The downside of iTunes U and Open Courseware

[neadods]

After having gotten all excited about Open Courseware and iTunes U, I've been exploring both... and finding that neither is quite suiting what I'm looking for.

I'm listening while I'm driving, so it can only be audio, and in a clear voice. I'm used to The Teaching Company, which has a professor speaking directly into a mike (the later editions don't even have a live audience, however respectfully silent.)

However, most of the juiciest-looking MIT open courses don't have an audio component at all, whereas iTunes U is almost exclusively audio, but it's audio created with a microphone in class - lots of student talking, time spent discussing school issues, muffled teacher voices.

Grr. Argh.

Anyone know any good educational podcasts? Shakespeare, literature, history? Something like Dr. Kiki's science hour would be a lot closer to what I'm looking for than what I'm finding in the online universities.

Comments

[raqs.livejournal.com]

I'll be interested to see if anyone has any suggestions I don't know of, but I suspect you'll have a hard time if what you're looking for is a professionally produced podcast aimed at a commercial audience rather than the student audience. Because universities don't product podcasts like that, and there's no money in it (see: your desire to get these things for free - you are not unique in that) so no or few commercial companies try to make a commercial product not aimed at students in a particular classroom or made WITH or FROM students in a particular classroom.

I'm assuming you've tried the resources you get from googling "open university podcast"? Did Stanford have nothing to suit you? I'm seeing a number of pages there that haven't been updated in a while, telling me the heyday of making lots of free podcasts is kind of over.
http://podcast.open.ac.uk/ ?

A lot of resources are now going to involve video, even if just as slides, so if you don't want that either they may not be making things to suit you. :-(

[neadods.livejournal.com]

I haven't tried googling that; I'll do that next, and open.ac.uk looks luscious! In a roundabout way, iTunes podcasts/educational pointed me at the British Library, which has a variety of things from last year. Fortunately, there are no major changes in Tudor thought recently. :) So I can listen to those as well.

But it's a bit frustrating. Teaching Co is so perfect, but there's only so many in the library system.

[persiflage-1.livejournal.com]

Have you not come across the OU before? The Open University is famous over here for educating vast numbers of people to degree level while they continue to work/look after their families. padawanpooh is getting her degree for the OU...

[neadods.livejournal.com]

No, I haven't. I shall explore...

[persiflage-1.livejournal.com]

I feel guilty now for never mentioning it!

[neadods.livejournal.com]

De nada! No reason for you to have, really - I'm doing this more for personal growth than a degree... although I wouldn't mind having another one!

[persiflage-1.livejournal.com]

*nods* Plenty of people do courses of study with the OU for personal growth rather than because they want a specific degree...

[redpanda13.livejournal.com]

Haven't checked any of these out yet, but AARP (yeah, I'm old) has an article listing a lot of sources for online learning:

http://bulletin.aarp.org/yourworld/reinventing/articles/freelearning.html?cmp=RDRCT-FREE_LEARNING

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Hmmm... I'll check it out, thanks!

[dora-took.livejournal.com]

Are you willing to digitize them yourself? Tom gets a lot of Great Courses out of the library, digitizes them and then listens to them on his mp3. They've got quite a lot of science ones, all sorts of things.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

It's on the possibilities list - the local library has American Lit, which I want, but at the rate I'm listening, I may be able to do a complete part in the time the library gives me.