coursera

Day 339: Meet the Beatles

The Beatles.

The Beatles.

My family and I recently took a road trip to Las Vegas, which meant I had to get into DJ mode for the ride. Back in the day that meant collecting cassettes (!) or CDs, but now it’s loading up the phone with playlists or stocking up the car’s built-in CD library with music. I opted for the latter, since it was the fastest method.

I had two Beatles greatest hits compilations (I still have the vinyl versions of the collections and I re-bought them on CD decades ago). Not surprisingly, they got the most play to and from Vegas

It’s fun listening to the songs, since so many of them have been ingrained into our collective consciousness. My parents grew up during the midst of Beatlemania and I remember my dad playing his Beatles 8-tracks on occasion, particularly this song.

Even though I was born after the Beatles had broken up, I still knew most of their catalog by heart. I never owned many of their albums (Revolver and the White Album are the only ones I have now; I really need to get Abbey Road some day), but their music always seemed to make itself into my life. I’ve always had a deep appreciation for them and this only grew after I took an online course on their music. I’d highly recommend checking out that class.

Day 48: Two on Tuesday

Statement of Accomplishment from coursera.com

Statement of Accomplishment from coursera.com

Two things that made my Tuesday:

1. I received my Statement of Accomplishment (with Distinction) for completing the U.S Department of State and the University of Oregon’s online course Shaping the Way We Teach English 1: The Landscape of English Language Teaching. I enjoyed this class on coursera.com so much that I immediately enrolled in second part of the course that started last week.

2. I got another shout-out from two of my favorite social media personalities Phil Yu and Jenny Wang during their Fresh Off the Boat post-show chat. I could get used to these weekly 15 seconds of Internet fame. I’ll wait until at least next week before hiring an agent.

Day 26: Back to School

rolling-stones-no-2-uk-cover

The Rolling Stones

 

In a future post I’ll write more about coursera.com, the online learning university that offers free classes from colleges worldwide, but for now let me say this: it’s one of my favorite things about the Internet. I’ve taken college-level courses in computer science, English, and music appreciation over the last two years and have been surprised at how sophisticated the classes are, as well as fascinated by the technology that makes MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) possible.

I’m currently enrolled in two courses. Through the University of Oregon, I’m taking Shaping the Way We Teach English 1: The Landscape of English Teaching. I’m halfway through the class and it’s been enlightening and beneficial; perfect for my line of work.

Through the University of Rochester, I’m taking The Music of the Rolling Stones, 1962-1974. I’ve taken other music appreciation classes with Professor John Covach and so far, this one is just as good as the others. The one thing this class has reminded me of is how young the Rolling Stones were at the beginning of their career. When I saw them back in 1990s, they were already considered old by rock standards, but it turned out that they had decades worth of farewell tours left in them.