|
 |
MIT OpenCourseWare Chinese | ||
Tags: Mandarin | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| mpete16 Diglot Groupie Germany Joined 5521 days ago 98 posts - 114 votes  Speaks: Tagalog, English* Studies: German | Message 1 of 9 17 October 2009 at 6:15pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Hello everyone,
I noticed that there is a Chinese Course on MIT OpenCourseWare. I haven't tried it yet (I'm busy learning German), but I looked at the online textbook (in PDF form), and it looks quite interesting. The last chapter looks pretty advanced, to my eyes, at least. The whole thing consist of 4 courses. I searched the forum to see if anyone has mentioned it, but it looks unheard of. Anyway I'm just posting this to let you guys know about it. Here's the URL for Chinese 1 (21F.101): http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Foreign-Languages-and-Literatures/ 21F-101Spring-2006/CourseHome/index.htm The links to the other 3 courses are on that page as well. MIT OCW is also great for learning lots of other things, by the way. Edited by administrator on 17 October 2009 at 7:14pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Woodpecker Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5810 days ago 351 posts - 590 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written), Arabic (Egyptian) Studies: Arabic (classical) | Message 2 of 9 17 October 2009 at 6:35pm | IP Logged | ||
|
You haven't been a member long enough to be able to post working links.
Here you are. I'm not totally convinced of the usefulness of open courseware. I use it to look into classes at my university when I'm trying to decided what to take, but I don't know that it works so well in terms of actually learning something, especially a language or something else that requires a lot of important work be done in class (i.e. lab science). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mpete16 Diglot Groupie Germany Joined 5521 days ago 98 posts - 114 votes Speaks: Tagalog, English* Studies: German | Message 3 of 9 18 October 2009 at 10:21am | IP Logged | ||
I agree. MIT OpenCourseWare can't replace a real MIT education. But at least they will give you a head start in college, you'll be better off than people who start college with no idea what an algorithm is. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6010 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 4 of 9 20 October 2009 at 11:29am | IP Logged | ||
|
The "Creative Commons" movement is a bit of a joke, and OCW is a good example of how.
You've got what almost amounts to a complete course, but no way to fill in the last few gaps. A tutor or night-class teacher could do it, but they´re not allowed to because that would be commercial use (not permitted under the particular license selected by OCW). They've clarified on the site that what they mean by commercial is a paid-for service, so in-company training departments can use it, but only the very biggest companies have substantial in-house training -- most companies hire specialist external training companies. Google has demonstrated that the principle of "share-alike" gets lost when material is used in-house (Google's technology is built on open-source software, but because the software stays in-house, the source code stays in-house too) so actually the MIT definition of non-commercial is much less use to the wider community than allowing commercial exploitation (which they couldn't have done). It's only any use to school teachers and independent learners. The chances are it'll stay incomplete. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6767 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 5 of 9 20 October 2009 at 1:27pm | IP Logged | ||
Copyright licenses cover distribution, not usage. A tutor or teacher absolutely could use the material so long as the students downloaded it on their own. An analog would be GPL software, which can be used and modified by anyone for any purpose, but people or companies distributing it are supposed to follow certain stipulations. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6010 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 6 of 9 20 October 2009 at 6:34pm | IP Logged | ||
Yes, but any course based around the material would be a "derivative work", and therefore subject to the same license conditions. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| RedKing'sDream Diglot Groupie United States Joined 5798 days ago 53 posts - 68 votes Speaks: English*, Russian Studies: Ukrainian | Message 7 of 9 21 October 2009 at 6:44am | IP Logged | ||
|
So it is or isn't ok to use the course?
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6010 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 8 of 9 21 October 2009 at 11:14am | IP Logged | ||
I've been thinking about this again
GPL software is a poor analogy, as it explicitly allows commercial exploitation. As for copyright law, correct: that covers distribution, not usage. However, you're looking at this from a buyer's perspective. When you buy something, you create an effective contract of sale, and that contract gives you certain rights. However, as OCW is free (absolutely free, not as in "free inside" a paid-for magazine/cereal box), you have made no contract of sale. This means the contractual terms have to come from somewhere else -- in this case the following page: http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/terms/terms/index.htm and in particular: http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/terms/terms/index.htm#noncomm RedKing's Dream, I'm not a lawyer, and I personally wouldn't want to use the materials as a teacher without speaking to one first. 1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
