Becoming A Writer Seriously

Last week I wrote a discouraging post about the “dumbing down” of the American public, which is reading less and engaging in substantial conversation almost never at all.

Now here’s the good news:  never in history have so many educational opportunities been easily available to so many around the world.  And that includes us writers, even if we lead busy lives or spend most of our time at home.

Today’s USA Today online edtion carries an enticing article detailing the explosion in college courses and lectures now available online.  And most encouraging is the data about the response of people world-wide to these offerings.  After first pointing to pace-setter Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA Today declares:

MIT’s initiative is the largest, but the trend is spreading. More than 100 universities worldwide, including Johns Hopkins, Tufts and Notre Dame, have joined MIT in a consortium of schools promoting their own open courseware. You no longer need a Princeton ID to hear the prominent guests who speak regularly on campus, just an Internet connection. This month, Yale announced it would make material from seven popular courses available online, with 30 more to follow.” 

We ourselves been following these developments in this blog over the past year.  The information bears repeating, gathered together here as we reflect about the coming year.  Several times we’ve pointed readers to the best source of information about this arena:  Open Culture, a guide to smart media  This blog, hosted by a professor at Stanford University, really keeps its readers up-to-date about university lectures available online.  During the upcoming year, we’ll try to pinpoint such lectures that may interest writers.  If any of you readers uncover such lectures, please share the information with our community of readers.

Apple’s iTunes serves as a host for universities and has even set up a special section of its online store to handle these lectures, some in audio, some in video  For example, Standord is currently offering via iTunes several streaming audio lectures of interest to writers:

• An Evening with Leonard Cohen and Philip Glass  
• The Future of Theater in America:  Are We in Peril?  
• History in the Hands of Playwright August Wilson  
• Sex, Lies and the Theater:  Shakespeare for Today  

Some universities offer courses via other websites.  UC-Berkeley lectures are hosted at YouTube.  Open Culture keeps a full listing of such sites, and readers can subscribe to email notices and RSS feeds to keep up-to-date.

Online learning opportunities, however, stretch well beyond the university offerings.  YouTube hosts a very interesting series of lectures sponsored by Google,, including Google’s scintillating Author at Google series.

More directly aimed at writers are downloadable videos and online courses offer by  a number of organizations.  Mediabistro, an organization I encourage every freelance writer and journalist to join, offers from its website a growing list of videos, taken at its various workshops around the country, along with full online courses, at Mediabistro On Demand.  Writer’s Digest offers online courses that will intrigue fiction writers and poets, as well as free-lancers, at its Writers Online Workshops.  You’ll also find videos from the BookExpo America conference, co-sponsored by Writer’s Digest. 

Another route to stimulation are, of course, writers conferences.  However, you no longer must travel to have access to the lectures.  Read our previous post A Writer’s Conference in Your Living Room, to learn where to find them.

Yes, US TODAY is correct:  there is a revolution in learning going on.  Join it!

Technorati Tags: online learning

Share This

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

 Email This Post