Comments on: Berkeley Webcasts

By: Jacob Christensen » Coming Soon To An Ear Near You

Jacob Christensen » Coming Soon To An Ear Near You — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 20:31:51 +0000

[...] If we leave aside the technical considerations, one obvious problem that we will have to face, is that university lecturers often are – how to put it – less than charismatic. And unlike Berkeley or Stanford, we cannot count on getting Robert Reich or the other guy (no not the one with the baseball-cap) to do the lectures on Politics 101. [...]

By: Norman David Gerre

Norman David Gerre — Sat, 03 Jun 2006 04:31:47 +0000

Amardeep, the Berkeley stuff is on iTunes too -- itunes.berkeley.edu. It's certainly more useful to me that way.

By: Bro. Bartleby

Bro. Bartleby — Sat, 03 Jun 2006 01:00:27 +0000

I recalled during my first year at the monastery Bro. Sedwick held a hands-on course titled “Existentialism in Existential Cinematography.” I do remember that we constructed a 16mm Bolex cameras from balsa wood, also a boom and microphone from a broom stick and tin can. After typing our movie scripts, Bro. Sedwick collected them all and then tore each page into four pieces, then shuffled and reassembled the pages randomly ala William S. Burroughs, and scotch-taped the quartered pages together. After picking straws, a director was chosen, who then cast the ‘actors’ from the remaining students. It was in the dry riverbed behind the monastery that the neophyte actors attempted to rehearse from the cut and reassembled script, and I believe it was Bro. Carl who ‘filmed’ the final production with the balsa wood 16mm Bolex. After, I believe, four days and nights in that dry riverbed, the production was finished and we all returned to the monastery for a critique by Bro. Sedwick, but not before we viewed our production. I recall that we all stared silently at a blank wall for two hours before our ‘teacher’ suddenly stood and faced the class and applauded while shouting, “Bravo! Bravo! Bravo!”

By: Maynard Handley

Maynard Handley — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 20:55:07 +0000

You left out the single best course in the Berkeley collection:
History 5, European Civ from the Renaissance till today.
The audio is fine, but more than that, the lecturer assumes you’re not an idiot, know something of the events involved, and spends his time presenting context and non-obvious connections between events.

I know this sounds hyperbolic but, damn, try it. It really is good.

By: Amardeep

Amardeep — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 15:04:49 +0000

Stanford's also doing this. Nothing on video as far as I can tell, but lots of interesting lectures for Itunes.

By: Christopher Ball

Christopher Ball — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 15:01:01 +0000

Having enjoyed the Berkeley J-School webcasts, I'm amazed at the failure of the A/V people to brief presenters or the presenters indifference to instructinos on what microphones will be used or to coordinate their use. Audio on some of these videos is awful at times.