How Do You Use Open Courses?

in Most Popular, Online Courses, Random | April 14th, 2009

I was asked by a news­pa­per reporter today how peo­ple, like you, are using open uni­ver­si­ty cours­es (such as those found in our col­lec­tion of Free Cours­es). And the truth is, I’m not always sure. So I fig­ured, why not put the ques­tion out there and ask you. Here it goes: How are you using these cours­es? Are you lis­ten­ing to (or watch­ing) these cours­es pure­ly for per­son­al enrich­ment? Or are you spend­ing time with these cours­es for pro­fes­sion­al rea­sons? Are you try­ing to boost your resume/career with these cours­es? Also, dur­ing this reces­sion, are these cours­es sud­den­ly more attrac­tive? Or were they attrac­tive to you all along? Last­ly, what top­ics do you gen­er­al­ly tend to focus on? His­to­ry? Lit­er­a­ture? Com­put­er Sci­ence? Physics?

Ok, folks, give a hand and let me know your thoughts. Please feel free to write your thoughts in the com­ments below, or write us at mail [at] openculture.com.

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Learning Physics Through Free Courses

in Physics | April 13th, 2009

There’s some­thing com­pelling about physics. Almost every major open course­ware col­lec­tion fea­tures a well-craft­ed physics course, and these cours­es con­sis­tent­ly rank high on iTune­sU and YouTube Edu. Let’s give a quick overview of the favorites.

At Stan­ford, we’re putting togeth­er a six course sequence called Mod­ern Physics: The The­o­ret­i­cal Min­i­mum. Taught by Leonard Susskind, one of America’s lead­ing physics minds, this course traces the devel­op­ment of mod­ern physics, mov­ing from New­ton to Ein­stein to Black Holes. So far, we’ve made five of the six cours­es avail­able online (get them here), which amounts to 100 hours of free class­room footage. Hard to beat. (And, in case you’re won­der­ing, the sixth course is being taped right now, and it will be com­ing online dur­ing the months to come.)

Anoth­er pro­gram that has received a fair amount of atten­tion is Wal­ter Lewin’s series of cours­es at MIT. As The New York Times has not­ed, Lewin has long had a cult fol­low­ing at MIT, and now, thanks to his physics cours­es, he’s achieved a minor degree of fame on the inter­net. His lec­tures, deliv­ered with panache, can be found here:

A third course to call your atten­tion to is Richard Muller’s Physics for Future Pres­i­dents (Feed — MP3s — YouTube).  The course comes out of UC Berke­ley, where it’s an under­grad­u­ate favorite. (It’s also the basis of a recent book by the same name.) And the whole point here is to give cit­i­zens the sci­en­tif­ic knowl­edge they need to under­stand crit­i­cal issues fac­ing our soci­ety.

Final­ly, anoth­er course worth review­ing is Fun­da­men­tals of Physics, which is taught by Rama­mur­ti Shankar and it’s part of Yale’s Open Course ini­tia­tive.

UPDATE: Since we orig­i­nal­ly cre­at­ed this col­lec­tion, Bill Gates has post­ed Richard Feyn­man’s great lec­tures online. Learn more here.

All of these physics cours­es, and many more, can be found in our col­lec­tion of Free Cours­es. You can also find the cours­es in our sec­tion called Physics: Free Cours­es.

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Open Culture Now at OpenCulture.com … and a Small Favor to Ask

in Random | April 13th, 2009

Here’s a quick announce­ment, and please take note. Start­ing today, you can find Open Cul­ture at www.openculture.com. Our old domain (oculture.com) will still work, as will old links. But they’ll for­ward (hope­ful­ly) seam­less­ly to the new domain. Why the change? Because it seemed time to have the url actu­al­ly match the site’s name.

If you encounter any tech­ni­cal prob­lems, please let us know at ma**@*********re.com. Also, let me please ask a quick favor from you. If you’ve pre­vi­ous­ly linked to our site, could you please update your links to reflect the new domain? Sim­ply change ocul­ture to open­cul­ture, and keep the rest of the link the same, and you’re good to go. This will be a big help to us. Mean­while, if you’ve nev­er told a friend about Open Cul­ture, now would be a good time to spread the word.

