Teaching Co. lectures---cd or dvd or audio download? and what about audiobooks?

[Robin in DFW]

Some of you suggested using TC lectures to accompany The Iliad, The Odyssey, etc...

 

Do you get the cd, dvd, or audio download?

 

Also, how do you incorporate these into the reading of the work? Read a bit, listen a bit, discuss, repeat?

 

We've never used these, but I am considering this for my son over the summer while he's recovering from surgery.

 

Also, if I should have him do an audio book or two...where do I get those?

 

Thanks,

Robin

[regentrude]

We listen to most of the TC lectures in the car on long drives, so we used to get CDs.

Video never worked for us, because we will not take the time to sit down and watch the lectures an do nothing else; the literature one have very few visuals and would not be worth it.

With modern technology, you can also listen to audio downloads from an ipod in the car, so we are now getting them as download and save the shipping cost. DS listens straight from the computer at home, I listen on my ipod, and we listen in the car by plugging the ipod in.

 

We usually read the book first and then listen to the lecture, or at least read ahead. The Vandiver lectures for Homer are fantastic!!! If you want to listen first, it is helpful to be familiar with the story beforehand, but she does a good job summarizing the relevant portion of the work she is going to discuss.

 

Audiobooks: librivox has free audio recordings. