Sedaris Reads “Solution to Saturday’s Puzzle”

in Audio Books, Comedy | June 14th, 2009

Not long ago, we fea­tured David Sedaris read­ing “Of Mice and Men,” a com­ic bit from his newish book, When You are Engulfed in Flames. Now, we give you anoth­er fun­ny (also live) read­ing from the same book. The sto­ry is called “Solu­tion to Sat­ur­day’s Puz­zle,” and you can get it as an mp3 here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Sedaris Deliv­ers a Piz­za (an Imper­son­ation)

Our Earth Captured in Wide Angle

in Current Affairs, Film | June 11th, 2009

Here we have Yann Arthus-Bertrand talk­ing at the TED Con­fer­ence and dis­play­ing his recent pho­to­graph­ic and cin­e­mato­graph­ic work that focus­es on human­i­ty and our habi­tat. The work is as visu­al­ly stun­ning as the sto­ry it tells is dis­heart­en­ing. Def­i­nite­ly worth giv­ing this one some time. We’ll be fol­low­ing up lat­er today with some more media from Arthus-Bertrand. Stay tuned for more.

6 Lessons One Campus Learned About E‑Textbooks

in Amazon Kindle, e-books, Education | June 11th, 2009

A quick heads up: Jeff Young has an infor­ma­tive piece in The Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion on what hap­pened when one uni­ver­si­ty deliv­ered all text­books to stu­dents elec­tron­i­cal­ly. It’s def­i­nite­ly worth a read. Mean­while, on a relat­ed note, Walt Moss­berg, the Wall Street Jour­nal’s tech guru, does­n’t like the new Kin­dle DX very much. Ama­zon designed the super­sized e‑book read­er (see it here) to bring porta­bil­i­ty to text­books, news­pa­pers and oth­er peri­od­i­cals. If you get one, let us know your thoughts, whether pro or con.

via Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty Press on Twit­ter (Find us on Twit­ter here)

Exploring the Spiritual Side of Tibet

in Religion, Video - Arts & Culture | June 10th, 2009

The film above takes you inside the spir­i­tu­al walls of Lhasa, Tibet’s cap­i­tal, which hosts the Pota­la Palace, “the tra­di­tion­al win­ter home of the Dalai Lama and a pil­grim­age des­ti­na­tion for thou­sands of Bud­dhists.” The video runs 9+ min­utes, and it’s one of many films pro­duced by Explore.org, a web site sup­port­ed by the Annen­berg Foun­da­tion that com­bines phil­an­thropy, trav­el, and learn­ing. Offer­ing glob­al cov­er­age, Explore.org also brings you to Africa, India, the Mid­dle East, Cos­ta Rica and beyond. You can find their full col­lec­tion of films here, and they have also been added to our col­lec­tion: Intel­li­gent Video: The Top Cul­tur­al & Edu­ca­tion­al Video Sites. Enjoy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Dalai Lama’s Intro­duc­tion to Bud­dhism

The Future of Tibet: Does It Have One?

Eighteen Challenges in Contemporary Literature

in Books, e-books | June 9th, 2009

Ear­li­er today, Seth Har­wood wrote about a new chal­lenge for writ­ers — mak­ing sure books get dis­trib­uted through as many dig­i­tal read­ing plat­forms as pos­si­ble. His think­ing dove­tails nice­ly with Wired’s list of the “Eigh­teen Chal­lenges in Con­tem­po­rary Lit­er­a­ture.” Here are some of the Wired items that mesh or flirt with what Har­wood is talk­ing about…

2. Ver­nac­u­lar means of every­day com­mu­ni­ca­tion — cell­phones, social net­works, stream­ing video — are mov­ing into areas where print­ed text can­not fol­low.

4. Means of book pro­mo­tion, dis­tri­b­u­tion and retail desta­bi­lized.

5. Ink-on-paper man­u­fac­tur­ing is an out­mod­ed, tox­ic indus­try with steeply ris­ing costs.

8. Long tail balka­nizes audi­ences, dis­rupts means of canon-build­ing and frag­ments lit­er­ary rep­u­ta­tion.

11. Bar­ri­ers to pub­li­ca­tion entry have crashed, enabling huge tor­rent of sub­lit­er­ary and/or non­lit­er­ary tex­tu­al expres­sion.

Get the full list here. Thanks to Ed Finn for giv­ing us a heads up on this list.

