Carnegie Mellon Takes Online Courses to Another Level with Its Open Learning Initiative
Open online courses—massive or otherwise—are revolutionizing higher education by making learning more and more accessible.
Carnegie Mellon University has taken online courses to another level, offering virtual classroom environments based on deep research into how adults learn.
The courses are free. Carnegie Mellon’s Open Learning Initiative currently offers 15 courses through a platform that provides targeted progress feedback to students.
The program doesn’t offer course credit or certificates but the courses are sophisticated. CMU spent anywhere from $500,000 to $1 million for each course to write the software, which includes a course builder program for instructors and a system of feedback loops that send student learning data to the instructor, the student and the course design team.
More than 10,000 students enrolled in OLI courses last year. So far CMU promotes OLI courses as supplementary to traditional classroom instruction. But the courses are certainly rich enough to be enjoyed by anyone. They’re mostly in the sciences but include a few language and social science classes too.
The list of currently-available courses appears below. We also have them listed in our complete list of Massive Open Online Courses from Great Universities (many of which happen to offer certificates too):
- American English Speech
- Anatomy and Physiology
- Argument Diagramming
- Biochemistry
- Elementary French 1
- Elementary French 2
- Engineering Statics
- Introduction to Biology
- Introduction to Chemistry
- Introduction to Psychology
- Logic and Proofs
- Media Programming
- Modern Biology
- Probability and Statistics
- Statistical Reasoning
Kate Rix writes about digital media and education. Read more of her work on thenifty.blogspot.com and .
Read More...Watch Nosferatu, the Seminal Vampire Film, Free Online (1922)
What, you haven’t seen Nosferatu yet? But you’re in luck: not only do you still have a few days left to fit this seminal classic of vampiric cinema into your Halloween viewing rotation, but when the 31st comes, you can watch it free online yet again. An inspiration for countless vampire films that would follow over the next ninety years, F.W. Murnau’s 1922 silent feature adapts Bram Stoker’s Dracula, but just loosely enough so that it could put its own stamp on the myth and not actually have to pay for rights to the novel. Jonathan and Mina Harker? Now Thomas and Ellen Hutter. Jonathan’s boss Renfield? Now a fellow named Knock. Count Dracula, to whose vast and crumbling estate Renfield sends the hapless Jonathan? Now Count Orlok — and unforgettably so. We can post no more relevant endorsement of Nosferatu’s enduring value than to say that it remains scary, or at least eerie, to this day. I defy any sophisticated modern viewer to spend All Hallows’ eve with this picture and not come away feeling faintly unsettled.
Part of it has to do with sheer age: while some visual effects haven’t held up — get a load of Orlok escaping his coffin in the ship’s cargo hold, employing a technique trusted by every nine-year-old with a video camera — the deeply worn look and feel seems, at moments, to mark the film as coming from a distant past when aristocratic blood-sucking living corpses may as well have existed.
This same process has, over four decades, imbued with a patina of menace every horror film made in the seventies. Fans of the 1979 Werner Herzog-Klaus Kinski collaboration Nosferatu the Vampyre, a companion piece obviously worth viewing in any case, can attest to this. You might also consider incorporating in your Halloween night viewing E. Elias Merhige’s Shadow of the Vampire, a satire of the 1920s film industry’s collision of eccentric old-world craftsmanship and savage commercial buffoonery which imagines Orlok as having been played by a geniune vampire. As for Francis Ford Coppola’s rights-having 1992 adaptation Bram Stoker’s Dracula… well, its chief point of interest is still Gary Oldman’s hairstyle.
You can always find Nosferatu on our list of Great Silent Films, part of our larger collection, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Classics, Indies, Noir, Westerns, Documentaries & More.
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Colin Marshall hosts and produces Notebook on Cities and Culture. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall.
Read More...Watch Historic Footage of Joseph Kittinger’s 102,800 Jump from Space (1960)
When I first heard that 43-year old Austrian daredevil and former military parachutist Felix Baumgartner would be jumping 128,000 feet from space, my immediate reaction was, “What? Why?!” Because why would anyone do that? And I assumed it was all some macho stunt to promote Red Bull, his corporate sponsor, which isn’t entirely unfounded. But I also had no sense of the historic context, the scientific implications, and until I read the details, the truly death-defying magnitude of it all. As I watched the jump and then learned more, my wonder and admiration grew, particularly in reading Baumgartner’s own accounts of his seven years of preparation for the feat.
