News on the Return of Some Berkeley Webcasts

Just over a month ago, I visited Berkeley's Webcast archive looking for an archaeology course I had seen previously only to find it had been removed when Berkeley upgraded its server. I posted a very angry note. Recently, Berkeley has just reloaded 169 of its classics courses-- Yay! Thank you Berkeley!-- and claims that it is going to attempt to upload several more.

It's Just Wrong!

I've spent a lot of time studying Greek today, so I decided I would reward myself by listening to the Berkeley class on Archaeology (Anthropology 2AC from Spring 2008). However, I went to webcast.berkeley in vain; the class is no longer there. In fact, a huge number of classes are no longer there.


Distressed, I looked for an explanation on Berkeley's website. I found a letter to the large group of perturbed self-education fans. The general gist is that the Real Player server has been retired, and all those courses with it. The team has been unable to find what they believe is an adequate conversion format for the files and seem to be hoping for donations in order to increase the possibility that they might find something. They claim that they might obtain a temporary stint on another server, but they give not hint as to when this might be: "We have requested additional temporary storage space on a new server, when this space comes online we will restore the Real Player files and make them available for the public to download for a limited period of time (Contingent upon instructor approval)." I do not have much faith in this limited period of time because they provided no warning whatsoever about the websites renovation.


I find this whole move quite saddening. Berkeley's webcasts are on of the great ways for people to educate themselves for free, and they are cutting off access to those who would seek out that education. I am posting this same note on Platonic Psychology because I believe it's an important problem.

Great College Stunts

Back when I was in applying to colleges, I heard a lot of stories about various pranks that the students took part in at each institution. The science and technology schools are especially proud of their heritage of practical jokes. However, on these college tours, one never hears about my favorite type of prank: jokes on the students by the professors for the sake of some greater educational purpose.

I was listening today to the sixth lecture from the History 5 class (Fall 2010). Even in the video, one cannot see the lecturer but only the slideshow. So, listening to it, this practical joke (and I use this in a loose sense) might have been funnier than in person. Thomas Laqueur (the lecturer) is speaking about the divisions in the early protestant church. He stops; there are some rustling noises. Then he says "is that a Berkeley homeless person?" Another long pause ensues in which presumably some unknown person moves through the audience. Then he says, no, it's Ulrich Zwingli (and the slide changed to a portrait of Ζwingli). I presume, again, that the "homeless person" is dressed like the portrait of Zwingli that Laqueur shows in the slideshow at this moment. Everyone laughs. Zwingli, played by emeritus professor Thomas Brady [1]. "Zwingli" explains the theological contention he has with Luther and the connection between religion and politics of the period. Laqueur interjects frequently with after jokes about Zwingle's death and the protestant conception of the afterlife. Finally, the stunt ends and Laqueur returns to his lecture, now focusing on the Catholics.

 

This reminded me of an instance at my own university in which a math professor played my number theory class. And I know it sounds totally weird, but this is a true story. So it was 11am and I was standing in the vestibule outside my number theory class. I had been up late the night before working on my qualifying paper, and I was very tired. The door opened to the lecture hall and a thin man with scruffy brown hair, wearing-- I thought-- round spectacles and pushing a cart full of pineapple. I blinked for a moment, just to make sure, and then stepped aside to let the outpouring of Linear Algebra students exit the classroom.

Our lesson that day was on the mathematics of the Fibonacci sequence. The lecture was interesting and fun (and, as it turned out, very similar to the Linear Algebra lecture from earlier that day). At some point, my professor, whom I will call James for the sake of convenience, stopped the class for a moment, explain that he forgot something. He proceeded to call 411 on his cell phone and ask for the number of Quimby and Dimby's Singing Pineapple Delivery Service.

This bizarre moment may need some context. In most classes, a stately math professor doing something like this might seem like it would require the Infinite Improbability Drive from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. However, James was a little different. A specialist in surreal numbers and the coauthor of a textbook that included fake biographies of the Ancient Greeks and cartoons, James was stick skinny, gangly, sporting a full beard, and often covered head-to-toe in magenta chalk. He was brilliant and exuberant, but also comical in, among other things, his obsession with brightly colored chalk. So the mid-class cell phone call was certainly unusual and pushing the boundaries of his usual eccentricities.

