Educational Courses in Digital Format?

An anonymous reader asks: "I own a portable MP3 player. Recently, my friend showed me several MP3 files he ripped that teach Japanese. I spend much of my day commuting to and from work. Using my portable player to learn new topics strikes me as a good use of that time. Can anyone recommend any educational audio files?"

Try this:

[Lazyhound]

You can probably find something here [ilovelanguages.com].

Cool!

[dimator]

I would love to learn japanese too. Is your friend sharing these files?

Re:Cool!

[floydigus]

Clearly there is much educational material available on CDs.
Why not buy and rip?

Re:Cool!

[WeaponOfChoice]

I'd also love to learn Japanese (have tried at least once... that and several other languages).

What I was wondering was does anybody see a difference in the ethical situation between sharing copyrighted entertainment works and copyrighted educational works?

In my limited experience I would have thought that companies producting educational course material can not really afford to have their work pirated (at least they don't have the massive buffers of cash and revenue the labels have).

On the other hand there are initiatives like MIT OpenCourseware [mit.edu] where anyone who wants to access the material is able to without charge (MIT can probably afford to though...)

Should eductaional products be free/subsidised/supported by the industry etc...

Sharing copywrited works.

[Urox]

Or what about a situation where the material is available for check out at a library? You could continue to check out the work over an incredibly long amount of time (until someone else specifically requested it on hold) OR you could illegally copy it and allow someone else the advantage of immediate access.

Re:Cool!

[Perry White]

Very few things are truly free. Someone (doubtless many people in fact) invested their time and ability to make those courses. Obviously, those writers should be free to give away the fruits of their labor for no money if they choose. But I'd say "volunteering them" to do so without their consent is pretty much the definition of theft. No matter what the motives.

So I for one, see no difference. Theft is theft, no matter how wealthy the victim.

People opting to subsidize courses so they have no immediate cost to the students is a different matter. I'd support copying the educational material from any "free" source (like the MIT link). Ripping them from commerial products is theft. Everyone has their own line for whether that's okay for them. I wouldn't choose to.

some science and a little philosophy?

[Chilles]

Try finding these [otrden.com] files somewhere.

technetcast

[krishnaD]

Look here http://technetcast.ddj.com/tnc_mp3.html
It has recorded mp3 interviews of people like Bruce Schneier, Gudio Van Rossum.

TNC

[kxr]

Not sure if this is the kind of thing you're after, but there's loads of really good stuff on TechNetCast [ddj.com]. I just got myself an MP3 car-stereo, and plan to grab all the talks I haven't gotten around to listening to, so that I can listen to them in the car.

Re:TNC

[dmorin]

The only problem I have with this site is that most of the talks seem to be over a year old. That's one thing if you're trying to learn Japanese, but if you're listening to a tutorial on how to get the most performance out of Java I/O, then it would be horribly out of date.

The fun part is to look at all the talks from 2000 in the business section, about dotcoms and VC, and laugh til your sides hurt.

Audible

[egrinake]

Audible [audible.com] provides alot of various books on everything from fiction to science to language courses in a downloadable audio format. Unfortunately, they use a proprietary audio format (in order to encrypt the data etc) which are only playable on a handful [audible.com] of MP3 players which are "Audible ready".

You can, however, burn the files to a cd (according to the site), and then you should be able to rip it back to mp3.

Audio Books

[charlie763]

How about you download audio books for just two bucks from this place [audible.com]? Or get some Stephen Hawking [filbertstreet.net] stuff for the same price.

Two bucks?

[DoctorFrog]

Funny, the site says $14.95 for one book a month or $19.95 for two. Where are you getting two bucks from?

Physics

[kasparov]

Even though it would be some work, if you are interested in Physics you should buy The Feynman Lectures on Physics on tape and use your soundcard to rip to mp3. These are an absolutely wonderful collection of Physics lectures from one of the brightest minds in the field.

Text to speech synthesis

[Frantactical Fruke]

How about taking a text to speech synthesizer and have it read out your man and info files to mp3s.

Hours of fun listening to robot voice going:

"NAME
bison - GNU Project parser generator (yacc replacement)

SYNOPSIS
bison [ -b file-prefix ] [ --file-prefix=file-prefix ] [
-d ] [ --defines=defines-file ] [ -g ] [ ...." etc. ad nauseam...

use of time for learning languages

[Urox]

It really depends on your drive.

I became quickly tired of all the overplayed songs on the radio. I used to listen to this really great discussion radio host but he was kicked off the air for discussing "controversial" topics. Anything the news station played, I had read on the net at least the day before (except for the 9/11 surprise).

A while ago, I started playing Cantonese learning cds on my way home. One thing about them is that they are meant as a supplimental to a book, so it goes by rather quickly. I find myself still on the third chapter (YOU try digesting a chapter's worth of information where they give you some vocabulary.. not the complete vocabulary.. nor any of the grammar.. and then shove 20 conversations at you... remember, this is a tonal language where you have to hear the tone as well).

Now, I have a rather sedate drive home: reverse commute and mostly a straight away. I once played the cd while in heavy traffic (not stop and go, but one you have to accelerate and decelerate a lot) and I just wasn't taking any of it in.

So if you have time to concentrate, then learning a language during the drive is great. If you have to keep your eyes glued to the road, you probably are better off listening to something that you can stop paying attention to now and then.

Previous "Ask Slashdot"

[rubinson]

A similar question was recently asked here [slashdot.org].