Literati agenda: “Stanford rector on learning and technology… “Teaching The Humanities Online

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http://news.stanford.edu/news/2015/may/academic-council-teaching-050115.htmlStanford Report, May 1, 2015
Academic Council considers role of technology in teaching and learning
The role of technology in teaching and learning was the focus of President
John Hennessy’s annual address to the Academic Council on Thursday. Also
announced was the upcoming 2015-16 Year of Learning, which will spur
discussion about teaching, learning and research in the 21st century.BY KATE CHESLEY

Interactive, online technology will play an increasingly important role in
improving higher education. But first, credentialing challenges must be
overcome; mastery of subject areas must be demonstrated and lower costs
must be achieved without sacrificing quality.

So many online courses concentrate on hard sciences and practical skills. How about the humanities? Laura Gibbs, who teaches two purely online courses for the University of Oklahoma, most certainly qualifies as a humanities enthusiast: Dr. Gibbs, who I first met as “OnlineCrsLady” via Connected Courses, teaches purely online courses about mythology and folklore and epics of ancient India.  Dr. Gibbs blogs in Latin, translated Aesop’s Fables for Oxford University Press, and her LOLcats in Latin is probably her biggest Internet meme claim to fame. She is proudest of “a huge collection of Aesop’s fables in Latin: “Mille Fabulae et Una: 1001 Aesop’s Fables in Latin.” That book, along with the other books I have written for Latin students and teachers, can be downloaded as free PDFs: PDF.BestLatin.net.”

Picasso-mainimage

A Cubist masterpiece by the legendary Pablo Picasso, painted in 1955, just blasted through all records to become the world’s most expensive painting ever sold at auction — at an eye-popping $160 million

From the David Rumsey Map Collection, a remarkable timeline/history of the world from 4004 BC to 1881 called Adams’ Synchronological Chart. This is just a small bit of it:

Locus Award finalists announced


The Locus Award — nominated and voted by science fiction fans — has publisheda particularly fine shortlist this year (in contrast to the hijacked Hugo Award ballot); I’m extremely proud to see my novella The Man Who Sold the Moon fromHieroglyph on the list. Read the rest

What insanity looks like

2161762323_983946a7ca_oIn the Paris Review, a fascinating, dense, and heavily illustrated history of how we’ve depicted insanity through imagery, written by sociologist Andrew T. Scull, author of numerous books on madness, hysteria, and culture. Read the rest

Red Book

Jorge Luis Borges specialized in envisioning the unenvisionable: a map the same size as the land it depicts, an event whose possible outcomes all occur simultaneously, a single point in space containing all other points in space, a vast library containing all possible books. That last, the setting, subject, and title of his short story “The Library of Babel,” has given readers much to think about since its first publication in 1941, and in recent decades has done more than its part to bolster Borges’ posthumous reputation as a seer of our unprecedentedly rich but often difficult-to-navigate new media landscape.

German Nobel laureate Guenter Grass dies at 87

Guenter-grass

BERLIN — Guenter Grass, the Nobel-winning German writer, has died aged 87

Matthias Wegner, spokesman for the Steidl publishing house, confirmed that Grass died Monday morning in a Luebeck hospital.

 

German author Günter Grass died on Monday in Lübeck, aged 87. The press praises the Nobel literature laureate as an incommodious voice who embodied the contradictions of German history.

German author Guenter Grass dies

Guenter Grass, German Nobel literature prize winner and author of The Tin Drum, has died aged 87.

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