Odd as it may seem, the modern university has not changed a great deal since its earliest instances in the 16th century. A lecturer, classes filled with students, examinations – these essential components of higher education have remained more or less static, while nearly all the other sectors of modern life have undergone immense transformations. Finally, however, technology has sunk its teeth into education, and as a result it appears as though the university’s own technological revolution is close at hand. At the forefront of this rethinking of the college classroom is OpenCourseWare, the digital media format pioneered in 2001 by MIT and used already by more than 100 million students worldwide. By releasing class content online to the public, elite universities are making available to anyone with an Internet connection what used to only be within reach to the most rarified strata of society. This radical democratization of learning is unprecedented in modern society – only time will tell how far it will be able to go.

Thanks,
-The OCC Team

If you ask a college grad what words come to mind when they think of their college experience, they’ll likely be mostly positive. “Fun,” “enlightening,” and “important” will all come up with great frequency. But another common aspect of the college experience, shared by virtually everyone who participates, isn’t positive at all: stress. Stress is as common a feature of contemporary college life as football games or beer, and though most of us accept it as part of the package, recent research suggests that we had better take a second look.

This website contains only a tiny fraction of the documents available in the Library of Congress, and yet the collection is still nothing sort of astounding. The American Memory archives provide over one hundred collections, adding up to over nine million individual documents, all of which are guaranteed credible primary sources for whatever it is you’re currently working on. What’s more, each collection is accompanied by a collection guide and a time line, so it’s never hard to know what you’re looking at.

Not only are there tons of informative and useful documents, but those documents exist across all forms of media, from old photographs and ragged parchment scans to modern high-definition video. The site also has several useful features, both for teachers and students, and for the casual browser.

For the Student

Anyone who’s ever tried to write a historical essay knows that finding primary sources can be quite a challenge, especially if you aren’t allowed to use the materials presented in class. With the American Memory archive, that’s not a problem. The collections in the archive cover a wide range of topics, including recreation, religion, literature, racial histories, the evolution of government, city biographies and just about everything else related to US History.

For example, say you wanted to write an essay about the history of Yellowstone National Park. It would be nice to have a map of the territory from when it was first set aside in 1988. The American Memory archives can provide that for you, as well as maps of many other national parks, including the Grand Canyon and the Great Smokey Mountains.

Or maybe the assignment is to chronicle the history of War in the US, or analyze early travel advertising, or even study dialect differences in native English speakers. All this information is available from the library of congress, for free.

Feature: Ask a Librarian

Despite the expansiveness of the American Memory archive, you may not find the information you’re looking for. But don’t worry! That’s where the Ask a Librarian function comes in. While the question form is the first thing that pops up when you click the feature’s icon, you should take some time to look through the topic categories, to make sure your question goes to the right place. Some of the topics even come with a chat function, so you can get immediate responses to your questions. But if there isn’t a chat for your topic, you can send your question to one of the many qualified librarians employed by the Library of Congress, and expect a thorough and well-sourced response within five business days. Also check out the frequently asked questions and reference shelf sections—both are valuable resources.

For the Teacher

Making lesson plans is time consuming and difficult in the best of conditions, but trying to find primary sources to build around can be downright impossible. Fortunately, the American Memory archive has teachers in mind as well, and the “Teachers” section has just about everything you could need. It includes classroom materials, resources for developing your career, tips for using primary sources and tons of outside resources that might be helpful.

Feature: Lesson Plans

Along with all the other resources, the American Memory archives have tons of pre-designed lesson plans for teachers, each with its own grade rating, estimated time and lesson objectives. The lessons correspond to specific collections in the archive, which means that most of them have a variety of materials for students and teachers to choose from.

Examples of lessons range from the Civil War through a Child’s Eye (grades 3-8) to defining what it means to be American, to learning about race relations through Jackie Robinson. Grade classifications are pretty broad, so the lessons may take some tweaking to fit them to your specific age level, but they’re a great baseline that can save you a lot of time on that lesson plan.

