Archive for the ‘Audio/Video’ Category

We’ve previously looked at some good online sources for free documentaries. This google page (mygod! somebody used one!) is a good interface for browsing 589 videos organized by topic and subtopic: eg, Health> Drugs> LSD: The Beyond Within. I’m constantly impressed by all the good documentaries online…and endlessly amazed that they aren’t taken down for copyright violation. But best to just innocently enjoy them and applaud the efforts to make them easier to find.

Listening to words is probably the most comprehensive and usable source for free online lectures. With 1366 lectures listed in dozens of topics, you’re sure to find something that strikes your fancy. It’s great to have all these materials in one place and even greater that they’re so well organize. Want only mp3s? You have the option. Looking for video? You got it. Sort by university or author. Look for tags you like. Browse popular to see the best lectures. By signing up you can also create playlists and favorites to come back later. Listening to Words is a great, timesaving tool in the jungle of online lectures.

Not much educational value to this, but if you need a study break try bmovies.com for a wide selection of free, streaming kung fu, horror, western and sci-fi classics.

Just added is one of my favorites - early Peter Jackson’s “Bad Taste“. Do you find people falling off cliffs and stuffing their brains back in their skulls while birds peck at them entertaining? If so, then this is a movie for you!

Avi sends me this recent Lifehacker post on lesser known .edu sites with good, free materials. While you guys probably know many of these there are some good picks to try out. For instance, the listed art history resources are very useful - especially the “mother of all links” page from the University of Michigan. Among the science listings, the most fun is the virtual microscope, letting you see 90 samples up close. Visit the original post for the selection of space, history, photography links and more.

Also, since we’ve been talking about good documentaries on Google Video, here’s a top 10 list from Dmitri (the Best Video blogger).

The University of Wisconsin has 27 explicit (but educational!) human dissection videos online. I can’t really believe this is freely available on the internet, but…then again…where else would you find it? Crazy stuff.

Here’s a great site for history afficianados. In addition to a comprehensive listing of history shows, the site also links to individual episodes on great people. For instance, if you’re interested in Winston Churchill, you’ll find a list of episodes from British History 101, Hardcore History, Speaking of History, etc.

Lots of good documentaries find themselves posted on Google Video - the neglected older child of the “non-evil” conglomerate. Dmitry Davydov has collected some of his favourites on his Best Free Docs blog, such as the BBC’s Dangerous Mind documentary (above) on four brilliant mathematicians whose discoveries drove them insane. Also check out this guy’s great collection.

Here’s a new webpage from Jon Bischke at learn out loud. 10 Things TV is another step towards educational YouTube-esque videos. While some sites are doing this - notably VideoJug, Expert Village and SuTree - there is still a long way to go. Jon’s got the right idea on focusing in on language learners. Right now only Spanish videos are available but more are to come. Keep track of this site.

If you are a Spanish learner, all see some of these two podcasts discussed over on the Stingy Scholar.

The New York Times carries this depressing description of access in Africa:

Attempts to bring affordable high-speed Internet service to the masses have made little headway on the continent. Less than 4 percent of Africa’s population is connected to the Web; most subscribers are in North African countries and the republic of South Africa. A lack of infrastructure is the biggest problem. In many countries, communications networks were destroyed during years of civil conflict, and continuing political instability deters governments or companies from investing in new systems. E-mail messages and phone calls sent from some African countries have to be routed through Britain, or even the United States, increasing expenses and delivery times. About 75 percent of African Internet traffic is routed this way and costs African countries billions of extra dollars each year that they would not incur if their infrastructure was up to speed.

So while educational video is clearly an attractive option for many in developed regions, it is going to have limited impact in these conditions.

New from Pew, a report on online video access in America. Here’s the headline:

Online video now reaches a mainstream audience; 57% of online adults have used the internet to watch or download video, and 19% do so on a typical day.

The growing adoption of broadband combined with a dramatic push by content providers to promote online video has helped to pave the way for mainstream audiences to embrace online video viewing. The majority of adult internet users in the U.S. (57%) report watching or downloading some type of online video content and 19% do so on a typical day.

• Three-quarters of broadband users (74%) who enjoy high-speed connections at both home and work watch or download video online.
• Looking separately at those who have access to a high-speed connection at home, 66% report online video consumption, compared with 39% of home dial-up users.
• Yet, some online video viewers who have dial-up at home are able to supplement their access with broadband connections at work. Among those who are truly relegated to slow connections at home and work, just 31% say they have watched or downloaded video online.

Video is among the most popular forms of open educational materials, and buried in the report is the stat that 22% of adult internet users in the US have accessed educational video. That’s higher than I would have imagined and demonstrates the demand for educational content.

The Columbia University Libraries news site is reporting that Google has awarded Columbia University Digital Knowledge Ventures (DKV) a $50,450 grant to support preparation and submission of video content from Columbia for the Google Video site. Here’s CUL News’ summary of the content to be included:

New content will include a number of events from the Earth Institute at Columbia University, including the Distinguished Lecture Series and the Seminars on Sustainable Development designed for general audiences from experts on current pressing global issues.

Course content will include the Frontiers of Science course, part of Columbia’s unique core curriculum for incoming students. Each semester, scientists in different disciplines deliver a series of three lectures each describing the background, context, and current state of an area of research.

It’s great to see Columbia getting into the open education mix, of course, but maybe the more interesting thing here: It will be worth keeping an eye on how things play out as Apple and Google both position themselves as the place to go for open educational video.

Apple recently made public its iTunes U site, accessible through the iTunes Store. iTunes U provides easy access to audio and video content from 16 different universities, including Standford, Duke and MIT. iTunes U is an interesting example of non-profit/for-profit partnerships emerging in the open education space. Early on open education projects, and OpenCourseWares in particular, were largely supported by foundation grants. In recent years, however, open education projects have been attracting audiences large enough to catch the interest of for profit companies in an number of ways.

While the details of the collaborations are not public, the iTunes U initiative demonstrates how such collaborations can both build audience for the participating open educational projects, and help Apple generate unique value for iPod users. It further leaves the partners to concentrate on what they do best: For the schools, develop high-quality open resources; for Apple, make those resources completely seamless to use. I’m expecting to see more non-profit/for-profit partnerships emerging in the coming years, as open education projects strive to become sustainable and companies begin to find business models to build around open educational resources along the lines of Red Hat and IBM’s relationships to open source software.