Educational Technology/Open Educational Resource Writer

in | March 24th, 2012

Open Cul­ture is look­ing for a free­lance writer to cov­er the Edu­ca­tion­al Technology/Open Edu­ca­tion­al Resource (OER) space. Here is an overview of what we have in mind.

• The writer will con­tribute three posts per week on a very reli­able sched­ule and will receive com­pen­sa­tion for each post. Days will be mutu­al­ly agreed upon in advance.
• The posts should be writ­ten in a clear, con­cise and engag­ing way. And the copy must be very clean.
• The can­di­date should have strong writ­ing skills and a demon­strat­ed under­stand­ing of the Edu­ca­tion­al Technology/Open Edu­ca­tion­al Resource (OER) space.

When it comes to open edu­ca­tion­al resources, we’re hop­ing that the can­di­date can high­light free resources avail­able online — free cours­es, free apps, free edu­ca­tion­al archives. Here are a few exam­ples.

• Down­load Free Cours­es from Famous Philoso­phers: From Bertrand Rus­sell to Michel Fou­cault
• MoMA Puts Pol­lock, Rothko & de Koon­ing on Your iPad
• British Clas­sics on the iPad App (Free… For Now)
• Albert Ein­stein Archive Now Online, Bring­ing 80,000+ Doc­u­ments to the Web
• Free: Richard Feyn­man’s Physics Lec­tures from Cor­nell (1964)

And when it comes to edu­ca­tion­al tech­nol­o­gy, the goal will be to cov­er new ven­tures and tech­nolo­gies chang­ing the edu­ca­tion­al world. The top­ics cov­ered here should ide­al­ly be of inter­est to a broad audi­ence, so we’ll want to avoid get­ting too gran­u­lar. Here are a cou­ple of exam­ples from our archive.

• MIT to Offer Cer­tifi­cates to Stu­dents Tak­ing Free Cours­es on the Web
• The iPad and Information’s Third Age
• Google Presents YouTube for Schools, Makes Video World Safe for Teach­ers
• The Cre­ation of Udac­i­ty

In terms of next steps, it would be great if you could please sub­mit the fol­low­ing by Fri­day March 30th:

1) A short para­graph about your back­ground, pro­fes­sion­al inter­ests, and knowl­edge of this gen­er­al field.

2) A writ­ing sam­ple, or links to sam­ple pieces online. A writ­ing sam­ple tar­get­ed to edtech/OER would be ide­al.

3) A list of three sam­ple ideas/topics that you would cov­er in your posts, with a brief descrip­tion explain­ing why.

This will help us get ori­ent­ed, and we will fol­low up with a phone call if things feel on tar­get.

Thanks for your inter­est, and please let me know if you have any ques­tions.

Regards,

Dan

Tom Schiller’s 1975 Journey Through Henry Miller’s Bathroom (NSFW)

in Books, Film, Literature | March 23rd, 2012

No sur­prise, you might think, that a doc­u­men­tary about the man who wrote Trop­ic of Can­cer would mer­it an NSFW label. But what if I were to tell you that this par­tic­u­lar doc­u­men­tary spends almost every one of its 35 min­utes in Hen­ry Miller’s bath­room? Yet the writer has imbued this bath­room with a great deal of noto­ri­ety, at least in his cir­cles, thanks to how care­ful­ly he adorned its walls with visu­al curiosi­ties. Fol­low­ing its sub­ject as he grunts him­self awake, puts on a robe, and tells the sto­ries behind what­ev­er the cam­era sees, Hen­ry Miller Asleep and Awake uses these bath­room walls as a gate­way into his mind. We see repro­duc­tions of paint­ings by Hierony­mus Bosch and Paul Gau­guin. We see por­traits of Miller’s per­son­al­ly inspir­ing lumi­nar­ies, like Her­mann Hesse and the less­er-known Swiss mod­ernist nov­el­ist Blaise Cen­drars. And of course, we see a still from the Trop­ic of Can­cer movie and the expect­ed amount of nude pin-ups. “I put these here express­ly for the peo­ple who want to be shocked,” Miller explains.