For the Casual Browser

But learning about American history isn’t just for the classroom. For the historically inclined (or those who are just bored and looking for something interesting to do), American Memories is a great way to learn about America and see cool old images without having to spend a cent. The collections are deceptively fascinating, and it shouldn’t surprise you if you end up avidly reading through each one when you ought to be getting other things done.

Because the collections cover such a wide range of topics, there’s guaranteed to be something that you find interesting. If you like sports and entertainment, take a look at the recreation section, which has information about baseball, traveling fairs, ballroom dancing and even old films. If you’re more politically inclined, take a look at the government & law section, or learn about the presidents and their legacies.

Feature: Today in History

For trivia buffs, this feature is a dream. Every day, a new interesting fact from decades past pops up on this page. It’s a great way to learn about history in piecemeal form, and browsing through the archives is alarmingly addicting. For example, did you know that the first ever college unofficial basketball game happened on January 15^th, 1896, and pitted the University of Iowa against the University of Chicago? The sport as it was played at the time is nearly unrecognizable from what we have today, but even so Chicago managed to soundly beat Iowa, with a final score of 15 to 12. That day in history also marked Carol Channing’s debut of her stunning performance in Hello, Dolly! In 1956. The notable events are linked back to related collections, so getting lost in the archives is even easier.

Universal Translators

Every space-ward science fiction novel has run into the same problem when it comes to alien life: how would we understand them? Some authors, like Douglas Adams, solve the problem with some unlikely animal like the Babble fish who can translate brain waves, but the majority of these stories go the technological route with a universal translator. But language is such a complex and misunderstood phenomenon, it’s hard to believe that we could ever write a technology smart enough to turn the unintelligible into English.

Google Goggles

But Google believed it, and in 2010 the internet giant came out with Google Goggles—a phone application that uses the in-phone camera to translate written text. It recognizes the selected text, identifies the language, translates it, and then the translation appears on the screen of your phone, in plain English. What’s more, the technology works in real time, with very little lag. While this may not be as powerful as the universal translator, especially as it’s restricted to the written word, it’s a step in a previously unimaginable direction.

Suspended Animation

Space travel is the holy grail of science fiction, with everyone striving to come up with newer, better ideas for how to get out into the stars. But one of the biggest problems faced by space travel is the sheer amount of time it takes to get anywhere—travel to Proxima Centauri, our nearest neighbor star, takes longer than the lifespan of the humans traveling there. The solution? Suspended animation: putting people to sleep so that their bodies can be stored indefinitely. But this sort of fanciful thinking is just imagination, right?

Mark Roth

Of course, if it were only imagination, it wouldn’t be on this list. Cellular biologist Mark Roth grew interested in the idea of suspended imagination when he started hearing stories about skiers freezing to death on mountains, only to be thawed and revived at the hospital with no harm done. With a little research and some dumb luck, he soon discovered that hydrogen sulfide could be used to decrease the need for oxygen, which in combination with cold resulted in hibernation. He has successfully suspended mice and zebrafish embryos, and hopes to develop the technology for use on humans. While the space travel aspect doesn’t come into it, suspended animation could be used to freeze critically ill patients, thus buying doctors enough time to heal them.

Growing Human Body Parts

No futuristic society is complete without this gem of a technology—the ability to grow replacement organs and limbs in a laboratory, rather than having to harvest them from deceased donors. Of course, it’s no surprise that we have the ability to replace organs—we’ve been doing that for decades—but actually growing them is more recent and far less common place. Nevertheless, as Anthony Atala’s lab demonstrates, it is entirely possible to grow an entire human organ from just a DNA sample. Because these organs are grown from the patient’s own cells, they won’t be rejected by the patient’s immune system. But to make it truly science fiction-worthy, you have to take it a step farther.

Printing a Human Kidney

Which is exactly what Atala did. 3D printing technology—building objects from the base up, in a variety of different materials, using a digital rendering as a guideline—is still relatively new, and quite a ways from being commercially viable. Nevertheless, Atala combined the revolutionary idea with his organ research, and engineered a printer that could theoretically print human organs, which he demonstrated by printing a human kidney. While it is still very much under development and we aren’t likely to see it implemented for several years, the proof of concept is more than astounding. If the technology works, it could eliminate the organ shortages currently plaguing medical facilities. Instead of having to join a wait list for a donor, patients could just have a new organ printed off for them.

