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.

Swiped from all over the f-list.

Writing and Academic stuff
From havocthecat and comments therein:
MIT Open Courseware: lecture notes and exams from all sorts of classes

10 Universities with free online writing classes (Shakespeare tag included because Univ. of Utah has a Shakes course.)

These include links to Purdue's "OWL": Online Writing Lab with lots of resources and England's Open University, which has a variety of undergrad and grad courses.

Rennie Stuff
For all the Renaissance fair enthusiasts who haven't heard yet, tonight's episode of "Dinner Impossible" (Food Network, 10pm, repeats listed in link) is set at our very own Maryland Renaissance Festival.

Fan Stuff
There's been a lot of discussion comparing the Torchwood S1 episode Cyberwoman to the Torchwood S2 episode Sleeper (This Saturday's for the American viewers). I particularly enjoyed this one.

From calufrax, a cycle of Jack stories as he relives his way back through the 20th century.

*giggle*snort*-worthy short Doctor Who/crossover fic. I can't say more for spoiling it. Worksafe. Read, it's only 5 paragraphs.

I've listened to the first lecture of American Religious History by Dr. Allitt. He's the same one who gave the Victorian Britain course I enjoyed so much, and it looks like this one's going to be even better. He starts right off by discussing America's unique positions as both the only one to have codified church/state religious separation and the only very religious world power. (He thinks these things directly relate to each other; it is his view, having grown up in England, that mandating a state religion weakens actual faith in that religion.)

But mainly, and what I'm *really* looking forward to, is the topic he elaborated in the second half of the opening lecture - how America's assorted faiths have politically shaped the country, from the makeup of the original states to the Moral Majority's hand in the 1980 election. (The lecture itself dates to the WWJD fad; he notes those armbands in his opening statements.) Already I've learned one thing I had not known - that there is a historical precedent to the argument that the First Amendment applies only to federal law and not to state law. Apparently that was how things were... until the Civil War, and the consequent strengthening of the federal government.

An overview of topics covered is here. There are 24 lectures, including:
- The European Background
- Colonial Religious Diversity
- Darwin and Other Dilemmas
- Judaism in the 19th Century
- Twentieth-Century Catholicism
- The Civil Rights Movement
- The Counterculture and Feminism
- Asian Religions
and
- Church and State

Since we're coming up on the Federally Mandated Religious Biggie, I'm going to make a theme out of my next set of "classes" - first this, then The Making of the New Testament Canon, and finally Bible and World Literature. By then it will be time to start listening to the courses for the self-taught Tudor class.

Dr. Saccio knows his stuff - he has not only researched, he has performed in, directed, and written about Shakespeare. I'm finding the class thought-provoking and yes, I'm learning things.

But at the same time, I'm really glad that this is a taped class, because if it were live, I would be that man's worst student. First is his voice - many professors have a theatrical/oratory edge to their manner of speech, but years of hammering the iambic pentameter has made him stress syllables slightly oddly in "regular speech." He doesn't quite sound like William Shatner, but I'm certainly reminded with every lecture that the genesis of the famous Shatner delivery was Shakespearean training.

The other biggie was that as he discussed the importance of blank verse in Shakespeare in Lecture 1 ("Shakespeare's Wavelengths") he talked about how much he hated it when people spoke the verse in a conversational meter and tone instead of treating it like verse. Fortunately he admitted that this was a personal opinion, because in my view, if you don't try to make the verse sound like speech, you're murdering the play. The quickest way to suck all the life out of a Shakes performance is to come at it from the attitude of "I am talking oddly and wearing odd clothes, but you will enjoy it because it is GOOD for you - like broccoli!"

Besides, it's entirely possible to use Shakespeare's exact language and make it feel fresh and modern. I think anyone who's heard the Barenaked Ladies As You Like It music is going to get the bouncy "with a hey and a ho and a hey nonny no!" stuck in their head and not think twice about the age of those lyrics.

This isn't to say that I'm not getting a lot out of the class - I am - but there's a fundamental viewpoint difference between myself and the teacher that makes me glad that a real GPA doesn't rest on this.