Baumgartner bested Chuck Yeager on the same day in history that Yeager broke the sound barrier (he says Yeager’s going to be “pissed”). He also broke the record set by Joseph Kittinger, an Air Force pilot who leapt from 102,800 feet (19.5 miles) above earth in 1960. You can watch a short documentary of Kittinger’s famous jump above. The technology of 1960 didn’t allow for the crystal-clear images Baumgartner captured with his two suit cameras, but it’s still an impressive little film, made more so by Kittinger’s voice over describing the sensations he experienced during free fall. Below is a classic 1960 newsreel film of the jump, with a dramatic announcer and triumphal, martial music.
Kittinger and Baumgartner first met in 2008, and the elder test pilot supported and helped plan the Red Bull Stratos project that would break his record. He also served as Baumgartner’s mission control, guiding him from his tiny space capsule to the ground. The jump was apparently supposed to take place two years earlier, on the 50th anniversary of Kittinger’s, but was delayed. Below, you can watch Kittinger discuss the project and his own career in a 2010 interview with Red Bull.
Josh Jones is a doctoral candidate in English at Fordham University and a co-founder and former managing editor of Guernica / A Magazine of Arts and Politics.
Read More...Philosophy Made Fun: Read the Free Preview Edition of the Action Philosophers! Comic
“Imagine Plato as a wrestling superstar of ancient Greece, Nietzsche as the original ubermensch, and Bohidharma as the grand master of kung fu. These are not just great thinkers they also make great comics. Action Philosophers! details the lives and thoughts of history’s A‑list brain trust in hip and humorous comic book fashion. ”
That’s how the Action Philosophers! comic book was pitched when its creators, Fred Van Lente and Ryan Dunlavey, published it in 2009. The comic book is still in print, and you can read the fun preview edition online. It starts, of course, with the Pre-Socratics — Thales, Anaximander, Parmenides, and the gang. Enjoy.
Bonus — Read more Action Philosophers! online:
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Read More...Learn New Languages (From Arabic to Yiddish) with 150+ Free Podcasts
I spend a great deal of time visiting unfamiliar cities, spending days walking, cycling, or riding trains and buses through them. Sometimes the people of these cities speak languages I know; sometimes they speak languages I don’t. Either way, during all these hours in motion, my personal soundtrack comes from an iPod loaded with language-learning podcasts. If you’d like to engage in this delightfully mentally stimulating practice yourself — and I highly recommend it — you can get started by browsing Open Culture’s collection of Free Language Lessons available online. The list covers no fewer than 40 tongues, and many of the lessons come in podcast form. Should you find yourself in need of shows offering Bulgarian survival phrases, instruction in Swedish expressions and culture, or Polish in one minute a day, here is the list you want. From my efforts in studying Spanish, Korean, and Japanese, I can personally (and strongly) recommend several of its offerings.
Coffee Break Spanish and the more advanced Show Time Spanish, both produced by the Radio Lingua network (out of Scotland, of all places) start you off from an absolute zero of presumed knowledge and proceeds to get you up to “cruising altitude,” which I call the point in language acquisition at which you become able to learn from real, untranslated speech. You might then consider downloading a show like Notes in Spanish, and especially the conversationally focused Notes in Spanish Gold. For Japanese, few language podcasts cater to a wider variety of proficiency levels at once than does JapanesePod101, which I supplement with Japanese national broadcaster NHK’s lessons (which also come taught in quite a few languages besides English.) And for Korean, the language that first cultivated in me this whole intellectually and socially thrilling learning addiction, you can do no better than Hyunwoo Sun’s Talk to Me in Korean, quite possibly the most thorough, frequent, slick, and entertaining language-instruction podcast of any kind. Listening to these shows has convinced me that every moment spent not acquiring a new language is a moment wasted. But even if you don’t believe anything that extreme, it’s still a lot of fun. And doing it through these free podcasts, you certainly can’t argue with the price.
Here’s our collection once again: Learn 40 Languages for Free: Spanish, English, Chinese & More
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Colin Marshall hosts and produces Notebook on Cities and Culture. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall.
Read More...Samuel Beckett Directs His Absurdist Play Waiting for Godot (1985)
Samuel Beckett’s absurdist play, Waiting for Godot, premiered in Paris in 1953, at the Théâtre de Babylone, under the direction of French actor, Roger Blin. Many other directors staged the play in the years to come, each time interpreting it in their own way. All the while, Beckett complained that the play was being subjected to “endless misunderstanding.” However, when an actor, Peter Woodthrope, once asked him to explain what Godot is all about, Beckett answered quixotically: “It’s all symbiosis, Peter; it’s symbiosis.” Thanks for the clarification, Sam.
