’d know how to script and host a 5‑minute YouTube show.

You can now find the syl­labus and all mate­ri­als for that course online at MIT’s Open­Course­Ware site. This includes all video lec­tures and class assign­ments. Or, if you pre­fer, you can get the video lec­tures straight from this YouTube playlist.

Becom­ing the Next Bill Nye will be added to our meta col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Carl Sagan Presents Six Lec­tures on Earth, Mars & Our Solar Sys­tem … For Kids (1977)

Watch the High­ly-Antic­i­pat­ed Evolution/Creationism Debate: Bill Nye the Sci­ence Guy v. Cre­ation­ist Ken Ham

Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) Books Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.