Last­ly, I want to extend a big thanks to Eric Ober­le for mak­ing this switch pos­si­ble and for gen­er­al­ly keep­ing the site run­ning smooth­ly. With­out Eric, I would have blown this site to pieces long ago. We’re only still around because of him. Thanks ‑e!

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Crime Fiction: Download and Listen

in Audio Books | April 11th, 2009

harwoodSeth Har­wood is bring­ing crime writ­ing into the new world of Web 2.0. Since 2006, Har­wood has been pod­cast­ing his own crime fic­tion, includ­ing a book called Jack Wakes Up, which you can down­load (for free) via iTunes, RSS Feed, or MP3. (Ran­dom House will be releas­ing Jack Wakes Up in print next month for $10.25.) This expe­ri­ence got Seth think­ing about the pow­er of pod­casts, and he soon took the next log­i­cal step, launch­ing Crimewav.com, a web­site devot­ed to pod­cast­ing crime sto­ries (not just his own) to an audi­ence world­wide. On Crime­wav, you’ll find some gems, includ­ing Dashiell Ham­met­t’s first sto­ry (1923), “The Bar­ber and His Wife” (mp3). Plus, you’ll stum­ble upon a delet­ed chap­ter from Michael Con­nel­ly’s lat­est NYT best­seller, The Brass Ver­dict, read by Con­nel­ly him­self (mp3). Lots of good pieces to explore. And if this sort of fic­tion is your thing, then let me direct you to two oth­er good resources. First, an archive of Agatha Christie’s radio mys­ter­ies, and then the free works of best­selling hor­ror author, Scott Sigler. Enjoy.

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Good Novels For Hard Times

in Books | April 11th, 2009

Not long ago, I flagged a piece by Leon Wieselti­er called “The Tol­stoy Bailout,” and it makes a great case for why great books mat­ter, espe­cial­ly in these hard times. As he put it, “In tough times, of all times, the worth of the human­i­ties needs no jus­ti­fy­ing. The rea­son is that it will take many kinds of sus­te­nance to help peo­ple through these trou­bles. Many peo­ple will now have to fall back more on inner resources than on out­er ones. They are in need of loans, but they are also in need of mean­ings…. We are in need of fis­cal pol­i­cy and spir­i­tu­al pol­i­cy. And spir­i­tu­al­ly speak­ing, lit­er­a­ture is a bailout, and so is art, and phi­los­o­phy, and his­to­ry, and the rest.  … Regres­sion analy­sis will not get us through the long night. We need to know more about the human heart than the study of con­sumer behav­ior can teach. These are the hours when the old Pen­guin paper­backs must stand us in good stead. It was for now that we read them then.”

With that in mind, I present you with a handy list, “Good Nov­els for Hard Times,”  just pub­lished by the San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle.

You may also want to vis­it our list of Life Chang­ing Books, as deter­mined by our read­ers.

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ArtBabble: The New Destination for Art Videos

in Art | April 11th, 2009

This week, Art­Bab­ble, a new video web­site for the muse­um & art world, opened its vir­tu­al doors. Cre­at­ed by the Indi­anapo­lis Muse­um of Art, Art­Bab­ble brings togeth­er videos from var­i­ous arts insti­tu­tions (MoMA, SFMOMA, PBS, the New Pub­lic Library, etc) and presents them to users in a clean, orga­nized way. The footage, often pro­duced in high def­i­n­i­tion, fea­tures inter­views with artists and cura­tors, doc­u­men­taries and art instal­la­tion videos. And, col­lec­tive­ly, they give you a more direct way to “expe­ri­ence the life of muse­ums.” To learn more about Art­Bab­ble, you can read a piece in The NY Times.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Art His­to­ry Web Book

The Rothko Panoram­ic Tour: A New Way to See Art

Rod­in’s Gates of Hell

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Twitter in the University Classroom

in Uncategorized | April 11th, 2009

From The Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion’s “Wired Cam­pus” Blog:

“Cole W. Cam­plese, direc­tor of edu­ca­tion-tech­nol­o­gy ser­vices at Penn­syl­va­nia State Uni­ver­si­ty at Uni­ver­si­ty Park, prefers to teach in class­rooms with two screens — one to project his slides, and anoth­er to project a Twit­ter stream of notes from stu­dents. He knows he is invit­ing dis­trac­tion — after all, he’s essen­tial­ly ask­ing stu­dents to pass notes dur­ing class. But he argues that the addi­tion­al lay­er of com­mu­ni­ca­tion will make for rich­er class dis­cus­sions…

Once stu­dents warmed to the idea that their pro­fes­sors actu­al­ly want­ed them to chat dur­ing class, stu­dents begin float­ing ideas or post­ing links to relat­ed mate­ri­als, the pro­fes­sor says. In some cas­es, a shy stu­dent would type an obser­va­tion or ques­tion on Twit­ter, and oth­ers in the class would respond with notes encour­ag­ing the stu­dent to raise the top­ic out loud. Oth­er times, one of the pro­fes­sors would see a link post­ed by a stu­dent and stop class to dis­cuss it.

Get the full sto­ry here, and feel free to tell us about oth­er edu­ca­tion­al uses of Twit­ter. Just add them to the com­ments below. Last­ly, you can find us on Twit­ter here.

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World’s Most Interesting Bookstores

in Books | April 8th, 2009

intriguingbooksstoreMirage­book­mark has gath­ered some notable pho­tos from uncon­ven­tion­al book­stores around the globe.

The col­lec­tion takes you from Hol­land to Paris, Helsin­ki, and Por­to (Por­tu­gal), then to San Fran­cis­co, Buenos Aires, Cal­cut­ta and beyond.

Worth pay­ing a vis­it.

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Twitter in the University Classroom

in Books | April 8th, 2009

From The Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion’s “Wired Cam­pus” Blog:

“Cole W. Cam­plese, direc­tor of edu­ca­tion-tech­nol­o­gy ser­vices at Penn­syl­va­nia State Uni­ver­si­ty at Uni­ver­si­ty Park, prefers to teach in class­rooms with two screens — one to project his slides, and anoth­er to project a Twit­ter stream of notes from stu­dents. He knows he is invit­ing dis­trac­tion — after all, he’s essen­tial­ly ask­ing stu­dents to pass notes dur­ing class. But he argues that the addi­tion­al lay­er of com­mu­ni­ca­tion will make for rich­er class dis­cus­sions…

Once stu­dents warmed to the idea that their pro­fes­sors actu­al­ly want­ed them to chat dur­ing class, stu­dents begin float­ing ideas or post­ing links to relat­ed mate­ri­als, the pro­fes­sor says. In some cas­es, a shy stu­dent would type an obser­va­tion or ques­tion on Twit­ter, and oth­ers in the class would respond with notes encour­ag­ing the stu­dent to raise the top­ic out loud. Oth­er times, one of the pro­fes­sors would see a link post­ed by a stu­dent and stop class to dis­cuss it.

Get the full sto­ry here, and feel free to tell us about oth­er edu­ca­tion­al uses of Twit­ter. Just add them to the com­ments below. Last­ly, you can find us on Twit­ter here.

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The Internet’s Librarian

in Web/Tech | April 8th, 2009

“Brew­ster Kahle wants to cre­ate a free, online col­lec­tion of human knowl­edge. It sounds impos­si­bly idealistic—but he is mak­ing progress.”

More on Kahle’s mis­sion here.

via @Harvard_Press

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The Evolution of Religions: A Talk by Jared Diamond

in Religion | April 8th, 2009

A good find by Kottke.org…

Jared Dia­mond, the Pulitzer Prize-win­ning author of Guns, Germs & Steel (and Col­lapse: How Soci­eties Choose to Fail or Suc­ceed), offers a lec­ture at USC where he gets into the uni­ver­sal attrib­ut­es of reli­gions and their under­ly­ing adap­tive value/social pur­pose. The talk runs about 41 min­utes, fol­lowed by a long Q&A ses­sion.

For those look­ing for more aca­d­e­m­ic lec­tures, I should remind you of the recent launch of YouTube EDU and Aca­d­e­m­ic Earth, plus our large col­lec­tion of free uni­ver­si­ty cours­es.

via @kottkedotorg

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