Writing in the Digital Age: It’s All About the Platform

in Audio Books, Books, e-books | June 8th, 2009

A cou­ple of weeks ago, crime writer Seth Har­wood wrote a very pop­u­lar piece here — How I Sold My Book by Giv­ing It Away. Now he’s back and telling us about the new chal­lenge of writ­ing in the dig­i­tal age. Take it away Seth (and check out his new book JACK WAKES UP )…

The num­ber of ebook read­ers and read­ing devices is grow­ing rather than shrink­ing these days. We’re enter­ing a world where indi­vid­ual read­ers will decide not only what books they want to read, but how they want to read them. And here there’s some­thing to think about for authors: As read­ers choose the read­ing plat­form they like best, they’ll see a cer­tain set of books in that space. Dif­fer­ent books show up at Wal-Mart than at your local inde­pen­dent book­seller. On the Kin­dle there are dif­fer­ent books—with dif­fer­ent prices—than on the iTunes App store. And even with­in the iTunes store, you’ll find dif­fer­ent books in the Audio­books sec­tion (owned by Audible.com), the Podcasts»Arts»Literature sec­tion (where many of the titles are free), and in the App store.

As an author, I want to be wher­ev­er a read­er can look. On every plat­form and every new plat­form, I want my book to be avail­able. My nov­el JACK WAKES UP start­ed out as a pod­cast (via iTunes, RSS Feed, & MP3). Peo­ple liked it. It got to print on demand, and Ama­zon sold it in print and Kin­dle for­mats. Guess what? It did pret­ty well. Now, it’s out from Three Rivers Press, a divi­sion of Ran­dom House, and read­ers can find it at all the online out­lets, as well as brick and mor­tar book­stores nationwide—both big box and indy. But that’s still miss­ing part of the mar­ket: soon more and more peo­ple will be buy­ing their books on their iPhones as Apps—both audio and text—or on Kin­dle, Scribd, eRead­er and who knows where else. All I can do is work toward mak­ing JACK WAKES UP avail­able in as many places and ways as pos­si­ble.

At the Pub­lish­ing 3.0 pan­el ses­sion dur­ing April’s LA Times Fes­ti­val of Books, the experts spoke about the prob­lem of pub­lish­ing in the 20th cen­tu­ry being demand—how do you gen­er­ate the inter­est in your book and get peo­ple to buy it—and that the new prob­lem in the 21st cen­tu­ry is sup­ply. With so many books pub­lished, many will fail. There’s lit­er­al­ly just too much, a glut of books that no one has a good idea how to fix.

The oth­er sup­ply-side issue is plat­form. As the pub­lish­ing game steams quick­ly toward dif­fer­ent plat­forms, vir­tu­al­ly unlim­it­ed choic­es for read­ers, dif­fer­ent pric­ing mod­els, read­ing expe­ri­ences, and pref­er­ences, my duty as an author now involves mak­ing sure my work is offered on as many plat­forms as pos­si­ble to ensure my book is an option for the great­est num­ber of read­ers.

Online Educational Resources in Africa

in Education | June 8th, 2009

Today, Aman­da Coolidge (British Colum­bia Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy) joins us and talks about what’s hap­pen­ing with Open Edu­ca­tion­al Resources (OER) in Africa. Down the line, she’ll be blog­ging about OER in oth­er parts of the world as well. Take it away Aman­da.

Over 500,000 Niger­ian teach­ers need teacher train­ing and you can bet this is going to be a chal­lenge. Africa is work­ing toward the UN Mil­len­ni­um goal of free edu­ca­tion for all by 2010. Still, teach­ers and stu­dents across Africa need resources in and out­side of the class­room and, like any­where else in the world, they need resources devel­oped in the con­text of their own envi­ron­ment and cul­ture.

The good news is that one of the world’s most com­pre­hen­sive open edu­ca­tion­al resource repos­i­to­ries in teacher edu­ca­tion is called “TESSA: Teacher Edu­ca­tion in Sub Saha­ran Africa”. TESSA has pro­duced a large bank of mate­ri­als direct­ly aimed at enhanc­ing and improv­ing access to, and the qual­i­ty of, local school-based edu­ca­tion and train­ing for teach­ers. These mate­ri­als (includ­ing audio and oth­er media) are mod­u­lar in for­mat. They focus on class­room prac­tice in the areas of lit­er­a­cy, numer­a­cy, sci­ence, social stud­ies and the arts, and life skills. All the mate­ri­als are avail­able through this web­site in a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent for­mats and in 5 dif­fer­ent lan­guages.

Since TESSA was launched in June 2008, the response from the Open Resource com­mu­ni­ty glob­al­ly has been grat­i­fy­ing­ly pos­i­tive.