Word and Action has 16 45-minute lectures, covering topics like:
- The Multiple Actions of A Midsummer Night's Dream
- Love and Artifice in Love's Labor's Lost and Much Ado About Nothing
- The Battles of Henry VI
- Action in Hamlet
- Nature and Art in The Winter's Tale
- History and Henry VIII

I think after I have listened to it through, I will add it to the Team Wench Shakespeare raffle basket I'm building, which also includes Stratford's Much Ado (VHS); a boxed set of Romeo & Juliet, RIII, and Taming; Love's Labors Lost (DVD); Discovering Hamlet (VHS); the Stratford mug that lists the entire canon; and the Barenaked Ladies' Much Ado soundtrack. (I'm trying to decide if the Ladies will be such an attraction on their own that they can stand to be a separate raffle item. Or if I should put the rarity up on 4goodcauses and advertise it on musical, theater, and rennie communities.)

stratfordbabe pointed out something that I should have thought of - that the Teaching Co. Great Courses are also in the library. I've done some searches on the county library bookfinder and my, oh, my!

The only problem is that the location field of the printout only says "Audio-Visual Dept" and doesn't list the actual library branches that they are actually in. On the other hand, I can take the printout to the library and let them sort it out via interlibrary loan.

Utterly, utterly doomed. I've already verified that Great Authors of the Western World; Great Religions - Hinduism; Shakespeare Comedies, Tragedies, and Histories; and Great Artists of the Italian Renaissance are in the system before the web interface got squiffy and kicked me out; that's enough to keep me busy while I try to find out if they also have History of Impressionism kicking around there somewhere.

In an attempt to break through my current inertia, I've started listening to the "Argumentation" class while I do some grunt work. Well, I was. The course material (rhetorical argument) is not simple enough to have flowing in the background; this is something that will require more than a little attention. (I may even lump it with a couple rhetoric books as a "class" later.) Also unfortunately, Prof. Zarefsky's voice reminds me a great deal of the minister I grew up with, and it's giving me a pavlovian urge to doodle on a church bulletin. He's not a particularly vivacious speaker, although in his favor, his diction is quite clear.

So short review: tough class, boring teacher, important information. Can't win 'em all, and I will make a point of listening to this... later.

After having spent hours in the stores finding that none of the cute shoes fit and paying triple digits for shoes that do fit but don't particularly flatter, I have Officially Had Enough.

I hereby declare my intention to learn how to make my own shoes. Not just sandals, but my own work flats and, if I can find a place, rennie moccasins as well. I thought there was a place called Rocky Mountain that had a class in making leather boots a la Catskill Moccasins, but I'm having the dickens finding it. faireraven? You know who I'm talking about.

Since I had much the same experience in foundational garments as well, I'm probably going to be learning to make my own bras at the same time.

Decided I wanted to learn more about Tudors right now, not Huguenots, so have bailed on Religious Wars 6 lectures in. I'll get back to it later. Right now, I'm going to listen to this one at least up through James. (Charles, Charles, and James will be decided on when I get there.)

It's taught by Prof. Bucholz of Loyola, who has a healthy ego on him and is currently (faintly defensively) explaining why an American can understand English history. Since I never thought that any nationality was an impediment to learning about any chunk of history, methinks the gentleman doth protest too much. His voice is clear, baritone, and easy to follow without being soporific. Now he's made a passing mention of the video, I guess they showed a picture of one of the Charleses. (He talks so much about why I'd want to study this period - something I already know because I bought this class for a reason - that I've skipped ahead to lecture 2. Yes, now he's stopped dropping hints and gotten down to the meat.)

Okay, I have just forgiven him the entire Lecture 1 for this line in Lecture 2, about the tie between a culture and the landscape the culture lives on, specifically, the English Channel: "The water that separates England from Europe... has acted as the barrier protecting England from infenction and the hand of war* - basically, rabies and the French."

The course book is done almost entirely in outlines, with questions to consider and specific book chapters listed at the end of each outline.

( The general setup of the course )

*From the "Sceptered Isle" monologue from Richard II.