So he finished his 411 call and told the class that he had to make just one more call before he got back to teaching. He called Quimby and Dimby's Singing Pineapple Delivery Service and appeared to have some difficulty explaining to the person on the other end of the line that his class was in the same room as before in order to have them do the show. At this point, my morning already appeared very strange and I was open to almost anything to happen next.

About ten minutes before the lesson ended, a man entered the room with a cart full of pineapples and something that resembled a violin case. Although he looked like the same guy as before, he was not wearing glasses. He greeted the class cheerfully. James said to him, "aren't you going to sing the song and show them how to count the pineapple [2]." The man, who was presumably Dimby, explained that his brother, Quimby, had come to the previous class, but was unable to return due to "too much Maui Wowi." He said he would show us how to count the pineapple, which he did, but he told James (who looked rather concerned and dishearted at the news) that he could not sing. He explained that he could accompany James if James wanted to sing, and he handed James a untidy pile of papers that were presumably the lyrics to the song. He then proceeded opened the violin case, which turned out to be a ukulele case, and the two of them put on a rather strange performance of a song. I don't remember any part of the song except the chorus, which was made up of the list of the Fibonacci numbers up through around 6000. It was pretty funny. We all joined in on the last chorus.

That evening when I got home, I googled Quimby and Dimby's Singing Pineapple Delivery Service. There were no results matching that phrase. The whole thing was an elaborate prank.

Endnotes

1. Brady is credited in a slide at the end of the stunt. According to Laqueur, Brady wrote a book on this splintering in the protestant movement.
2. The pattern of growth on a pineapple matches the Fibonacci sequence, as does the pattern of growth on many plants.

More on Self-Guided Education

I have been reading Horace (selected poems in Latin, see my reading list) and Euripides' Medea with friends. Although I do not read as quickly or as well as I would like, it is a wonderful and enjoyable experience and it's amazing that skype has enabled me to talk and coordinate with people in totally different places.

But today a fell in love again with the Berkeley webcast website. Today I have listened to the first four lectures of "History 5: European Civilization from the Renaissance to the Present" (well, I'm listening to the fourth one right now). Although his voice is kind of annoying, Thomas Laqueur, the professor, is thoroughly engaging and intelligent. He seems to be a Foucault-influenced scholar with an interdisciplinary approach that involves finding the narratives of power and legitimacy in history an analyzing their progression. I wanted to listen to this for the most part because Cerinthus and I have been debating over Romanesque verses Gothic architecture (he likes Romanesque, I love Gothic) and specifically of the historical quoting and power of religion built into the architecture itself. If anyone wants to share their thoughts for one side or the other for the debate feel free to comment (we would love to have some new ideas to discuss)

Unfortunately, most of the courses do not have any links to their course material, since the material is now contained on b-space, which I believe is a Berkeley-students-only website. A few of them do and the lectures do provide a vast amount of the information so it is still an effective teaching tool.

One other thing that I found recently is a set of free e-books "sold" by Amazon that cover high school math and science from the CK-12 Foundation. This is not very advanced, although the math does go through calculus, but I think it's incredible that a company it making them accessible to students who want to get ahead, review, or just learn on their own. The coolest one is CK-12 21st Century Physics: A Compilation of Contemporary and Emerging Technologies, which intends to introduce high school students to the marvels of modern physics rather than forcing them into only learning the advancements of the 19th and first half of the 20th century. I have not read much of the book itself, but the purpose looked great.

I am continually amazed at the resources out there for self-teaching. It is very cool. It reminds me of the food blog network, from which I taught myself to make bread. It is amazing that people are willing to provide their experience to a public and talk about the techniques for cooking. That is very cool.

The Joys and Pitfalls of Self-Directed Education

In May, I graduated from college with my BA in Classics. I decided to strike out on my own for a year (and looking increasingly like two years) in order to solidify my education, gain some work and teaching experience, and choose my path forward into academia. Exploring education on my own, and teaching my own classes, continues to provide me with a new perspectives on the benefits and drawbacks to institutionalized learning and also on educational resources.

