Coursera Strikes Partnerships with 12 Universities, Raises More $$$, Announces a Long List of Courses

in Online Courses, Stanford | July 17th, 2012

There’s an inter­est­ing com­pe­ti­tion shap­ing up between Udac­i­ty and Cours­era. Spe­cial­iz­ing in offer­ing Mas­sive­ly Open Online Cours­es (MOOCs), both ven­tures spun out of Stan­ford ear­li­er this year. But they did so in very dif­fer­ent ways. When Sebas­t­ian Thrun, Udac­i­ty’s founder, left his tenured posi­tion at Stan­ford, he kicked a lit­tle sand in the Uni­ver­si­ty’s face. And true to its name, Udac­i­ty (oh the audac­i­ty!) has posi­tioned itself as an out­sider. It isn’t part­ner­ing with estab­lished uni­ver­si­ties (so far as we know). Rather, it’s cre­at­ing cours­es under its own brand (à la Khan Acad­e­my and The Teach­ing Com­pa­ny) and exert­ing top-down con­trol over the prod­uct (à la Apple). It’s an approach that has obvi­ous upsides and down­sides.

Mean­while, Cours­era is head­ing down a very dif­fer­ent path. The founders (both Stan­ford pro­fes­sors) did­n’t snub their employ­er, and they’ve instead built a plat­form on which tra­di­tion­al uni­ver­si­ties can launch their own open cours­es. The down­side: the com­pa­ny does­n’t exer­cise great con­trol over the cours­es being built. The upside: they can lever­age the brands of great uni­ver­si­ties, and the many cours­es they’ll build. Case in point.…

Today, Cours­era is announc­ing that they’ve signed part­ner­ship agree­ments with 12 new uni­ver­si­ties: Geor­gia Tech, Duke Uni­ver­si­ty, Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton, Cal­tech, Rice Uni­ver­si­ty,  Uni­ver­si­ty of Edin­burgh, Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to, EPFL — Lau­sanne, Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­si­ty (School of Pub­lic Health), UCSF, Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia, and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois. That’s in addi­tion to their four exist­ing part­ners: Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia, Prince­ton, Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan and Stan­ford.

There’s a lot of great insti­tu­tions enter­ing Cours­er­a’s sta­ble. And they’ll bring with them over 60 cours­es in the com­ing months. (Find a com­plete list of cours­es below the jump.) We’ll keep you post­ed on how Cours­era and Udac­i­ty evolve, and, in the com­ing weeks, we’ll care­ful­ly test dri­ve their cours­es and let you know the pros and cons of each. Stay tuned for more from the bat­tle of the MOOCs.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Cours­era Adds Human­i­ties Cours­es, Rais­es $16 Mil­lion, Strikes Deal with 3 Uni­ver­si­ties

Har­vard and MIT Cre­ate EDX to Offer Free Online Cours­es World­wide

Udac­i­ty to Launch 5 New Cours­es, from Sta­tis­tics to Physics. Shoot­ing for Largest Online Class Ever.

Free Online Cer­tifi­cate Cours­es from Great Uni­ver­si­ties: A Com­plete List

(more…)

Our Big List of 500 Free Courses Featured by The Young Turks

in Online Courses | July 14th, 2012

Yes­ter­day, the team at The Young Turks Uni­ver­si­ty cre­at­ed a lit­tle video seg­ment pro­mot­ing our big list of 500 Free Online Cours­es from top uni­ver­si­ties. As they right­ly explain, the list lets you down­load free cours­es from schools like Stan­ford, Yale, MIT, Oxford, Har­vard and UC Berke­ley. And when you dive in, you’ll dis­cov­er 55 cours­es in Phi­los­o­phy, 50 in His­to­ry, 50 in Com­put­er Sci­ence, and 35 in Physics, plus lec­tures from famous intel­lec­tu­als like Richard Feyn­man, Leo Strauss, Bertrand Rus­sell, Michel Fou­cault and Richard Dawkins. Final­ly, you can usu­al­ly access the cours­es from mul­ti­ple sources — YouTube, iTunes or uni­ver­si­ty web sites. So what are you wait­ing for? Dive right into the com­plete list here and start using your leisure time in a pro­duc­tive way.

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and now Google Plus and share intel­li­gent media with your friends! They’ll thank you for it.

Woody Guthrie at 100: Celebrate His Amazing Life with a BBC Film

in History, Music | July 13th, 2012

Sat­ur­day marks the 100th anniver­sary of the birth of Woody Guthrie, the great­ly influ­en­tial folk singer whose music was insep­a­ra­ble from the hard cir­cum­stances of his life and his deep sense of social jus­tice.

