Sunday, February 22, 2009

Academic Earth


At Wig-Wags, Rene Tyree has a fantastic tip on a site called Academic Earth, which has downloadable lectures by leading academics. Since Rene focuses on David Blight's course on the Civil War Era and Reconstruction, let me recommend another: Donald Kagan's course on Ancient Greek History.

Professor Kagan has been a leading scholar on Ancient Greece for the past thirty plus years. His four-volume study of the Peloponnesian War, first published in the 1970s, remains the leading work on the subject. To top it all off, Professor Kagan has been known on the Yale campus for decades as one of the school's finest and most entertaining lecturers. Over the years, his introductory Greek History course has routinely been packed to the rafters -- and that despite the subject matter, the professor's rigorous grading, and his outspoken conservative political views, which have sometimes been controversial in Yale's left-wing culture.

3 comments:

  1. Anonymous10:42 AM

    Elektratig,

    SO COOL! I will definitely view Kagan's class as well.

    Just a point of clarification. You CAN download the lectures for sure - either in video or audio format - or you can simply watch them online. There is a nice lights down / lights up feature on the site that let's you focus in on the lecture either in partial or full screen mode.

    I LOVE this idea of bringing tier 1 education to the masses.

    Rene

    ReplyDelete
  2. Rene,

    I mentioned the "downloadable" part because that's the part that really excited me. I'm always looking for material to download to my ipod, so I can then listen while driving.

    e

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous12:16 AM

    elektratig - completely understand. I plan to do the same. I find that I do better if I listen to Professor Kagan's lectures more than once. A lot of information in there.

    R

    ReplyDelete

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