Here are some of the great things I have found while learning on my own:

• Skype is awesome. 
• Although Cerinthus is away, I can still ask him questions and get answers from the experts he has access to in Greece and Italy (see Cerinthus Reports on both Fragments of Sulpicia and Platonic Psychology).
• Propertius II and I work on Horace together over skype as well and we can share screen, send information, and interact.
• On a broader educational level, Sugata Mitra's work which he explained in his TED Talk (which I highly recommend if you have not seen it) employs Skype through a method known as the Granny Cloud. This employs British grandmothers to watch over and encourage students using internet resources for the purpose of education and has proved to be an effective tool
• I can read and research whatever I want, which leads me to exciting new areas of research.
• As I was doing some more in-depth research on grave monuments to solidify work on my thesis, I stumbled across Ian Morris' Burial and Ancient Society: The Rise of the Greek City-State (which can be downloaded for free if you have access to ACLS and some minimal computer skills). The book is awesome so far, but I realized I have almost no background whatsoever in archaeology. This lead me to find another book, An Archaeology of Greece, by Anthony Snodgrass, which is currently public from University of California Press.
• There are a number of websites and blogs that provide immense amounts of information and there are even more under construction.
• The UC Berkeley Webcast website has some fabulous classes by incredible professors that one can listen to via podcast. They also have campus events and speakers. A truly phenomenal resource.
• I have a whole list of classics resources under "Interesting Links" on the left-hand side of Platonic Psychology.
• Wikimedia Commons provides images for people to use. I employed these to find examples of for myself and then to provide examples to me readers for Proto-Corinthian pottery.
• There are also some unfinished resources which may still be valuable:
• Wikiversity (and its Classic Department) attempts to provide class outlines and resources to individuals who want to learn from the teachers who are willing to make them. Wikiversity says on its main page: "Wikiversity is a Wikimedia Foundation project devoted to learning resources, learning projects, and research for use in all levels, types, and styles of education from pre-school to university, including professional training and informal learning. We invite teachers, students, and researchers to join us in creating open educational resources and collaborative learning communities."
• The Homer Multitext is an incredible resource put together by the Center for Hellenic Studies, which, according to the website, "seeks to present the textual transmission of the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey in a historical framework. Such a framework is needed to account for the full reality of a complex medium of oral performance that underwent many changes over a long period of time. These changes, as reflected in the many texts of Homer, need to be understood in their many different historical contexts. The Homer Multitext provides ways to view these contexts both synchronically and diachronically." This is an incredible resource for Homer scholars.
• Everything you do is directed toward your needs (or the needs of those with whom you study).
• Something I really need to work on is my Greek and Latin reading fluidity and pronunciation, as well as building my vocabulary. Although all of my classes in college attempted to do a little of this, none of them focused on it. After ascertaining from those who I considered experts in each area what resources I should be using, I have been able to at least begin to work on these areas.
• Furthermore, I can use old syllabi to review precisely those assignments I did not quite understand (or wanted to look into further).

 

However, there are also inevitable problems with learning on my own:

• There are no teachers and no deadlines. I have to be ready to set firm deadlines as well as find resources among friends, books, and the internet to provide instruction. It is incredibly easy to slip up or procrastinate. I have slipped up a number of times, but I remind myself that cheating only hurts me, which motivates me to work harder.
• I have to create my own evidence of my efforts. Unforuntately, I cannot get a degree from Sulpicia University and I am not graded in my endeavors, even when I use resources like UC Berkeley Webcast, so I have to demonstrate my knowledge effective and produce something. Blogging has been one thing that provides a certain amount of accountability and shows some amount of my effort, but I need to also work on getting something published so that I can show it to a graduate school.
• There are no school facilities. Although I can drive to my local university library to check out books or search for information (and I do), I do not have the same incredible facilities that I had in college, e.g. I cannot use an inter-library loan program nor do I have campus visiting lecturers nor easily-accessible students and professors in other disciplines. However, Skype, email, and access to my parents has helped ameliorate this, because I can contact scholars and peers as well as having greater access to cars and trips to concerts, lectures, conferences, museums, and even out of town to find wonderful opportunities.