“A folk song is what’s wrong and how to fix it,” Guthrie once said, “or it could be who’s hun­gry and where their mouth is or who’s out of work and where the job is or who’s broke and where the mon­ey is or who’s car­ry­ing a gun and where the peace is.”

To help mark the mile­stone we bring you rare footage, above, of Guthrie singing “The Ranger’s Com­mand” in 1945. The clip is from the 1988 BBC Are­na doc­u­men­tary, Woody Guthrie, which can be seen in its entire­ty below. The film is a vivid por­trait of the singer, with rare audio record­ings of Guthrie speak­ing, along with inter­views with Alan Lomax, Jack Elliot, Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie and oth­ers. As BBC Are­na edi­tor Antho­ny Wall writes of the film’s sub­ject:

“This land is your land”, sang Woody Guthrie, his mis­sion to reclaim the true Amer­i­ca from the lawyers and politi­cians and thugs and return it to the peo­ple. He said he was just try­ing ‘to tell peo­ple what they already know’. Orig­i­nal­ly from a com­fort­ably-off fam­i­ly in Okla­homa, he took to the road and rails to chron­i­cle in song the depres­sion and dust­bowl. A fab­u­lous exam­ple of Amer­i­can self-inven­tion, ‘Guthrie came with the dust and he went with the wind’

For more on the Woody Guthrie Cen­ten­ni­al, vis­it Woody100.com. The Web site fea­tures a biog­ra­phy with pho­tographs and oth­er mate­ri­als, a “song of the day,” and a 2012 cal­en­dar of events. This week­end there are sev­er­al big events in New York, includ­ing a birth­day par­ty Sat­ur­day on Coney Island, with appear­ances by Bil­ly Bragg, Steve Ear­le and Guthrie’s daugh­ter, Nora, along with a free screen­ing the film “Bound For Glo­ry” on the beach. On Sun­day, Arlo Guthrie and oth­ers in the Guthrie fam­i­ly will give a free con­cert in Cen­tral Park.

And for more Guthrie resources, go to:

• SoundPortraits.org to down­load audio of Alan Lomax’s 1940 inter­view with Guthrie, along with a tran­script of the con­ver­sa­tion.
• CulturalEquity.org, host of the Alan Lomax Archives, for sev­er­al short but inter­est­ing takes of Guthrie singing polit­i­cal songs in 1948, includ­ing “If Dewey Gets Elect­ed” and “The Road is Rocky.”
• NPR.org for a 40-minute radio pro­gram, “Fresh Air Cel­e­brates Woody Guthrie at 100.” Ter­ry Gross inter­views Guthrie biog­ra­ph­er Ed Cray and Smith­son­ian Folk­ways archivist Jeff Place, who co-pro­duced the new box set Woody at 100.
• DemocracyNow.org for a one-hour tele­vi­sion spe­cial, “On Woody Guthrie’s Cen­ten­ni­al, Cel­e­brat­ing the Life, Pol­i­tics & Music of the ‘Dust Bowl Trou­ba­dour.’ ” Hosts Amy Good­man and Juan Gon­za­lez inter­view Woody’s daugh­ter Nora Guthrie, author of the new book, My Name is New York: Ram­blin’ Around Woody Guthrie’s Town, and his grand­daugh­ter Anna Canoni, along with musi­cian Steve Ear­le. The show also fea­tures rare audio record­ings of Guthrie speak­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pete Seeger: To Hear Your Ban­jo Play

The Alan Lomax Sound Archive Now Online: Fea­tures 17,000 Record­ings

Henry Rollins Remembers the Life-Changing Decision That Brought Him From Häagen-Dazs to Black Flag

in Life, Music | July 13th, 2012

Metafil­ter recent­ly fea­tured this Big Think clip of Hen­ry Rollins telling the sto­ry of his most life-chang­ing deci­sion. This choice, of course, was the one that brought him to the front of punk rock band Black Flag. Before he made it, he could call him­self only a col­lege dropout assis­tant-man­ag­ing a Wash­ing­ton, D.C. Häa­gen-Dazs. In 1981, after catch­ing one of Black Flag’s New York shows — dur­ing which he hap­pened to climb onstage and sing a song with them — he decid­ed to try out to become the group’s actu­al singer. When Rollins ditched the ice cream game for the day (a for­feit, he recalls, of no more than $21) to audi­tion, Black Flag went from his favorite band to his band. Think­ing back, he real­izes he had lit­tle to lose: if he did­n’t give it a shot, he’d find him­self look­ing down the bar­rel of a long, hard exis­tence on his feet, answer­ing to cus­tomers all day, every day. If he gave it a shot and did­n’t make it, he’d at worst feel humil­i­at­ed, but, as he puts it, “humil­i­a­tion and young peo­ple kind of go togeth­er.”