“The TESSA mate­ri­als are eas­i­ly locat­ed in the envi­ron­ment around us with­out hav­ing to trav­el long dis­tances at high cost”
Teacher, Tan­za­nia

“per­haps the most suc­cess­ful of all the OER projects we have heard about”
Sir John Daniel, Pres­i­dent and Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer, Com­mon­wealth of Learn­ing

Aman­da Coolidge is cur­rent­ly Edu­ca­tion­al Tech­nol­o­gist at the British Colum­bia Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy (BCIT) in Van­cou­ver, BC. She was pre­vi­ous­ly with the Open Uni­ver­si­ty UK and BBC based in Kenya.

The Dalai Lama’s Introduction to Buddhism

in Philosophy, Religion | June 7th, 2009

When the Dalai Lama paid a vis­it to Emory Uni­ver­si­ty, he offered an intro­duc­to­ry lec­ture to Tibetan Bud­dhism. The lec­ture is not exact­ly what you’d nor­mal­ly get in the uni­ver­si­ty class­room. The talk is not entire­ly lin­ear. And he spends some time speak­ing in Eng­lish, then speaks in his native tongue (with the help of an inter­preter). But, he can talk about Bud­dhism with the author­i­ty that few authors can, and there’s a rea­son audi­ences come to see him in droves. Things real­ly get going about 23 min­utes in.

Harvard Studies Twitter

in Harvard | June 4th, 2009

The folks who pub­lish the Har­vard Busi­ness Review have con­duct­ed a study of Twit­ter, sur­vey­ing 300,000 Twit­ter users in May 2009 to see how peo­ple are using the ser­vice. And here are the top lev­el find­ings:

• “Although men and women fol­low a sim­i­lar num­ber of Twit­ter users, men have 15% more fol­low­ers than women.” 
• “An aver­age man is almost twice more like­ly to fol­low anoth­er man than a woman. Sim­i­lar­ly, an aver­age woman is 25% more like­ly to fol­low a man than a woman. Final­ly, an aver­age man is 40% more like­ly to be fol­lowed by anoth­er man than by a woman.”
• “Among Twit­ter users, the medi­an num­ber of life­time tweets per user is one. This trans­lates into over half of Twit­ter users tweet­ing less than once every 74 days.”
• And final­ly, “the top 10% of pro­lif­ic Twit­ter users account­ed for over 90% of tweets.”

The num­bers sug­gest that Twit­ter is not stick­ing that well. Peo­ple sign up and then most leave. That’s too bad. But it does­n’t negate the fact that Twit­ter has been a very use­ful tool for Open Cul­ture. As we’ve writ­ten here before, Twit­ter has put a human face on our audi­ence and allowed us to get to know you much bet­ter. Mean­while, we can’t say the same about Face­book (although we’re not knock­ing it.) What’s your expe­ri­ence with Twit­ter?  (PS You can find us on Twit­ter @openculture).

Is The College Bubble Next?

in Current Affairs, Education | June 1st, 2009

From The Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion:

Is it pos­si­ble that high­er edu­ca­tion might be the next bub­ble to burst? Some ear­ly warn­ings sug­gest that it could be.

With tuitions, fees, and room and board at dozens of col­leges now reach­ing $50,000 a year, the abil­i­ty to sus­tain pri­vate high­er edu­ca­tion for all but the very well-heeled is ques­tion­able. Accord­ing to the Nation­al Cen­ter for Pub­lic Pol­i­cy and High­er Edu­ca­tion, over the past 25 years, aver­age col­lege tuition and fees have risen by 440 per­cent — more than four times the rate of infla­tion and almost twice the rate of med­ical care. Patrick M. Callan, the cen­ter’s pres­i­dent, has warned that low-income stu­dents will find col­lege unaf­ford­able.

Mean­while, the mid­dle class, which has paid for high­er edu­ca­tion in the past main­ly by tak­ing out loans, may now be pre­clud­ed from doing so as the pri­vate stu­dent-loan mar­ket has all but dried up. In addi­tion, endow­ment cush­ions that allowed col­leges to engage in steep tuition dis­count­ing are gone. Declines in hous­ing val­u­a­tions are mak­ing it dif­fi­cult for fam­i­lies to rely on home-equi­ty loans for col­lege financ­ing. Even when the equi­ty is there, par­ents are reluc­tant to fur­ther lever­age them­selves into a future where job secu­ri­ty is uncer­tain.

Is this more doom and gloom­ing? Or is this some­thing to wor­ry about? Your thoughts?
via Andrew Sul­li­van’s Dai­ly Dish