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.

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Ian McKellen Stars in King Lear

in Film, Literature, Theatre | June 7th, 2009

Thanks to PBS, you can watch online Ian McK­ellen star­ring in King Lear, one of Shake­se­peare’s finest tragedies. McK­ellen per­formed the play first in Eng­land (2007), then on a world­wide tour, before film­ing the pro­duc­tion for pub­lic tele­vi­sion. You can watch it all right here, and if you want to fol­low the orig­i­nal text, you can get it from MIT’s Shake­speare web site, which hous­es Shake­speare’s com­plete works online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Did Shake­speare Real­ly Look Like?

Goethe and Shake­speare on Google

Shake­speare and the Uses of Polit­i­cal Pow­er

via Metafil­ter

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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.

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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).

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David Carradine: Rewind the Videotape

in Television | June 4th, 2009

As many may now know, David Car­ra­dine was found dead this morn­ing in Thai­land. Above, we fea­ture him act­ing in the pop­u­lar 1970’s tele­vi­sion series Kung Fu. “In this clip from the pilot episode of Kung Fu, Caine (David Car­ra­dine) is dis­cussing life with a fel­low expa­tri­ate. Their dis­cus­sion touch­es on the uni­ty of oppo­sites, which is sym­bol­ised in Tao­ism as the yin-yang. The yin-yang is the most impor­tant con­cept in Tao­ism.” The Guardian has also assem­bled a nice col­lec­tion of clips trac­ing Car­radine’s act­ing career. Find it here.

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Is Gay the New Black?

in Current Affairs | June 3rd, 2009

Michael Eric Dyson, the George­town soci­ol­o­gy pro­fes­sor and pub­lic intel­lec­tu­al, talks here about how civ­il rights move­ments have his­tor­i­cal­ly built upon one oth­er. MLK took pieces from Gand­hi, and the gay rights move­ment is now draw­ing on the black civ­il rights move­ment of the 60s. The clip runs about 7 min­utes, and you can watch the full video here. You can also watch anoth­er Dyson speech, “No Dreams Deferred?: Black Aspi­ra­tions from Mar­tin Luther King Jr. to Jay‑Z.”

via The Huff­in­g­ton Post

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TED To China: An Inside View

in Language Lessons, Media, TED Talks | June 1st, 2009

Today, we’re fea­tur­ing a guest piece by Tony Yet, a Chi­nese stu­dent, who is help­ing lead an effort to bring TEDTalks to Chi­na. This is part of a larg­er TED Open Trans­la­tion Project, which wants to move  TEDTalks “beyond the Eng­lish-speak­ing world by offer­ing sub­ti­tles, time-cod­ed tran­scripts and the abil­i­ty for any talk to be trans­lat­ed by vol­un­teers world­wide.” Tony speaks very elo­quent­ly about how he got involved with this project and what he hopes to achieve, and how the con­nec­tions between East and West can hope­ful­ly become clos­er. Take it away Tony and check out his web site TED­toChi­na…

I have been watch­ing TEDTalks for near­ly three years. I orig­i­nal­ly found them by serendip­i­ty on iTunes. The very first few talks (notably from Al Gore, David Pogue and Sir Ken Robin­son) grabbed me like a mag­net, and I could­n’t resist watch­ing them again and again. There were quite a few sen­tences and phras­es in each of these talks that fell on a deaf ear for me, as I could­n’t quite under­stand some slang Eng­lish. I worked with the TED videos at home with a com­put­er and a note­book. And yes, I’ve got to admit that I am tak­ing each TED screen­ing as a valu­able learn­ing expe­ri­ence, and they did help me in broad­en­ing my hori­zons and enrich­ing my under­stand­ing of the world.

Then, in the sum­mer of 2008, I decid­ed that mere­ly watch­ing was not enough, at least not enough in com­ing to a full under­stand­ing of the talks, as many of the mean­ings are hid­den in the seman­tics. Thus I embarked upon a project to trans­late TEDTalks into Chi­nese. I start­ed with some famil­iar ones, like Erin McK­ean’s talk on redefin­ing dic­tio­nar­ies, and Alex Stef­fen’s talk on a bright green future. It proved to be a mind-enrich­ing expe­ri­ence. Before mak­ing any attempt to trans­late a talk, I would probe into the depth of the back­ground of the speak­er and rel­e­vant con­cepts and ideas. This was a great learn­ing process. It helped me build up a clear pic­ture of the talk and its sig­nif­i­cance, and also reshape my under­stand­ing of many ideas across the whole spec­trum of arts and sci­ence.

As I was push­ing for­ward with my endeav­or, I found that it would be bet­ter if we can have more peo­ple join­ing in this joy­ful jour­ney of intel­lec­tu­al min­ing through trans­la­tion. So I post­ed the mes­sage on a com­mu­ni­ty web­site for trans­la­tors. Then it start­ed to get kicked off. Peo­ple jumped in the boat and offered help. It was a most grat­i­fy­ing expe­ri­ence to know that your efforts in spread­ing the idea of TED gen­er­at­ed so much ener­gy and so rich a wel­com­ing response. (more…)

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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

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.