“I don’t have tal­ent,” Rollins insists. “I have tenac­i­ty. I have dis­ci­pline. There was no choice for me but to work real­ly hard.” You may recall him mak­ing a sim­i­lar point in his pre­vi­ous Big Think video we fea­tured, in which he rec­om­mend­ed going at one’s pur­suits with a “monas­tic obses­sion.” But this time, he adds a note of fear. He talks about com­ing to under­stand that, with­out rely­ing on his four pil­lars of “appli­ca­tion, dis­ci­pline, focus, rep­e­ti­tion,” an enti­ty he calls “the Amer­i­ca” would have got­ten the bet­ter of him. This term seems to refer to the con­stant threat of crush­ing medi­oc­rity he feels in the Unit­ed States. “Every moment I am alive is because I have not been mur­dered by the Amer­i­ca,” he says in anoth­er inter­view. “The tasks I set out for myself are what I do to beat the per­fect point­less­ness of life.” Even if you don’t con­ceive of your own sit­u­a­tion quite so grim­ly, Rollins offers a per­spec­tive worth con­sid­er­ing. Per­haps his recruit­ment into Black Flag strikes you as a lucky break; he cer­tain­ly con­sid­ers it one. But as Bri­an Eno, anoth­er cul­tur­al fig­ure as well known for his point of view as his music, once said, “Luck is being ready.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

Hen­ry Rollins Tells Young Peo­ple to Avoid Resent­ment and to Pur­sue Suc­cess with a “Monas­tic Obses­sion”

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Cinecitta Luce and Google to Bring Italy’s Largest Film Archive to YouTube

in Film, History | July 12th, 2012

Italy’s Cinecit­ta Luce pos­sess­es more than 100,000 films dat­ing back to 1927. Any­one with an inter­est in Ital­ian cul­ture, his­to­ry, or cin­e­ma will sure­ly want to take a look at them, and now, thanks to a part­ner­ship between Cinecit­ta Luce and Google, they can. As those 100,000 films under­go dig­i­ti­za­tion, they’ll make their way to Cinecit­ta Luce’s offi­cial Youtube chan­nel, which offers, to rough­ly trans­late the Ital­ian on the page, “sev­en­ty years of Ital­ian his­to­ry and social life from the twen­ties to the nineties,” the “price­less pat­ri­mo­ny of our visu­al mem­o­ry.” So far, the chan­nel has bro­ken the films into sev­en cat­e­gories: art, sci­ence and lit­er­a­ture; the Sec­ond World War; movie stars and the cat­walk; pro­tag­o­nists of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry; the “dust archive” (which seems mis­cel­la­neous); mate­r­i­al relat­ed to Cinecit­ta Luce’s cur­rent film fes­ti­vals; and la dolce vita (a phrase, I would argue, bet­ter pre­sent­ed in the orig­i­nal).

At the top of this post, you’ll find a two-and-a-half-minute sequence show­cas­ing the kind of his­to­ry in motion to be found in Cinecit­ta Luce’s archive: musi­cal per­for­mances, beau­ty pageants, culi­nary fes­ti­vals, sport­ing events, movie pre­mieres, impor­tant moments in pol­i­tics and indus­try, and — for what­ev­er rea­son — all sorts of march­es. Just above this para­graph, we’ve embed­ded some news­reel footage of Fed­eri­co Felli­ni fresh off his Best For­eign-Lan­guage Film Acad­e­my Award win for 8½. But the hours of mate­r­i­al now on Cinecit­ta Luce’s Youtube chan­nel rep­re­sent only the tip of the ice­berg. We hard­ly need tell Italophiles that they’ll want to con­sid­er sub­scrib­ing, so as not to miss more from an archive the Hol­ly­wood Reporter describes as “rich in videos from the Vat­i­can, the 1960 Olymics in Rome, and sceners from gen­er­a­tions of every-day life in Rome.” And giv­en that Ben­i­to Mus­soli­ni orig­i­nal­ly cre­at­ed the Cinecit­ta film stu­dios and the Luce archives as engines of pro­pa­gan­da, they still retain the world’s largest col­lec­tion of Mus­soli­ni-relat­ed film. Schol­ars of dic­ta­tor­ships, take spe­cial note!

