A Child’s Introduction to Jazz by Cannonball Adderley (with Louis Armstrong & Thelonious Monk)

In 1961, Julian “Can­non­ball” Adder­ley, the jazz sax­o­phon­ist best known for his work on Miles Davis’ epic album Kind of Blue, nar­rat­ed a chil­dren’s intro­duc­tion to jazz music. Part of a larg­er series of edu­ca­tion­al albums for chil­dren, this 12-inch LP offered an “easy-going, con­ver­sa­tion­al dis­cus­sion of the high­lights of the jazz sto­ry,” high­light­ing the “major styles and great per­form­ers” that began in New Orleans and spread beyond. Includ­ed on the album are some leg­endary jazz fig­ures — Louis Arm­strong, Fats Waller, Jel­ly Roll Mor­ton, Duke Elling­ton, Cole­man Hawkins, Sid­ney Bechet, Thelo­nious Monk, and, of course, Can­non­ball him­self. The album, A Child’s Intro­duc­tion to Jazz, has long been out of cir­cu­la­tion. But you can catch it on YouTube, or above.

Thanks to James for telling us about this album on our Face­book page. Feel free to mes­sage us good ideas for posts at Face­book or cc: us on Twit­ter (cc: @openculture). And then there’s always old-fash­ioned email.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Thelo­nious Monk, Bill Evans and More on the Clas­sic Jazz 625 Show

1959: The Year that Changed Jazz

The Uni­ver­sal Mind of Bill Evans: Advice on Learn­ing to Play Jazz & The Cre­ative Process

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Watch the Animation of Maurice Sendak’s Surreal and Controversial Story, In the Night Kitchen

By now you’ve heard the sad news. The beloved chil­dren’s author Mau­rice Sendak died yes­ter­day at the age of 83. Of course, he’s best remem­bered for his clas­sic tale, Where the Wild Things Are (1963). But some read­ers may hold a spe­cial place in their hearts for his 1970 pic­ture book, In the Night Kitchen. It’s a sur­re­al sto­ry that was named one of the Out­stand­ing Chil­dren’s Books of 1970 by The New York Times. It’s also a sto­ry that stirred up some con­tro­ver­sy. At points in the illus­trat­ed book, the three year old pro­tag­o­nist appears naked, shock­ing some crit­ics and read­ers. These days, you’ll find the book rank­ing 25th on the Amer­i­can Library Asso­ci­a­tion’s list of the 100 Most Fre­quent­ly Chal­lenged Books of 1990–2000.

In 1980, illus­tra­tor Gene Deitch got beyond the con­tro­ver­sy and pro­duced a five minute, faith­ful adap­ta­tion of In the Night Kitchen. It appears above, and it’s now right­ful­ly added to the Ani­ma­tion sec­tion of our big col­lec­tion of 475 Free Movies Online.

Bonus Mate­r­i­al:

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Crowdsourcing Free Educational Resources for Kids: We Want Your Help

Note: Since this post was writ­ten, we have cre­at­ed a big list of resources called 200 Free K‑12 Edu­ca­tion­al Resources: Video Lessons, Mobile Apps, Web Sites, Free Books & More. Please check it out.

Call­ing all teach­ers, par­ents, home school­ers, and beyond. We’re going to enter some new ter­ri­to­ry today and start cre­at­ing a big meta col­lec­tion of free edu­ca­tion­al resources for younger stu­dents — for any­one in the K‑12 range. Of course, we all know about the Khan Acad­e­my, and they’ll be includ­ed on the list. But what oth­er great resources would you like to see men­tioned here? For exam­ple, we recent­ly point­ed you to Lit2Go’s col­lec­tion of audio­books for young­sters. In times past, we’ve told you about CK-12 and their free text­books for high school stu­dents; the Roy­al Insti­tu­tion’s Christ­mas Lec­tures for Chil­dren; and these great ani­mat­ed ver­sions of Shake­speare’s plays. If it’s an open edu­ca­tion­al resource geared toward chil­dren, we want to know about it. And we’ll pull them all togeth­er in a nice­ly orga­nized list and share them with you and oth­ers. You can tell us your favorites in the com­ments sec­tion below. Or sim­ply email us your faves here. We thank you in advance for your con­tri­bu­tions!

Image pro­vid­ed cour­tesy of Big­Stock­Pho­to

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MIT & Khan Academy Team Up to Develop Science Videos for Kids. Includes The Physics of Unicycling

Of course, the big news this week is that MIT and Har­vard announced that they’re join­ing forces to offer free online cours­es start­ing next fall. We gave you the scoop on that yes­ter­day. Now we give you anoth­er MIT announce­ment that has large­ly flown beneath the radar.

MIT is team­ing up with Khan Acad­e­my (whose founder went to MIT and will deliv­er MIT’s com­mence­ment speech this spring), and togeth­er they will pro­duce “short videos teach­ing basic con­cepts in sci­ence and engi­neer­ing” for K‑12 stu­dents. The videos will be pro­duced by MIT’s ever-so-cre­ative stu­dents them­selves and then be made avail­able through a ded­i­cat­ed MIT web­site and YouTube chan­nel. You can click the links to start watch­ing the first batch of videos, or watch an exam­ple above, The Physics of Uni­cy­cling. H/T @HKPerkinson

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Lit2Go’s 200 Free (and Teacher-Friendly) Audio Books: Ready for Downloads

A num­ber of sites offer free Mp3s of pub­lic domain books—Lib­rivox and Podi­o­books, for instance. What sets apart Lit2Go, the Uni­ver­si­ty of South Florida’s exten­sive col­lec­tion of free audio books (Web — iTunes), are the mate­ri­als to help K‑12 teach­ers present lit­er­a­ture in the class­room.