Nano Bots

As technology increases, gadgets get smaller—it’s actually a law in the minds of most computer scientists, known as Moore’s Law. But how small can they get? If you believe science fiction, they will get so small that they can even go into your body and perform medical procedures. Of course, this theory is supported by the ever-shrinking gadgets and gizmos we tote around, but small enough to go inside of your body? That’s just crazy talk.

Nanomedicine

But not according to IBM and the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology in Singapore. These two organizations teamed up to develop the first ever nanomedicine—a tiny robot that can detect the Staph virus, hunt it down and kill it, without harming any healthy cells. Essentially, it works by smashing into the infected cells and bursting their membrane walls. Because the attack is physical, bacteria would not be able to adapt to it and become resistant the way it has with antibiotics, and the nanos are biodegradable so there’s nothing to worry about afterward. When fully developed, the nanomedicine could potentially show up in anti-bacterial soaps, deodorants and sanitizers, as well as in regular clinical use.

Mega Computer

What science fiction novel would be complete without an all-knowing computer to run the show—or at least the ship—all while talking in a calm, calculated computer voice? Of course, everyone knows that with the internet information is more available than ever, so we’re already living in the world of the mega computer, except that it’s actually a bunch of different computers. Still, the internet is confined to your computer, and you have to sort through all of the information yourself—hardly the glamorous life depicted in the books.

Qwiki Video Definitions

That’s where Qwiki comes in. Still under development, this remarkable program can compile and organize information from sources all across the internet and present it in a clear, neat video. Eventually, the program will be able to keep track of your schedule, your whereabouts, or even remind you when you have dinner dates. The program is still in early development, but there’s nothing to stop this technology from turning into a mega computer than runs our lives.

There are lots of other cool, seemingly fictional technologies that aren’t covered in this article. If you’re interested, take a look at regeneration, military robots, prostheses and even synthetic life. It seems the bizarre and wonderful world of the future is almost here.

Thankfully, there are several budget options for students living on a shoestring, and for professors who want to help them out.

Open Source Textbooks

While it may seem like your professor doesn’t care much about your financial situation, the skyrocketing prices of textbooks have driven many professors to use or even write open source textbooks. These volumes are free online resources, and often just as accurate and informative as regular textbooks with the added benefit of interactive material like videos. Some of them are actually just the online versions of the same textbooks used in class, provided by the publisher, but more often they are put together by a volunteer or paid for by grants. Both individual states and the federal government have started putting together incentives for open source textbooks, recognizing the need of students.

There are literally thousands of free textbooks, ranging in quality, available online. Just a few websites where you can find them are:

• Textbook Revolution
• Book Boon
• Flat World Knowledge
• HathiTrust Digital Library

There are some downsides to online textbooks, of course. First of all, they aren’t usually as neatly laid out as their physical counterparts, lacking in the fancy graphics and layout. Secondly, they don’t allow for margin notes or highlighting, which can really disrupt the studying process of some students.

Online/Computer Textbooks

Of course, not all online textbooks are for free. There are also a number of places where you can buy or rent eBooks for a third the price of buying a hardcopy version of the text. Many publishing companies offer online versions of their textbooks with reduced prices, and companies like Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Apple have textbook rental options for their various tablets and readers. Websites like Textbook Media, Kno, CourseSmart.com and CengageBrain.com offer downloadable versions of textbooks for a nominal fee, which assures that students save money while publishers still see a profit margin.

Of course, these textbooks suffer from the same difficulties as the open source ones—most students prefer to have a physical copy, which can be marked up and highlighted. In fact, in recent Student PIRG studies, as many as ¾ of students say they prefer physical copies to digital ones, and only 30% say they would be willing to buy all of their textbooks in digital format. However, nearly 80% said that they would buy at least one textbook in digital form, which suggests that perhaps the medium will pick up as students grow accustomed to it.

