What are you learning?

[Feba]

It seems to me that most of us are constantly engaged in learning something; a few of us are in school, and most of you seem to keep studying stuff well after you graduated. There've been plenty of resources and links posted before, but I think it would be good for there to be a central thread for us to discuss stuff, share resources, get encouragement and so on.

Personally, having entered college four years ago, I am finally... a freshman. Yay. So I've finished up my first semester in an LL.B, grades not as terrible as I expected (two classes not in yet, B- in Criminal Law, B in Statistics, B+ in Minnan Chinese, A- in Constitutional law, A+ in Chinese).

All of the resources I'm going to mention are free, although non-free resources are welcome as well

So I'm on break now, catching up on my Anki ( Anki - powerful, intelligent flashcards ) decks, mostly in Japanese and Chinese.

Also in languages, I've been using Duolingo | Learn Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian and English for free to learn some French. Their options are slightly limited right now, but they're a very robust site, and they do a good job of gamification. http://fsi-language-courses.org/ has more varied and and in depth resources, although the material is harder to use and navigate.

I've also been using Khan Academy to fix my poor as shit math skills; I mentioned to some classmates last semester that I probably have the shittiest math skills in the entire school, and I was not kidding; any local with math skills as bad as mine would have zero chance of doing well enough on the college exams, and I doubt any of the other foreign students are worse (why my math skills are so bad is a long story, suffice to say I would probably fail an algebra final at this point, if my school even offered that). I'm not proud of that, and if I decide to take a minor or second major later on, I would likely require a calculus course (my only math requirement in this branch is covered by statistics); even if I never really need it though, I just want to not have such terrible math skills.

I'm also intending on using Khan for random liberal arts education, and to try (yet again) to get a start in CS. Learn to code | Codecademy is another resource there, although I haven't touched it much. Semi related, I'd like to pick up excel sometime too, Free Excel Training! | Learn Excel Online | ExcelExposure.com looks promising for that. Of course there's MIT's OCW too MIT OpenCourseWare | Free Online Course Materials



So DIV, what have you been studying lately? Any brilliant resources you've found out there?

[cidbahamut]

Re: What are you learning?

The closest I've come to properly continuing my education as of late has been reading Twentieth Century by Howard Zinn and learning a bit more about the darker details of American history that the schools always skipped over. It's been enlightening on a number of levels, but mostly it makes me despair for our education system as a lot of what I'm reading seems terribly relevant to the dilemmas we find our country facing today. Maybe if we weren't sanitizing all our history lessons we wouldn't be making the same mistakes again and again.

[Feba]

Re: What are you learning?

Speaking of history, I'd be remiss not to mention Crash Course. I think most of us have heard of it, and it's also available through Khan Academy, but Crash Course has been one of the best refreshers in history I've come across, not to mention giving a perspective somewhat different than you might get in school.

I can't say it's taught me a bunch of things I didn't know, but it's definitely cleared up some things I was vague on, and helps to tie things together. They also have biology and chemistry, which I'd like to go over some time too.

[Malacite]

Re: What are you learning?

That reminds me, I REALLY need to find those French lessons I got from the govt.

It's really bad that I'm not perfectly bilingual when half my family is French (I hated it in school and all my relatives spoke mostly french when I was little, so I felt isolated and resentful towards the language. Brother did too.)


Not sure about picking up Japanese again, maybe when I've got some money to blow and can find a big discount on Rosetta Stone or something. Live Mocha was OK but I didn't like it quite as much (and RS owns them now).

[Feba]

Re: What are you learning?

It's been over a year and a half, and you still haven't pirated Rosetta Stone? Hell, Rosetta Stone isn't even the best way to pick up Japanese... you could be having conversations in Japanese and reading manga by now if you had simply put your time into it.

I can understand your feelings towards French, being that I'm somewhat in the same boat with Spanish. Still, this is a problem with effort, not resources. With the internet, there is such an abundance of resources that there is no excuse not to pick up a language so common if you wish to.

[Jarre]

Re: What are you learning?

My job means I am continually doing CPD (continual professional development) in researching new materials and ways of construction.

[Mezlo]

Re: What are you learning?

I learn more and more about you little freaks every day

[Aksannyi]

Re: What are you learning?

Unfortunately, taking the semester off from my degree-seeking ways due to a transcript snafu. (Still kind of pissed about that...) But I will be majoring in Secondary Education - English when I return for the summer semester.

I have been planning to learn German though, since my boyfriend was born in Germany and still has family there. I just want to know it. I will take a look at some of those resources you posted. Khan is also a great resource, we learned about that in one of my Ed prerequisite courses last semester.

I don't have any amazing resources now, but this thread has great potential.

[Feba]

Re: What are you learning?

I forgot to mention https://www.coursera.org/ , apparently. Not something I'm using myself, but looks promising.

Yeah, Aks, for German Duolingo should be quite good; FSI might be a bit harder to use, but because it's all government stuff it tends to be a very good meat and potatoes basis for your language learning. There's also deutsch.info - Learn German online for free! Courses, exercises, grammar, media library and practical information. you can check out, although I haven't played with it myself.

I should also note that reddit is a great place for finding a ton of resources and a community to ask questions of.

[Aksannyi]

Re: What are you learning?

Sweet. I will definitely check it out. There were a couple good sites posted on Tumblr that I have yet to look through, too, but I should be well on my way to learning my fourth language. (Though not sure if I can count French, since I forgot so much of the vocabulary.)

Since I was stationed in Germany in 2003-2004, I did learn a handful of words so I have a very slight head start, better than I was when I started learning Spanish. I love learning languages. Also, since I have a native speaker, I will have someone to practice with on the regular, which is really useful, though I'll admit that the idea of just out of nowhere one day hauling off with excellent German and surprising the hell out of him would also be awesome.

[Feba]

Re: What are you learning?

I do that to mess with people. "...you speak Japanese?" is a running theme. It's a lot of fun, but I wouldn't push it too far. I would get to the point where you can give a short speech (self introduction type stuff), and then ask for his help. One of the benefits of my ex, learning Chinese. Wouldn't squander that resource for too long.

Also, learn how to have sex in German. He'll appreciate it, and you'll get plenty of practice.

[DakAttack]

Re: What are you learning?

oh ja, das ist ein gutes gefühl, legen sie ihre sturmwurst in meinem hitlerbierkrugführer

[Mezlo]

Re: What are you learning?

oh ja, das ist ein gutes gefühl, legen sie ihre sturmwurst in meinem hitlerbierkrugführer

die einzige besseres Gefühl ist eine junge attraktive Frau serviert Ihnen eine große Bier und dann Reiben Sie Ihre Füße oder andere Körperteil

[Caspian]

Re: What are you learning?

Also, learn how to have sex in German. He'll appreciate it, and you'll get plenty of practice.

My penis has enough trouble getting enough practice in English. Finding the time and proper classmates to be bilingual is gonna be damned near impossible.

[Feba]

Re: What are you learning?

Took a look over at https://www.coursera.org/ and signed up to try out a few courses;

starting soon:
https://www.coursera.org/course/gamification
https://www.coursera.org/course/conlaw
https://www.coursera.org/course/understandingterror

and starting in a month or two:
https://www.coursera.org/course/europe
https://www.coursera.org/course/intlcriminallaw
https://www.coursera.org/course/interactivepython

Wish I'd known about some of this stuff earlier, and I might have to let this stuff slide to focus on my actual classes, but still very neat.