The Tudor self-study begins with Lecture 1 (Ideologies of Political Obedience) of Europe and the Wars of Religion (1500-1700). Professor Sreenivasan of Brandeis has a slightly prissy, very clear tenor voice; its easy to hear what he's saying and he seems to have an engineer's habit of being very precise about what he's talking about and why. (As opposed to Mozart Guy, who is talking about Mozart because anyone with any sense loves, loves, loves Mozart and wants to know the real deal.) I almost missed it, but he's also got a sly, dry sense of humor that surfaces at odd moments:

"The final aspect we are going to look at is technology. Technologies of resistance, technologies of repression. Now, when I talk about technology, I suppose what immediately comes to mind are tools. Things like guns. Large artillery. Long pointy sticks."

This is the first class with suggested pages for the suggested readings in the coursebook. I'm not going to go get a copy of The European Dynastic States 1494-1600 by Bonney, partially because the only copy on half.com costs $30, but mostly because in the long run, I'll be focusing on the Tudors and I have reading of my own.

The short-term goal is to finish this class and one of the Henry books by the end of the month. At 2 lectures a day, I can finish the Teaching Company class in 12 days. (Then I'll take History of England, Tudors-Stuarts and Henry VIII as listening on the drive to Stratford. With soundtracks in case I get bored and want to sing along.) If I finish the book I'm reading this week, I'll have sent in 3 reviews to RtE, leaving me free to read Harry Potter and then a Henry book before it's time to review the next book for I Love a Mystery and the new month's cycle starts for RtE.

The end goal of all of this is to:
1) Become well-rounded on English history from the rise of Henry VIII through the end of Elizabeth's reign.
2) Pitch/write multiple articles on the subject to Renaissance magazine.


And on a slightly related note, in an effort to exercise and have non-food rewards, I've promised myself that if I exercise for half-hour increments to Batman TAS v4 and Scrubs S1 (which I have), I can buy the DVDs for Teaching Company's "Great Artists of the Renaissance" and "A History of Impressionism."

Some of the Teaching Company courses require more attention than others. For instance, I dug up the supplementary materials for The History of the English Language, whereas I'm merely listening to the CDs on Mozart and not even bothering to skim the attached coursebook. Three of them - Religious Wars in Europe, Henry VIII, and English History Tudor-Stuart - will be listened to in conjunction not with their own recommended readings, but with my pre-selected 19-book self-study reading.

But then I started looking at the coursebooks for Understanding Literature and Life, and *blink* Dang! Professor Arnold Weinstein is taking it all very seriously. In the coursebooks, Dr. Lerer ended the History of English lecture notes with "you should have learned" questions and suggestions for comparison. In Science Fiction, Prof. Rabkin provides a couple "Questions to Consider," like Is there, in your opinion, such a thing as fact? Considering Verne's questioning of our construction of facts.

In Literature and Life, Prof. Weinstein is outright giving quizzes. Cumulative essay question quizzes, three per lecture.

Explain, according to Blake, what comprises the voyage from innocence to experience in the modern world.

Compare and contrast Baudelaire's treatment of women in "The Little Old Women" with Whitman's depiction of city crowds in "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry."

Summarize how "The Road Not Taken" offers a vision of the past contrary to that represented in Oedipus.

Give examples of where Bronte uses a fairytale environment to create a horrific effect.

Given that the course itself will take a significant effort to even listen to - it's 64 lectures, roughly 32 hours of audio alone - it's surprisingly tempting to actually treat this particular one exactly like a class and make a point of not only doing the reading but the homework.

That would make this one class a year-long project, if not longer, (life would have to come first!) but... it's really tempting.

Turns out that The Teaching Company is pimping itself by putting some of its lectures online for free download. You have your choice of two lectures on:

Fact and Fiction in The Da Vinci Code
Einstein

I do not entirely trust my computer to pull down and play the DVC lectures, so if some kind soul could rip them to a CD that could be read by a regular computer, I'd be grateful.

Note for the lower tech folks: I found out when I ordered by phone that they offer VHS or audiotape freebies. My last big order came with a side of Roman history.

And, perniciously, if you register with them, you can get an email notice when classes you are interested in go on sale.