Book Rentals

But for those of us who just like the smell of paper and the feel of a full volume in the hand, there are other, cheaper alternatives to the campus bookstore. One of these options is book rentals, which have been instated in some school bookstores and considered in others. The rental system would allow students to pay only about 30% of the price for the book, with the possibility of buying the rest of it later if they decide they want to keep it at the end of the quarter. These systems could save students quite a lot of money, but they are also quite expensive for schools to establish, and require that professors stick with the same text for 2-4 years, limiting their flexibility with material.

Seeing this problem, many online companies have capitalized on the idea of renting textbooks and offer the service for students online. Some of these websites are:

• Chegg.com
• BookRenter.com
• ecampus.com

Each of these companies offers book rentals for a fraction of the full purchase price, with the promise that you’ll return it or pay the rest of the cost at the end of the agreed-upon rental period. One obvious drawback to this set up is that it also limits the amount of marking up and highlighting the student can do, since the book doesn’t belong to him or her, and it also means that the student doesn’t have the book for reference later. However, most students don’t keep their texts anyway—they sell them back to the school or other bookstores. To use this method, you also have to be pretty on top of your game, as the delivery time could mean that you start class without your text.

Ordering Online

Of course, most students have already figured this one out. Online retail sites like Amazon and barter sites like eBay offer prices on books that more than quarter the prices demanded by school bookstores. It can be challenging to find these books online, as many universities hide the ISBN number of their books to prevent just this thing, but recent federal legislation has now made that illegal. Thus, it’s easier than ever to find cheap copies of your book online.

One thing in particular to keep an eye out for is international versions of the assigned textbooks. These books contain the exact same information as the US version, but they’re published in paperback and for less than half the price overseas. Many overseas distributors make a business out of buying these books cheap and shipping them back into the United States, which was ruled legal by the Supreme Court in 1998. If you can get your hands on one of these books, you will be saving yourself quite a bit of money and lose none of the textbook value in the process.

To find textbooks for cheap online, check out these sites. Remember: searching for the text’s ISBN number is the best way to make sure you’re getting the correct edition.

• abebooks.com
• valorebooks.com
• half.com
• textbooks.com
• bigwords.com

eBooks

Of course, textbooks aren’t the only books that students need to buy. Many students majoring in the humanities have to buy fictional or philosophical works that have been around for ages, and while the individual books tend to be pretty cheap, they add up quite a bit over time. Fortunately, most of these “classic” texts have been around long enough to be public domain. That means that nobody owns the rights to the texts, and it is perfectly legal to distribute them for free online. Many companies have taken advantage of this, and you can find free eBook versions of just about any required texts in a classics, English or philosophy class. For starters, try searching these websites:

• eBooks.com
• Google eBookstore
• Project Gutenberg
• ManyBooks.net

Ultimately, finding texts for cheap or even free online isn’t particularly difficult. Mostly, it just takes a little bit of patience, some skill with a search engine and a lot of forward planning. Campus bookstores might still be more convenient, but buying your books over the internet can save you more money than you probably even realize.

But you don’t have to reach back to ancient Greece or Renaissance Europe, or even early 1900s America to see examples of some major philosophical ideas at work. Modern comic book characters often exhibit these belief systems with remarkable detail, and just a brief overview of each hero’s motivations can serve as quite an introduction to these philosophical viewpoints.

Utilitarianism: Ozymandias from Watchmen

If you haven’t read the Watchmen, and you don’t like stories spoiled, you should probably skip this section. In the Watchmen world, Ozymandias is the billionaire smartest-man-in-the-world ex-vigilante who ultimately calls all of the shots, though he does it from behind the scenes. Far too late, his ex-teammates figure out that he was orchestrating the destruction of several of the world’s largest cities, which lead to the death of billions of innocent people. He pins the bombing on Dr. Manhattan, and later explains that his plan was the lesser of two evils: unite the world against an imaginary common enemy by killing billions, or allow it to dissolve into nuclear warfare that would kill everyone.