From fairy tales to The Ili­ad (Web — iTunes), Lit2Go orga­nizes more than 200 titles by author and genre (adven­ture, goth­ic, his­to­ry, sci­ence fic­tion) with clear genre descrip­tions and plot sum­maries for young read­ers. The look and feel of the site’s beta ver­sion is user-friend­ly and library-like, with type­writer fonts and illus­tra­tions mak­ing it a plea­sure to browse. There are a few small kinks to be worked out how­ev­er, so teach­ers inter­est­ed in down­load­ing sup­ple­men­tal mate­ri­als should opt for the orig­i­nal site.

Lit2Go mar­ries the old school library form (each novel’s year of pub­li­ca­tion and orig­i­nal pub­lish­er is includ­ed) with the capac­i­ty of the web (a link takes read­ers direct­ly to the iTunes store, where Lit2Go has its own sec­tion of free down­loads).

Many titles include sup­port mate­r­i­al to kick off class­room dis­cus­sion or to coach stu­dents through devel­op­ing their own char­ac­ter dia­grams. One of the site’s real assets is the way it curates titles into col­lec­tions, includ­ing African-Amer­i­can Lit­er­a­ture, Amer­i­can Founders and the intrigu­ing Hap­pi­ness Col­lec­tion where read­ers find Robert Louis Stevenson’s poem “The Swing” and Shakespeare’s heart-stop­ping scene in which Fri­ar Lau­rence mar­ries Romeo to Juli­et (Web — iTunes).

Anoth­er cura­to­r­i­al bonus: Mate­ri­als are also orga­nized by grade lev­el, using the Flesch-Kin­caid Grade Lev­el index. Teach­ers and stu­dents can also down­load each title’s full text as a PDF, to read along to the audio.

Mean­while, your can find hun­dreds of down­load­able works of lit­er­a­ture in our own meta col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books.

Kate Rix writes about k‑12 instruc­tion and high­er ed. 

Shel Silverstein Reads His Poem ‘Ickle Me, Pickle Me, Tickle Me Too’ in Animated Video

You know Shel Sil­ver­stein as the author of the beloved chil­dren’s book, The Giv­ing Tree, which he even­tu­al­ly turned into an ani­mat­ed film in 1973. Sil­ver­stein nar­rat­ed the film him­self and played the accom­pa­ny­ing har­mon­i­ca too. You can watch it online right here.

Now, almost four decades lat­er, comes anoth­er ani­mat­ed video. This time we have the voice of Sil­ver­stein (1930–1999) read­ing his poem, ‘Ick­le Me, Pick­le Me, Tick­le Me Too,’ which orig­i­nal­ly appeared in anoth­er famous col­lec­tion, Where the Side­walk Ends. The ani­ma­tion, you’ll notice right away, uses the same aes­thet­ic as the 1974 book. Hope you enjoy. And props go to Media Bistro for bring­ing it to light.

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Just How Small are Atoms? Mind Blowing TEDEd Animation Puts It All Into Perspective

In this new video from TED Edu­ca­tion, teacher and author Jonathan Bergmann uses col­or­ful analo­gies to help us visu­al­ize the scale of the atom and its nucle­us. Bergmann is a pio­neer of the “Flipped Class­room” teach­ing method, which inverts the tra­di­tion­al edu­ca­tion­al mod­el of class­room lec­tures fol­lowed by home­work. In a flipped class­room there are no lec­tures. Instead, teach­ers assign video lessons like the one above as home­work, and devote their class­room time to help­ing stu­dents work their way through prob­lems. To learn more about the flipped class­room method you can read a recent arti­cle co-authored by Bergmann in The Dai­ly Riff. And to see more TED Edu­ca­tion videos, which come with quizzes and  oth­er sup­ple­men­tary teach­ing mate­ri­als, vis­it the TED­Ed YouTube chan­nel.

PS Find 31 Free Physics Cours­es in our Col­lec­tion of 450 Free Cours­es Online. They’re all from top uni­ver­si­ties — MIT, Stan­ford, Yale and the rest.

via Boing­Bo­ing

Animated Plays by William Shakespeare: Macbeth, Othello and Other Great Tales Brought to Life


Yes­ter­day we gave you a fine BBC adap­ta­tion of Ham­let star­ring David Ten­nant (Doc­tor Who), not real­iz­ing that it hap­pened to be Shake­speare’s death­day — the day when the Bard died in 1616. The pass­ing of that anniver­sary calls for some­thing a lit­tle spe­cial. So, here we have it: The Ani­mat­ed Shake­speare.

Aired between 1992 and 1994 on the BBC and HBO, The Ani­mat­ed Shake­speare brings to life 12 famous Shake­speare plays. Leon Garfield, a well-known British chil­dren’s author, wrote the scripts, main­ly using Shake­spear­i­an lan­guage. And some tal­ent­ed Russ­ian artists did the ani­ma­tion. Above, we give you the ani­mat­ed Mac­beth.

Below you will find com­pan­ion ver­sions of Julius Cae­sar and Romeo & Juli­et, plus links to nine oth­er plays. The full set can be pur­chased on DVD in high­er res­o­lu­tion right here.

Oth­er Plays:

  • Julius Cae­sar — Watch
  • A Mid­sum­mer Night’s DreamWatch
  • Ham­let - Watch
  • King Richard III - Watch
  • Oth­el­loWatch
  • The Tem­pest - Watch

 

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.