Relat­ed con­tent:

Mus­soli­ni Sends a Hap­py Mes­sage to Amer­i­ca, Helps Change Cin­e­ma His­to­ry (1927)

Fellini’s Fan­tas­tic TV Com­mer­cials

Learn Ital­ian for Free

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

40 Years Ago Today: Chess Rivals Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky Meet in the ‘Match of the Century’

in History | July 11th, 2012

They called it the “Match of the Cen­tu­ry.” The eccen­tric Amer­i­can chess mas­ter Bob­by Fis­ch­er and the reign­ing world cham­pi­on Boris Spassky of the Sovi­et Union faced off against one anoth­er 40 years ago today in Reyk­javik, Ice­land. As the world looked on, the Cold War strug­gle between two super­pow­ers was played out in proxy, on a chess board.

The tense atmos­phere and enor­mous fan­fare sur­round­ing the event are cap­tured in this excerpt from the 2006 GSN doc­u­men­tary Any­thing to Win: The Mad Genius of Bob­by Fis­ch­er. Spassky won the first game, on July 11, 1972, when Fis­ch­er made a sur­pris­ing blun­der. Game two went to Spassky when Fis­ch­er refused to play because the tele­vi­sion cam­eras were both­er­ing him. Before the start of game three, Fis­ch­er went around the room inspect­ing TV equip­ment for sources of noise. The entire sequence of events was per­haps an elab­o­rate game of psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare. When Fis­ch­er final­ly sat down to play, Spassky’s equa­nim­i­ty was shat­tered: The third game went to Fis­ch­er, and the tide had turned. When the match final­ly con­clud­ed on Sep­tem­ber 1, the score was Fis­ch­er 12½, Spassky 8½. To learn more about the match, and Fis­cher’s extra­or­di­nary life, you can watch the entire one-hour GSN doc­u­men­tary here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Famous Chess Match from 1910 Reen­act­ed with Clay­ma­tion

Neal Stephenson, SciFi Author, Crowdsources $500,000 for New Sword-Fighting Video Game

in Literature, Technology | July 11th, 2012

Neal Stephen­son (Crypto­nom­i­con, Snow Crash, Anath­em) is a hard­work­ing man. In addi­tion to not get­ting any of his sci-fi nov­els made into movies, hang­ing out at Google, writ­ing some of the most fas­ci­nat­ing non­fic­tion in print or online, and being awe­some, he’s work­ing on a project called Clang, a first-per­son sword­fight­ing game, and he’s fund­ing it through Kick­starter. As of yes­ter­day he exceed­ed his goal of $500,000 with over 9,000 back­ers. And why not? Like most of Stephenson’s ideas, it’s bril­liant.

Stephenson—a self-described “swords­man­ship geek”—explains in the video above why he’s decid­ed to cre­ate a real­is­tic sword fight­ing game, in a gam­ing scene rid­dled with high-tech first-per­son shoot­ers. And even though Stephen­son admits to being only a “casu­al gamer,” as you can see, he’s dead­ly seri­ous about the devel­op­ment of Clang. Watch him test sev­er­al dif­fer­ent medieval weapon designs to repli­cate the weight and feel of a real blade and cre­ate the intense inter­ac­tive expe­ri­ence of games like Medal of Hon­or and Met­al Gear Sol­id.

Stephen­son and his team are mak­ing use of a cut­ting-edge track­ing tech­nol­o­gy devel­oped by a com­pa­ny called Six­ense, which promis­es very low laten­cy and “unpar­al­leled pre­ci­sion.” The Clang team are con­fi­dent that their track­ing tech­nol­o­gy, embed­ded in the Raz­er Hydra game con­troller, will bring the thrills and chal­lenges of Medieval sword fight­ing into the hands of fel­low geeks very soon.

Josh Jones is cur­rent­ly a doc­tor­al stu­dent in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

An Abridged History of Western Music: “What a Wonderful World” Sung in 16 Different Styles

in Music | July 10th, 2012

Joe Sabia, Michael Thurber and Matt McCorkle teamed up to form cdza, a group ded­i­cat­ed to cre­at­ing “musi­cal video exper­i­ments.” They start­ed with a His­to­ry Of Lyrics That Aren’t Lyrics and A His­to­ry of Whistling. Now, nine months into their project, they’re up to their Opus No. 7 — An Abridged His­to­ry of West­ern Music in 16 Gen­res. In a fun three min­utes, they tease apart Louis Arm­strong’s chest­nut, What a Won­der­ful World, pre­sent­ing it in var­i­ous West­ern styles of music. Gre­go­ri­an Chant. Baroque. Blue­grass. Reg­gae. Rap. Punk. The list goes on. Enjoy.