Regardless of the outcome of Ozymandias’ plan, it’s his motivations that are most fascinating philosophically. His dichotomous view of the world leads to a question at the heart of utilitarianism: which option results in the least harm? While John Stuart Mill, one of utilitarianism’s biggest proponents, might object to the way Ozymandias implements the ideas, he couldn’t argue that it was definitely a utilitarian course of action. The lack of desire for personal gain is most notable here—if Ozymandias were only doing it for his own good, it would be in conflict with the idea of a greater good.

Nihilism: The Comedian from Watchmen

Edward Blake, better known as the Comedian from the Watchmen universe, sees the entire world as a meaningless, cruel joke, which he takes as permission to do whatever he wants whenever he wants without consequence. Essentially, the Comedian has no moral code, and simply sees everyone as an enemy of sorts. While this is a simplified version of his character—he shows several moments of humanity and compassion, especially toward his daughter, Laurie—his complete disregard for others and his firm belief that life has no intrinsic value makes him a poster child for the philosophical ideas of nihilism.

Nihilism comes originally from theological arguments against rationalism, and was initially proposed by Friedrish Heinrich Jacobi. The idea was later further developed by Soren Kierkegaard with the idea that individuals were not inherently valuable, but it didn’t come out in its current form until the famous philosopher Neitzsche got his hands on it. That is when the idea of the world having no intrinsic value first surfaced—the form of nihilism that the Comedian so accurately embodies.

Determinism: Doctor Manhattan from Watchmen

In the Watchmen universe, Doctor Manhattan is essentially a god. After a nuclear accident in his lab, he is blown to bits and then resurrects himself as a mostly all-knowing, all powerful creature. Doctor Manhattan can see into the future, which leads him to believe that nothing can be changed—all that he sees must come to past. He even goes so far as to abandon the planet, knowing that nothing he can do will save it. This resignation is in keeping with one of the founding principles of theological debate: determinism.

Determinism says that everything that happens is pre-ordained (usually by god, but there are some softer theories like biological determinism that merely point out that we have no control over our cells, which make up our every action and decision). There is nothing you can do to fight against determinism—it has already been decided for you, and all you can do it let it happen. This idea comes into direct conflict with the idea of free will, which is why there has been so much theological debate on the subject. While Doctor Manhattan’s version of determinism doesn’t include a god, his firm belief that his visions must come true lead him to believe that he cannot influence what happens in the future and it is better to leave things to their own devices.

Idealism: Superman

Superman is the poster child of comic books. As one of the first comic book heroes, he quickly became a staple image of Americana, and his wild popularity in the 50s was unprecedented. But what is it about Superman that made him so popular? His super strength? His x-ray vision? No—it was his unfailing devotion to do what was right and see the best in people. Despite some questionable writing in the 70s and 80s, Superman has remained a bastion of goodness, almost to the point of pacifism, which makes him an idealist.

Idealism as a philosophy mostly focuses on the value of the human spirit, but it also requires that followers always see the best in people, because all are the same. Superman’s refusal to step outside of his moral box reflects this viewpoint, especially as he is determined to use his powers for good only—never evil. Many superheroes actually fall into this category (Captain America, Spiderman, etc.), but Superman is the biggest and best example because of his iconic status in our culture.

Pragmatism: Iron Man

This runaway-superhero from the Marvel universe is best known for his carelessness and bravado, often flaunting the rules and rolling through attractive young girls on the side. He’s one of the few heroes who doesn’t go to the ends of the earth to conceal his identity as playboy-genius-millionaire Tony Stark, and seems largely driven by impulse. For this reason, you might think he’s a strange choice for pragmatism—a philosophy essentially concerned with reconciling the difference between science and theology through careful consideration and rational thought. But despite his public persona, Stark is actually an intensely introspective person, as well as incredibly scientific. He doesn’t disregard the rules without forethought. He considers consequences. His brashness is often countered by concern for those he cares about and a level of calculated thinking not seen in many other superheroes. In this way, he is practically the walking embodiment of pragmatism, always walking the line between the scientific and the emotional.

