I Think, Therefore...

iTunes U is a good thing, but it is not the be-all and end-all of free, online, university-level lectures.

MIT offers Open Courseware, "free lecture notes, exams and videos" from MIT professors. Not all listed courses offer usable materials--many are just syllabi or reading lists; however, some provide lectures notes, audio lectures or more. Each listing shows icons of what content the course makes available, which is useful.

TechCrunch calls Academic Earth the "Hulu for education," and they're not wrong. Providing video content on topics ranging from literary history to astrophysics to politics, Academic Earth's site is searchable by topic, university or professor.

Moreover, the content comes from top-notch universities: Harvard, Yale, Stanford and Berkeley, just to name a few. Here's a selection from a series of lectures by Michael Sandel on "Justice: What's the Right Thing To Do?"

Watch it on Academic Earth

The Physics Behind Figure Skating

Talk about teachable moments! NBC and the Science Foundation collaborated on this series of 10 videos exploring the science behind, for example, snow-boarding and figure skating, just to name a few, as a tie-in with the upcoming Winter Olympics.

Click the "watch video" link in the lower right-hand corner.

On Beakers and Bunson Burners

If you haven't informed your Science Dept. about National Lab Day, do it now! Even Thomas Friedman is on board.



Sponsored by several leading scientifically-based organizations,such as the National Science Foundation, NLD links up science classrooms with local professionals in an effort to improve the quality of labs and scientific inquiry in schools, whether through direct participating or help with resource funding.

Teachers create a project/lab, and the site helps connect them with scientists, engineers, university students or other professionals in a collaborative effort.

Now as an English major/teacher, don't get me started on the whole privileging of science over the arts thing, but any program that promotes students' creative thinking and analytical abilities--along with intellectual curiosity--has my 100% support.

I've passed this along to my own Science Dept., and will certainly be gently nudging them to participate.

Now Moderating Comments

Sorry about that! I've gone for a couple of years without getting spam comments, but it seems to be happening frequently now, sooo.... I thought of just re-instating the Captcha thing, but that's very annoying for you, dear reader; thus, I shall just preview before posting them.

EBSCO and the 19th Century

EBSCO is neolithic. Oh, sure it's all high tech and database-y, but its aggressive policies reek of imperialism and monopolies. In this day of open source and creative commons, its outdated.

What fomented such a rant on my usually benign blog? An email I received from Gale (who, granted, have a stake in this) described a bidding war they've been having with EBSCO over Time, Inc. and Forbes content.

Gale's bid allowed for other services to carry the content in a spirit of equal access. EBSCO's much-higher bid included rights as sole provider, which offends my democratic, openly-sourced soul to the core. Guess who won?

I blame Time and Forbes as much as EBSCO. These are not some obscure, highly specialized journals, but popular periodicals for the mass market. Limiting them to the often exorbitantly expensive EBSCO narrows public access prodigiously. While Gale is equally expensive, their bid (which they excerpted here) allows other, possibly cheaper, companies to also carry the content.

I used to think this was a problem limited to academic libraries: having to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to access specialized content not available elsewhere. Apparently corporate greed is seeping down the food chain.

This seems like a virtual hi-jacking; it forces libraries to purchase EBSCO databases if they want to provide basic content to their patrons. Moreover, who do you think will really pay the artificially high price EBSCO forked out for the periodicals? It's going to be passed on to us, of course.

If you'd like to add your voice to the protest, you can join the Facebook group "Librarians for Fair Access to Content" (started by Gale, and I'm not sure what joining a Facebook group will do, but I'll pass along the info!). Or we can start a flood of Tweets.

You can email EBSCO or call Time, Inc. at 212.522.1212. (I can't seem to find a non-subscription email address).

Come the revolution, brother!

ISTE SIMGS: Keeping You Technologically Current!

Well, maybe that's an overstatement. But the SIGMS group in ISTE (Special Interest Group: Media Specialists) just started a newsletter to feature tech articles and issues. You can access the first issue here. Yours truly has an article on book trailers.

MUN: Research Handout

I'm working on upgrading all my forms for Model UN to make them more visually enticing. This one works well for guiding students' issue research.

Know Your Issue