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Atten­bor­ough Reads “What a Won­der­ful World” in a Mov­ing Video

Lis­ten­ing to Music. Yale Course added to our col­lec­tion 500 Free Cours­es Online

The Open Gold­berg Vari­a­tions: J.S. Bach’s Mas­ter­piece Free to Down­load

New­ly Dis­cov­ered Piece by Mozart Per­formed on His Own Fortepi­ano

James Baldwin Bests William F. Buckley in 1965 Debate at Cambridge University

in History, Life, Literature | July 10th, 2012

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Author of the nov­el Giovanni’s Room and the non­fic­tion col­lec­tion “Notes of a Native Son,” James Bald­win was also a scathing social crit­ic, a wit­ty yet for­mi­da­ble media per­son­al­i­ty, and a lit­er­ary ambas­sador for civ­il rights. And, as an out­spo­ken gay man, he decried dis­crim­i­na­tion against gays and les­bians. In 1965, he accept­ed an invi­ta­tion by Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty to debate the “father of Amer­i­can con­ser­vatism” William F. Buck­ley on the sub­ject, “The Amer­i­can Dream is at the Expense of the Amer­i­can Negro.” In the video above, Bald­win (intro­duced as the “star of the evening”) deliv­ers his stir­ring open­ing remarks, set­ting the tone he main­tains through­out and pulling his near­ly all-white audi­ence to the edge of their seats.

Buck­ley, found­ing edi­tor of the con­ser­v­a­tive jour­nal Nation­al Review, had come out four years ear­li­er against deseg­re­ga­tion and Civ­il Rights leg­is­la­tion and was in the midst of his ulti­mate­ly failed 1965 New York City may­oral cam­paign. He was always will­ing to engage with his ide­o­log­i­cal adver­saries (see him debate Noam Chom­sky in 1969 on his long-run­ning tele­vi­sion pro­gram, Fir­ing Line), but remained a staunch oppo­nent of lib­er­al­ism. In this clip from the debate, Buck­ley responds to many of Bald­win’s asser­tions:

Bald­win had just fin­ished his nov­el Anoth­er Coun­try when this debate took place. He was 41, Buck­ley 40. While both are well-known for the rhetor­i­cal savvy on dis­play here, in this case at least, Bald­win proved the more per­sua­sive voice. After the debate, the Cam­bridge Union Soci­ety took a vote and decid­ed the issue in his favor, 540–160.

You can (and should) view the full debate above.

Josh Jones is cur­rent­ly a doc­tor­al stu­dent in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

375+ Episodes of William F. Buckley’s Fir­ing Line Now Online: Fea­tures Talks with Chom­sky, Borges, Ker­ouac, Gins­berg & More

James Bald­win Debates Mal­colm X (1963) and William F. Buck­ley (1965): Vin­tage Video & Audio

Great Cul­tur­al Icons Talk Civ­il Rights: James Bald­win, Mar­lon Bran­do, Har­ry Bela­fonte & Sid­ney Poiti­er (1963)

The Tour de Francis: Can an Amateur Tackle the World’s Greatest Cycling Race?

in Current Affairs | July 10th, 2012

Could an ama­teur bik­er han­dle the rig­ors of the gru­el­ing Tour de France? Hal­fords, a UK spon­sor of the 2012 Tour, and their ad firm, DLKW Lowe, decid­ed to find out. The rid­er is Dan Fran­cis, a 29 year old employ­ee at a Lon­don phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­ny. The bike, a $1500 rebadged Car­rera Vira­go. The route, five clas­sic stages from The Tour de France. And it’s all doc­u­ment­ed in a 15-minute film play­ful­ly called The Tour de Fran­cis.

The ride is gru­el­ing, yes. And it’s only com­pli­cat­ed by the unusu­al road con­di­tions — the snow block­ing the roads in the Alps, cars lit­ter­ing the already treach­er­ous roads in front of the Tui­leries in Paris (where I hap­pened to see Miguel Indurain win the Tour three times). How does Fran­cis han­dle it? No spoil­ers here. We’ll let you find out.

via @Coudal

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sci­ence Behind the Bike: Four Videos from the Open Uni­ver­si­ty on the Eve of the Tour de France

The 1910 Tour de France Revis­it­ed

Brus­sels Express: The Per­ils of Cycling in Europe’s Most Con­gest­ed City