Tom Schiller, the doc­u­men­tary’s direc­tor, made his name cre­at­ing short films for Sat­ur­day Night Live. Obscu­ri­ty-ori­ent­ed cinephiles may know him best as the direc­tor of Noth­ing Lasts For­ev­er, a 1984 com­e­dy fea­tur­ing Bill Mur­ray and Dan Aykroyd that, to this day, lan­guish­es some­where in Warn­er Broth­ers’ legal depart­ment. Schiller received this guid­ed tour of Miller’s bath­room — and, by exten­sion, his mem­o­ry — in 1975, when the author had reached his 82nd year and fifth mar­riage; his wife, Hiroko “Hoki” Toku­da, appears in one of the wal­l’s pho­tographs. He also points out a blown-up cov­er of a favorite Junichi­ro Taniza­ki nov­el, a scrap of Chi­nese text for which every Chi­nese vis­i­tor has a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent trans­la­tion, an image of a leg­en­dar­i­ly randy Bud­dhist monk, dra­mat­ic por­traits of Chi­nese actress­es and Japan­ese bar girls, and — in the absence of reli­gious iconog­ra­phy of any oth­er kind — count­less rep­re­sen­ta­tions of the Bud­dha. And if you’d like to see some­thing else from Asia pre­sent­ed in an espe­cial­ly Milleresque spir­it, don’t miss when Schiller’s cam­era turns toward the show­er. Just make sure you’re not watch­ing at work. Seri­ous­ly.

The films has been added to our big col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online. Look under Doc­u­men­tary.

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

Filmmaker James Cameron Going 36,000 Feet Under the Sea

in Film, Science | March 23rd, 2012

This week, film­mak­er James Cameron (Titan­ic, Avatar, The Abyss) hopes to go where only two men have gone before, div­ing 36,000 feet beneath the sea, to the Mar­i­ana Trench, the deep­est known place on Earth. It’s basi­cal­ly Mount Ever­est in the inverse. Cameron plans to make the his­toric solo jour­ney in The Deepsea Chal­lenger, a 24-foot-long ver­ti­cal tor­pe­do, built secret­ly in Aus­tralia over the last year eight years. (More on that here.) And when he reach­es his des­ti­na­tion, he’ll spend six hours shoot­ing 3‑D video of the trench and col­lect­ing rocks and rare sea crea­tures with a robot­ic arm. Or so that’s the plan.

Above, James Cameron describes his mis­sion in a Nation­al Geo­graph­ic video. Below, you’ll find an ani­ma­tion of the Mar­i­ana Trench dive cre­at­ed by The Nation­al Ocean­ic and Atmos­pher­ic Admin­is­tra­tion (NOAA). You can track Cameron’s voy­age on the Nat­Geo web­site and find a detailed descrip­tion of the actu­al dive right here.

Terry Gilliam’s Debut Animated Film, Storytime

in Animation, Comedy, Film | March 22nd, 2012

Ter­ry Gilliam’s fun­ny debut film, Sto­ry­time, fea­tures three ear­ly exam­ples of the Mon­ty Python ani­ma­tor’s twist­ed take on life. The film is usu­al­ly dat­ed 1968, but accord­ing to some sources it was actu­al­ly put togeth­er sev­er­al years lat­er. The clos­ing seg­ment, “A Christ­mas Card,” was cre­at­ed in late 1968 for a spe­cial Christ­mas-day broad­cast of the chil­dren’s pro­gram Do Not Adjust Your Set, but the oth­er two seg­ments– “Don the Cock­roach” and “The Albert Ein­stein Story”–were broad­cast on the 1971–1972 British and Amer­i­can pro­gram The Mar­ty Feld­man Com­e­dy Machine, which fea­tured Gilliam’s Pythonesque ani­ma­tion sequences at the begin­ning and end of each show. What­ev­er the date of pro­duc­tion, Sto­ry­time (now added to our col­lec­tion of 675 Free Movies Online in the Ani­ma­tion Sec­tion) is an engag­ing stream-of-con­scious­ness jour­ney through Gilliam’s delight­ful­ly absurd imag­i­na­tion. If you’re a Ter­ry Gilliam fan, don’t miss these oth­er relat­ed items:

Ter­ry Gilliam Shows You How to Make Your Own Cutout Ani­ma­tion

Ter­ry Gilliam: The Dif­fer­ence Between Kubrick (Great Film­mak­er) and Spiel­berg (Less So)

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!

