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Tag: "university"

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By Erich Vieth on October 24th, 2009

College classes free, for anyone

If you’d like to attend college classes over the Internet at a wide variety of prestigious colleges, consider visiting Academic Earth. According to the about page,

We are building a user-friendly educational ecosystem that will give internet users around the world the ability to easily find, interact with, and learn from full video courses and lectures from the world’s leading scholars. Our goal is to bring the best content together in one place and create an environment in which that content is remarkably easy to use and where user contributions make existing content increasingly valuable.

The participating universities include Berkeley, Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford, UCLA, and Yale. I just finished watching an informative lecture on “The Origins of the Financial Mess.” I’m wondering what I’m going to view next. Maybe I’ll watch some more of Shelly Kagan’s 26-part series on the topic of “Death.”

Education • Featured • Internet
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By Erich Vieth on September 17th, 2009

New edition of Darwin’s Origin with a Creationist Intro

While watching this video, try counting Kirk Cameron’s lies. Just incredible. What does it tell you when someone is so utterly insecure about his own arguments that he lies about his opponent’s positions?

Richard Dawkins has a post on this new wacko edition of Darwin’s Origin, and a suggestion that concerned citizens go pick one up and chop out and throw away the 50-page intro.

Evolution • Religion
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A required course is worse than an elective.
By Erika Price on February 19th, 2009

A required course is worse than an elective.

I wrote the initial draft of this post using my Ipod’s Wordpress application, tip-tapping away as I sat in the very class that inspired it.

A required class is worse than an elective class. A simple and inevitable process ensures this. Making any college course a requirement for graduation ensures that more students will enroll in the course. This enrollment will necessarily include disinterested students- kids who would never take the class if they didn’t have to. These students will only meet the minimum standards to achieve graduation.

A mass of disinterested students sucks the life out of a classroom. Responses must be pulled like so many teeth, and more people sleep and scribble on their desks than take notes. Out of boredom, a few play games on their laptops or write blog entries on their iPods. No one makes the effort to go over the required readings. No one shows up to class if they have a choice. Usually, attendance is made into a requirement itself.

American Culture • Communication • Education • Featured • History • Science • Uncategorized • Whimsy
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By Erich Vieth on January 09th, 2009

Would you like to go to college for free?

Would you like to get smart cheaply?   You can now “attend: selected courses at prestigious college courses for free, while sitting at your computer.    The participating universities include MIT, Yale, McGill and UC-Berkeley.  This is a great opportunity if you’d like to get serious about the topics of the selected courses.   The participating colleges videotaped [...]

Education
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By Erich Vieth on August 22nd, 2008

It takes conflict among colleges to make education interesting to the media

If the media really wanted to know about the kind of education offered by America’s colleges, they could visit any of hundreds of fine colleges hundreds of days each year. It’s a rare day, however, when any corporate media outlet takes interest in education of any sort. Unless, of course, the media itself concocts [...]

Education • Media
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By Erich Vieth on May 01st, 2008

How dangerous plastics freely work their way into your house

I was in a bad mood after I wrote a post summarizing a recent Harpers Magazine article demonstrating that the United States government is working hard to keep its citizens from knowing whether numerous commonly used chemicals are dangerous.
After all, our government is supposed to be there to protect us yet it appears that our [...]

Consumerism • Environment • Food • Health • Medicine • Science • snake oil
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By Artemis on February 15th, 2008

Terrorism Begins At Home (or “Kill or Be Killed!”)

Is anyone else struck by the irony that Homeland Security so often erodes First Amendment rights? Homeland Security has become obsessed about listening to personal phone calls and seizing people’s cell phones and laptops when they travel.  Ironically, there is no security for the victims of gunmen who shoot up college campuses and city council [...]

Good and Evil • Politics • law and order
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