The University of California Berkeley has run a trial program this past semester that makes webcasts available from around 30 courses. (MIT also has had some course videos and other material available for some time.) They also have special lectures and events available here. The courses range from Art 32, “Foundations of American Cyberculture”, to EE 240, “Advanced Analog Integrated Circuits”, to Psych 130, “Clinical Psychology”. There is one philosophy course – Phil 7, “Existentialism in Literature and Film” by Hubert Dreyfus. His course has 27 lectures; each appears to be a little over one hour. Video is available for many of courses, but not Dreyfus’s.
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Christopher Ball 06.02.06 at 10:01 am
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.
Amardeep 06.02.06 at 10:04 am
Stanford’s also doing this. Nothing on video as far as I can tell, but lots of interesting lectures for Itunes.
Maynard Handley 06.02.06 at 3:55 pm
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.
Bro. Bartleby 06.02.06 at 8:00 pm
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!”
Norman David Gerre 06.02.06 at 11:31 pm
Amardeep, the Berkeley stuff is on iTunes too — itunes.berkeley.edu. It’s certainly more useful to me that way.
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