Cinema History by Titles & Numbers

in Animation, Art, Film | March 22nd, 2012

Between the sim­ple card open­ing D.W. Grif­fith’s 1916 Intol­er­ance to the vibrat­ing neon first onslaught of Gas­par Noé’s 2009 Enter the Void, Ian Albinson’s A Brief His­to­ry of Title Design packs in count­less icon­ic, rep­re­sen­ta­tive, and oth­er­wise fas­ci­nat­ing exam­ples of words that pre­cede movies. As Edi­tor-in-Chief of the blog Art of the Title, Albinson dis­tin­guish­es him­self as just the per­son you’d want to cut togeth­er a video like this. His selec­tions move through the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry from The Phan­tom of the Opera, King Kong, and Cit­i­zen Kane, whose stark state­li­ness now brings to mind the very archi­tec­ture of the old movie palaces where they debuted, to the delib­er­ate, tex­tur­al phys­i­cal­i­ty of The Trea­sure of Sier­ra Madre and Lady in the Lake. Then comes the late-fifties/ear­ly-six­ties mod­ernist cool of The Man With the Gold­en Arm and Dr. No, fol­lowed by Dr. Strangelove and Bul­litt, both of which show­case the work of Pablo Fer­ro — a liv­ing chap­ter of title design his­to­ry in his own right. After the bold intro­duc­tions to the block­busters of the sev­en­ties and eight­ies — Star Wars, Sat­ur­day Night Fever, Alien, The Ter­mi­na­tor — but before the fresh­ly extrav­a­gant design work of the cur­rent cen­tu­ry, we find a few intrigu­ing­ly mar­gin­al films of the nineties. How many reg­u­lar cinephiles retain fond mem­o­ries of Freaked, Mim­ic, and The Island of Dr. More­au I don’t know, but clear­ly those pic­tures sit near and dear to the hearts of title enthu­si­asts.

An elab­o­rate work of motion graph­ics in its own right, Evan Seitz’s 123Films takes the titles of four­teen films — not their title sequences, but their actu­al titles — and ani­mates them in numer­i­cal order. If that does­n’t make sense, spend thir­ty sec­onds watch­ing it, and make sure you’re lis­ten­ing. Does­n’t that calm­ly malev­o­lent com­put­er voice sound famil­iar? Does the col­or scheme of that “4” look famil­iar, espe­cial­ly if you read a lot of com­ic books as a kid? And cer­tain­ly you’ll remem­ber which of the sens­es it takes to see dead peo­ple. This video comes as the fol­low-up to Seitz’s ABCin­e­ma, a sim­i­lar movie guess­ing game pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured on Open Cul­ture. Where that one got you think­ing about film alpha­bet­i­cal­ly, this one will get you think­ing about it numer­i­cal­ly.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Brief Visu­al Intro­duc­tion to Saul Bass’ Cel­e­brat­ed Title Designs

450 Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, etc.

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

Tour the Amazon with Google Street View; No Passport Needed

in Google, Travel | March 22nd, 2012

Google Street View launched in 2007, giv­ing web users the abil­i­ty to tour neigh­bor­hoods with a series of 360° panoram­ic maps. The tech­nol­o­gy seemed pret­ty straight­for­ward … until peo­ple real­ized that it was­n’t. Since ‘07, techies have fig­ured out some cool and unex­pect­ed uses for the soft­ware, and Google began using it to offer vir­tu­al tours of famous his­tor­i­cal sites (Pom­peii, Stone­henge and Ver­sailles) and then inter­na­tion­al muse­ums, rang­ing from the MoMA and Met in New York City, to the Uffizi Gallery in Flo­rence, and the Van Gogh Muse­um in Ams­ter­dam. (More on that here.) And now they’re push­ing the lim­its of the tech­nol­o­gy just a bit fur­ther.