Beckett never gave a clear explanation. But perhaps he offered up something better. In 1985, Beckett directed three of his plays — Waiting for Godot, Krapp’s Last Tape and Endgame — as part of a production called “Beckett Directs Beckett.” The plays performed by the San Quentin Players toured Europe and Asia with much fanfare, and with Beckett exerting directorial control. And do keep this in mind. Beckett paces things slowly. So you won’t hear your first sound until the 2:00 mark.
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Read More...The History of Byzantium Podcast Picks Up Where The History of Rome Left Off
In May we posted about Mike Duncan’s The History of Rome podcast, which, upon reaching episode 179, had concluded the tale of the Roman Empire’s heyday. Over its five-year run, Duncan’s show amassed a large, enthusiastic audience, most of whom have no doubt continued their exploration of Roman history elsewhere. It has even inspired some to launch history podcasts of their own, one of which presents itself as The History of Rome’s direct successor in subject, style, and tone. The History of Byzantium (RSS — iTunes), which debuted in May, aims to recount the story of Roman Empire of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, now better known as the Byzantine Empire, from the years 476 through 1453. Though perhaps less often discussed by the average history buff, the Byzantine Empire nonetheless offers a wealth of historical interest, especially, it seems, to podcasters; you may already have heard Lars Brownworth’s show 12 Byzantine Rulers, which eventually landed him a book deal. And many more Byzantine stories remain to tell.
Pierson, by day a televison critic, explicitly describes his project as both an unofficial sequel and an homage to The History of Rome. “I liked the simplification and explanation of the Roman story,” he writes in his introductory post. “I liked the half an hour length. I liked Mike’s sense of humour and timing. I liked his neutral tone which never felt like it was providing an overbearing opinion on the narrative. When Mike announced he would be stopping with the fall of the West in 476 I considered whether I could possibly take on the task of continuing the story. [ … ] Initially at least I hope to emulate Mike’s style. I want to keep the rough structure and neutral tone established on The History of Rome because I think so highly of it. I hope you won’t see it as simply an imitation and doubtless over time my own style will emerge.” This seems as honest an account as any of the way creators work off of their inspirations, and History of Rome fans will no doubt listen with interest to The History of Byzantium for both the developments in the tale and in Pierson’s way of telling it.
You can subscribe to The History of Byzantium via RSS or iTunes.
And, all of you history buffs, remember that you can find free courses in the History section of our collection of Free Online Courses from Great Universities.
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Colin Marshall hosts and produces Notebook on Cities and Culture. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall.
Read More...Read Joyce’s Ulysses Line by Line, for the Next 22 Years, with Frank Delaney’s Podcast
If you need someone to host a multi-decade podcast on James Joyce’s Ulysses, then why settle for less than the most eloquent man in the world? Visit Frank Delaney’s site, and you’ll find it less than shy about proclaiming that National Public Radio once dubbed him just that. A prolific man of letters, Delaney has in his 42-year-long career logged time as a newsreader, book journalist, interviewer, Edinburgh Festival Literature Director, talk show host, Man Booker Prize judge, radio broadcaster, novelist, and historian. In 1981, his book James Joyce’s Odyssey brought his surpassing enthusiasm for Joyce scholarship to public attention, and it took a whole new form on, appropriately enough, Bloomsday 2010, when Delaney added the title of podcaster to his résumé by launching Re: Joyce (iTunes — RSS). The show operates on a simple concept: each Wednesday, Delaney deconstructs a piece of Ulysses, usually for four to fifteen minutes. This will run, so the plan goes, for the next twenty-two years.
An ambitious project, certainly, but I find that podcasting, especially literary podcasting, could always use a little more ambition. “Why?” Delaney asks of the show on its debut episode. “Well, why not? You could say, ‘Why bother?’ And I would say, for the sheer fun of it. Because this is a book that has engrossed and delighted me for most of my adult life, and I know the enjoyment to be had from it. And I also know that such enjoyment has been denied to many, many people who would read Ulysses if they weren’t so daunted by it, and indeed, who tried to read it but had to give up. How do I know this? Because I was one of them.” If this sounds a little like the script of an infomercial, Delaney embraces the sensibility, labeling Re: Joyce his “infomercial for Ulysses.” As far as eloquence — and erudition, not to mention richness of subject matter — he’s certainly surpassed Ron Popeil.
You can download the podcast from iTunes for free or follow the RSS feed here. Copies of Joyce’s Ulysses can be found in our collections of Free eBooks and Free Audio Books. The first episode of Re:Joyce appears below:
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Colin Marshall hosts and produces Notebook on Cities and Culture. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall.
