Flotsam and Jetsam: Ateneo-La Salle, iTunes U

I came across Raphael Bartholomew's studiedly fair, but nicely bland article on the rivalry between Ateneo and La Salle through my good friend Jayvee Fernandez, blogger wunderkind extraordinaire. Funny how basketball seems to embody quite a lot of things to quite a lot of people in the tropical paradise that I call home. A shame about the, I suspect, many factors that Mr. Bartholomew had to take into consideration in writing his article, which really hamstrung the piece as a whole. Still, it provides me with an opportunity to plug Jayvee's site, A Bugged Life, where he comes up with decidedly more interesting geeky fare such as the entry entitled Undressing the Inspiration of Souls, Descendant of Seneca, That Which is Named Omnipotens, Son and Daughter of Leviathan. A mouthful, but only in the sense that it should be full in a Godiva sort of way.

It's been awhile since I visited iTunes U, but only because I had just finished Professor Hubert Dreyfus' wonderfully disputatious lecture series on Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy in the University of California Berkeley section. They have quite a number of prestigious universities involved now, with one or two surprises from the lesser known institutes of higher learning. I'd recommend Al Gore's lecture "The Earth in the Balance" in the Stanford Environmental Science section. Good stuff. He should never have lost to Bush, but then, he talked like a Windows 98 NE version of the fabulous Tiger OS Gore we all know and love now.

iTunes U

I've only recently been introduced to the many different educational possibilities that our brave new, interconnected world has to offer, and I must say, with the odd gloriously brave failure that crops up every once in a while, that thus far, I've yet to be disappointed by the efforts of Apple to push the boundaries of technology. Case in point: iTunes U.

According to Apple, they're simply offering a service that allows higher learning institutions to disseminate audio and video resources to its students through the, by now, intuitive iTunes interface. In the end, these institutions get to supplement classroom instruction by allowing their students to bring substantive content with them wherever they go.

Colleges and universities build their own iTunes U sites. Faculty post content they create for their classes. Students download what they need, and go. Learning isn’t just for the classroom anymore. It’s for anytime and anyplace you’ve got a Mac, a PC, or an iPod.

So far, iTunes looks to be, at the very least, one of the gloriously brave failures that will, eventually, lead to something truly revolutionary. I've been to the iTunes store, and have delighted in the many FREE and varied resources that schools are offering for download.

The video podcasts of Professor Hubert Dreyfus on "Existentialism in Literature and Film" are worth visiting UC Berkeley's section for. Dreyfus is considered one the world's leading analysts of postmodern philosophy from Edmund Husserl to Michel Foucault, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and especially Martin Heidegger.

Stanford is also offering a wonderful series of audio lectures on literature, particularly the classics, courtesy of Professor Susanna Braund, whose analysis of the Aeneid is both lively and comprehensive.

The Web is opening up, and a brave new world emerges. Excuse me while I put on my iPod. I have a class to attend.

Photo Credits:

Picture of iTunes U comes courtesy of Webware.