Yes­ter­day Google announced that Street View will let you expe­ri­ence the beau­ty and diver­si­ty of the Ama­zon basin. Once you enter Street View’s Ama­zon tour, you can:

Take a vir­tu­al boat ride down the main sec­tion of the Rio Negro, and float up into the small­er trib­u­taries where the for­est is flood­ed. Stroll along the paths of Tumbi­ra, the largest com­mu­ni­ty in the Reserve, or vis­it some of the oth­er com­mu­ni­ties who invit­ed us to share their lives and cul­tures. Enjoy a hike along an Ama­zon for­est trail and see where Brazil nuts are har­vest­ed. You can even see a for­est crit­ter if you look hard enough!

The video above explains how the project got start­ed and how the images were gath­ered, while also offer­ing a quick demo of the online expe­ri­ence. You can start your voy­age to the Ama­zon here, or head to Google’s blog to learn more about this project cre­at­ed in part­ner­ship with the Ama­zonas Sus­tain­able Foun­da­tion (FAS).

Note: Are you a writer inter­est­ed in edu­ca­tion­al tech­nol­o­gy and open edu­ca­tion­al resources? And, do you want to write for Open Cul­ture? Then drop us a line.

Michael Pollan’s Book, Food Rules, Brought to Life with Animation

in Animation, Books | March 21st, 2012

If you’ve lis­tened to the past decade’s con­ver­sa­tions about food, you’ll have noticed that eat­ing, always a pur­suit, has sud­den­ly become a sub­ject as well. One flank of this move­ment of enthu­si­asts has tak­en up Michael Pol­lan, a pro­fes­sor at UC Berke­ley’s jour­nal­ism school, as its lead­ing light. Whether they agree or dis­agree with his prin­ci­ples, intel­lec­tu­al­ly engaged eaters who don’t have at least a basic famil­iar­i­ty with Pol­lan’s books such as The Omni­vore’s Dilem­ma and In Defense of Food can hard­ly con­sid­er them­selves con­ver­sant in the food ques­tions and con­tro­ver­sies of the day.

Both Pol­lan’s poten­tial boost­ers and detrac­tors alike can get them­selves up to speed with his lat­est vol­ume, Food Rules: An Eater’s Man­u­al, which boils down his culi­nary weltan­schau­ung into a series of sim­ple sen­tences, includ­ing “Eat foods made from ingre­di­ents that you can pic­ture in their raw state or grow­ing in nature,” “Pay more, eat less,” and, “The whiter the bread, the soon­er you’ll be dead.” Pol­lan also takes posi­tions on entire­ly gnarli­er issues, such as the effi­cien­cy (or lack there­of) of agribusi­ness, and that’s when ani­ma­tors like Mar­i­ja Jaci­movic and Benoit Detalle pro­vide their enliven­ing ser­vices. In the two-minute video above, Jaci­movic and Detalle use pieces of actu­al food to illus­trate Pol­lan’s cri­tique of large-scale food pro­duc­tion.

Man Flies Like a Bird in The Hague

in Random, Technology | March 21st, 2012

First a Robot Flies Like a Bird. Then Humans Fly with the Birds. Now Man Flies Like a Bird with Cus­tom-Made Wings. It’s the third part of our unplanned tril­o­gy. Accord­ing to Wired, Dutch engi­neer Jarno Smeets took flight using “using videogame con­trollers, an Android phone and cus­tom-built wings,” and it all hap­pened this past week­end at a park in The Hague. There’s appar­ent­ly some spec­u­la­tion about the authen­tic­i­ty of the video. But Wired seems to think it will hold up. And, no mat­ter what, we’re inclined to sus­pend dis­be­lief and just enjoy this lit­tle moment.

Note: Are you a writer inter­est­ed in edu­ca­tion­al tech­nol­o­gy and open edu­ca­tion­al resources? And, do you want to write for Open Cul­ture? Then drop us a line.