*Photo courtesy of wiki commons

You probably already know the regular sources—academic journals, podcasts, online textbooks, even wikipedia (we all do it)—but it’s probably never occurred to you to check blogs. And why would you, really? Blogs get a bad name for unreliability, as most of them are just personal chronicles from people who know very little about their subject. But there’s a growing community of academic bloggers on the Internet, and the Academic Blogs Portal is your best bet for finding them.

What Is It

The Academic Blog Portal is based on a quote from Brad DeLong, a professor at the University of California Berkeley, who described the academic blogosphere as an “invisible college”—a place you could learn everything they teach in college, if only you knew where to look. He stressed the importance of having a varying number of opinions in any academic setting, and how the blogosphere allows even those in politically isolated areas to expand their thoughts and see other viewpoints.

But this “invisible college” was hard to come by. You had to know who to ask and where to look, and collect each specimen on its own to add to the list. Finding the proper blog could be quite a challenge. By putting all of those blogs in one place, sorted in a variety of ways, the Academic Blog Portal seeks to eliminate that challenge, making it easy to find information on just about every academic topic.

How does it work?

The archive is fairly intuitive for anyone familiar with the wikipedia setup, as it works like just about any other archive—by sorting the blogs into categories, which you can use to browse or to home in on the specific material you want. What makes this particular site so useful, though, is that it offers several different organizational schemes for the blogs. You can browse them by subject matter, the home university or country of the blogger, and the language the blog is written in. It even marks the difference between blogs focused on a specific topic and blogs with a more personal bent to them, so you know what you’re getting before you click through.

The subject headers are fairly obvious for the most part, with “humanities,” “sciences,” and “social sciences,” but there’s a bit of a humorous twist to it as well. Vocational blogs are labeled “Professions and Useful Arts,” imply that the others aren’t particularly useful, and thus embodying the kind of gentle teasing that goes on in university settings between disciplines. It also includes a section labeled “These Belong to the Emperor,” which features the blogs that don’t belong in any particular category, including those written anonymously, those no longer getting updates and purely personal blogs from academics. Blogs for university museums, libraries and press releases are also included.

Along with each link to a blog, the site also has a link to a wiki page explaining what the blog is about and who it will be useful to. If you’re not sure about a title, just click the wiki page link and see what the portal has to say about it before you click through.

How are the Blogs?

The blogs featured on the website are all fairly high quality, although the actual academic content is a bit light on some of them. For example, iMechanica in the Engineering section features a lot of quite useful information, complete with the newest news, academic commentaries and a community forum so you can compare ideas. Meanwhile, nOnoScience feels much more like a personal blog, with commentary from the blogger on recent events and even some random off-topic discussions about music or whatever else is on his mind. But that doesn’t mean the website is devoid of useful information. There’s several quite interesting posts, both on fun things like the Batman Equation and more serious topics like thermal science or even student etiquette.

Here are a few of the more prestigious blogs listed on the website:

1. Blog.Bioethics.Net: Written by the editor of The American Journal of Bioethics, this blog keeps abreast of the news in the world of biology, quickly stepping in to comment on the moral and ethical implications of the various discoveries and innovations.
2. Abandoned Footnotes: This blog focuses on the classics, particularly those from ancient Rome and Greece. The author is a political science professor, so he is primarily interested in stories relating to politics and political thought, though he also posts links to more modern topics like social networking. His primary MO seems to be providing links to interesting news and posts elsewhere, so this blog is a great way to keep up on new discoveries and thinking in the political and classical worlds.
3. Civil Warriors: This blog is dedicated to the civil war, and the complex and fascinating history that surrounds it. It aims to work its way through the entire war, covering every imaginable aspect of it. It’s written by a community of bloggers, most of whom have their own sites. The bloggers balance links to other academic sources on the topic with personal stories, like visiting gettysburg.
4. Female Computer Scientist: Written by a female Ph.D. in computer science, this blog covers a range of different computer- and academia-related topics, including a number of posts about the pressure to publish in the academic world.
5. Real Climate: This blog is written by a community of earth science academics, and focused on climate change and the issues facing our environment. Topics range from volcanic activity to software reviews, but all are focused on the planet and how to protect it.