The new spring semester UC Berkeley classes are up on iTunesU, and you can see them on the webcast.Berkeley site if you click here.
A few old friends are back.
Principles of Economics, J. Bradford DeLong (iTunes, course website)
DeLong gives Berkeley students the benefit his sharp wit and dry humor in this intro to economics. As in the past, DeLong provides open access on his website to lots of additional course materials such as lecture slides, lecture notes and problem sets.
Introduction to Biological Anthropology, Terrence Deacon (iTunes)
Deacon is back with one of my all-time favorite classes. In the past his class (iTunes) was a fascinating mix of biology, genetics, animal ethology and anthropology.
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Darla;
Hello again from the frozen tundra.
Do you know of a way to download Berkeley courses without the use of iTunes? iTunes won’t let me access the site through them until I upgrade my iTunes. The last time I upgraded it, iTunes trashed my entire folder of lectures (but not podcasts), and started anew with an empty folder. It was painful (read ‘long and boring’) restoring the folder.
I’ve contacted their site, and they responded with the typical Apple attitude that they know what’s best for me, and what’s best is to upgrade and let the chips fall where they may. That sounds a little drastic to me, so I’m looking for another way. The only way that I’ve found so far is to access their current classes, which use Shockwave, and are non-downloadable. The reason that I want to download them is that I enjoy them, and use them to keep me from getting agitated during my long commutes.
Thanks, and keep up the good work!
Ham
Hi Ham,
I feel your pain. I too have had my problems with iTunes, but not as dramatic as yours. I have a few suggestions.
1. Try to solve the iTunes problem (after you make a full backup of your iTunes folder). iTunes has such a wide selection of lectures, it’s sad to be without it. I’ve found it useful to simply “ask Mr. Google” when I have a tech problem. In this case I googled “iTunes wiped my files” and got a lot of results and possible solutions.
2. Get the Berkeley classes on YouTube. Most of the classes are also posted on YouTube, but you have to go through the hassle of downloading the video and then converting to either mp3 audio or mp4 video for a portable player.
Check out these posts:
http://diyscholar.wordpress.com/2008/09/12/how-to-download-streaming-audio-and-video-part-1/
http://diyscholar.wordpress.com/2008/09/14/how-to-download-streaming-audio-and-video-part-2/
http://diyscholar.wordpress.com/2009/10/07/a-nifty-download-manager/