Read More...Philosopher Slavoj Zizek Interprets Hitchcock’s Vertigo in The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema (2006)
Philosopher and psychoanalyst Slavoj Zizek is a polarizing figure, in and out of the Academy. He has been accused of misogyny and opportunism, and a Guardian columnist once wondered if he is “the Borat of philosophy.” The latter epithet might be as much a reference to his occasional boorishness as to his Slovenian-accented English. Despite (or because of) these qualities, Zizek has become a fascinating public intellectual, in part because all of his work is shot through with pop culture references as diffuse as the most studied of fanboys. And even though Zizek, a student of the Freudian theorist Jacques Lacan, can get deeply obscure with the best of his peers, his enthusiasm and rapid-fire free-associations mark him as a true fan of everything he surveys.
The Zizek I just described is fully in evidence in the short clip above from the three-part documentary The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema. Directed by Sophie Fiennes (sister of Joseph and Ralph), The Pervert’s Guide places Zizek in original locations and replica sets of several classic films—David Lynch’s Blue Velvet, Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, and Hitchcock’s Vertigo, to name just a few. Zizek’s scenes of commentary are edited with scenes from the films to give the impression that he is speaking from within the films themselves. It’s a novel approach and works particularly well in the video above, where Zizek gives us his take on Vertigo. As he says of Hitchcock’s film—which could apply to the one he is in as well—“often things begin as a fake, inauthentic, artificial, but you get caught in your own game.” Viewers of The Pervert’s Guide get caught in Zizek’s interpretive game; it’s a fascinating, ridiculous, and unsettling one.
In the clip, through a series of close analyses of plot points and camera angles, Zizek concludes that Vertigo is the realization of a male fantasy, which necessarily involves violence and nightmarish transformations. In the “male libidinal economy,” he says, in the jargon‑y psychoanalytic speak of his trade, women must be “mortified” before they are acceptable sexual partners. Slipping out of academic argot, he clarifies: “to paraphrase an old saying, the only good woman is a dead woman.” It’s this kind of blunt and utterly unsentimental way of speaking that raises the hackles of some of Zizek’s critics. But I’m not here to defend him. Watching (and reading) him for me is a game of edge-of-your seat “what outrageous or incomprehensible thing is he going to say next?” and I’ll admit, I enjoy it. So I’ll leave you with a final Zizek-ism. Perhaps it will scare you off for good, or perhaps you’re game for a few more rounds of “perversion” with this encyclopedic critic of the self, the social, and the sexual:
“A subject,” says Zizek, “is a partial something, a face, something we see. Behind it, there is a void, a nothingness. And of course, we spontaneously tend to fill in that nothingness with our fantasies about the wealth of human personality and so on, and so on. To see what is lacking in reality, to see it as that, there you see subjectivity. To confront subjectivity means to confront femininity. Woman is the subject. Masculinity is a fake.”
You can watch the film in its entirety here.
via Biblioklept
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Josh Jones is a doctoral candidate in English at Fordham University and a co-founder and former managing editor of Guernica / A Magazine of Arts and Politics.
Read More...The Moby Dick Big Read: Tilda Swinton & Others Read a Chapter a Day from the Great American Novel
“Moby-Dick is the great American novel. But it is also the great unread American novel. Sprawling, magnificent, deliriously digressive, it stands over and above all other works of fiction, since it is barely a work of fiction itself. Rather, it is an explosive exposition of one man’s investigation into the world of the whale, and the way humans have related to it. Yet it is so much more than that.”
That’s how Plymouth University introduces Herman Melville’s classic tale from 1851. And it’s what sets the stage for their web project launched earlier this week. It’s called The Moby Dick Big Read, and it features celebrities and lesser known figures reading all 135 chapters from Moby Dick — chapters that you can start downloading (as free audio files) on a rolling, daily basis. Find them on iTunes, Soundcloud, RSS Feed, or the Big Read web site itself.
The project started with the first chapters being read by Tilda Swinton (Chapter 1), Captain R.N. Hone (Chapter 2), Nigel Williams (Chapter 3), Caleb Crain (Chapter 4), Musa Okwonga (Chapter 5), and Mary Norris (Chapter 6). John Waters, Stephen Fry, Simon Callow and even Prime Minister David Cameron will read future chapters, which often find themselves accompanied by contemporary artwork inspired by the novel.
If you want to read the novel as you go along, find the text in our collection of Free eBooks. We also have versions read by one narrator in our Free Audio Books collection. Tilda Swinton’s narration of Chapter 1 appears right below:
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Open Culture editor Dan Colman scours the web for the best educational media. He finds the free courses and audio books you need, the language lessons & movies you want, and plenty of enlightenment in between.
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