Astronaut Films Auroras from Above

in Astronomy, Science, Video - Science | March 20th, 2012

As the sun’s 11-year cycle of mag­net­ic storms moves clos­er to peak inten­si­ty some­time ear­ly next year, peo­ple who live at high­er lat­i­tudes can expect to see col­or­ful auro­ras light­ing up the night sky. But what would it be like to look down at the auro­ras, or to move through them? In these strik­ing images from NASA, we find out. Astro­naut Don Pet­tit has been orbit­ing the Earth since Decem­ber, as a Flight Engi­neer for Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion Expe­di­tion 30, and while up there he’s been tak­ing advan­tage of the increased solar activ­i­ty by film­ing some of the fire­works in the Earth­’s mag­ne­tos­phere. “We can actu­al­ly fly into the auro­ras,” Pet­tit says in this NASA Sci­ence­Cast. “It’s like being shrunk down and put inside of a neon sign.” To learn more, you can read the arti­cle at NASA Sci­ence News, and to watch oth­er episodes in the series, vis­it the Sci­ence­Casts home page. Find more excel­lent clips in our col­lec­tion of Great Sci­ence Videos.

Fact Checking Bill Murray: A Short, Comic Film from Sundance 2008

in Comedy, Film | March 20th, 2012

Bill Mur­ray, sure­ly both Amer­i­ca’s most and least approach­able movie star, seems for almost every­thing yet unavail­able for almost any­thing. Rarely grant­i­ng inter­views, lim­it­ing him­self (most­ly) to roles he actu­al­ly cares about, and famous­ly work­ing with­out an agent, he tends to pop up in places you would­n’t expect him to. Well, aside from Wes Ander­son films, where he’s remained a con­sis­tent pres­ence since 1998’s Rush­more — but remem­ber how star­tling it felt to see the star of Ground­hog Day turn up in such a rel­a­tive­ly small-scale, low-con­cept, gen­re­less pro­duc­tion in the first place? More recent­ly, his extend­ed cameo in Ruben Fleis­cher’s Zom­bieland has become, in the full­ness of time, that pic­ture’s very rai­son d’être. Not long before that, he appeared in a selec­tion at the 2008 Sun­dance Film Fes­ti­val: it was­n’t the lat­est fea­ture from a Wes Ander­son or a Sofia Cop­po­la or a Jim Jar­musch, and in fact not a fea­ture at all, but Peter Kari­nen and Bri­an Sac­ca’s short FCU: Fact Check­ers Unit.

Kari­nen and Sac­ca star as two low­ly fact-check­ers at Dic­tum, a pub­li­ca­tion solid­ly in the tra­di­tion the Unit­ed King­dom calls “lads’ mags.” (“SEX WORK OUTS,” insists one cov­er blurb.) Faced with a draft of an arti­cle on celebri­ty sleep­ing tips that rec­om­mends drink­ing a glass of warm milk before bed, “like Bill Mur­ray,” the fel­lows kneel before a shrine to Alex Tre­bek — their per­son­al god of facts — don their Fact Check­ers Unit wind­break­ers, and go look­ing for Mur­ray’s house. Sens­ing their stum­bling pres­ence, Mur­ray finds our heroes hud­dled in the bath­tub almost imme­di­ate­ly after they’ve bro­ken in. True to his rep­u­ta­tion, Mur­ray has not been easy to find, but true to his pub­lic per­sona, he proves placid­ly will­ing and able to hang out when found. After an evening of M*A*S*H, mar­ti­nis, check­ers, and lounge singing, the FCU boys dis­cov­er the truth about Bill Mur­ray and milk. I won’t, er, spoil it.

I can’t help but admire this cast­ing coup; Kari­nen and Sac­ca must have gone through just as much has­sle as the FCU did to find Bill Mur­ray. (That, or they hap­pened to know him through some coin­ci­den­tal con­nec­tion none of us could ever repli­cate.) Even more impres­sive, in its way, is how they seem­ing­ly craft­ed the struc­ture of FCU: Fact Check­ers Unit to accom­mo­date whichev­er hard-to-come-by celebri­ty they could have man­aged to come by. Per­haps a big­ger fan than I knows of some deep, long-estab­lished con­nec­tions between Bill Mur­ray, lad’s mags, M*A*S*H, and warm milk, but noth­ing stops me from imag­in­ing the Kevin Spacey ver­sion. In fact, I’d like to see the Kevin Spacey ver­sion. Insert a new celebri­ty each week while hold­ing all else equal, and the con­cept could become an avant-garde web series.

You can find this film list­ed in our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

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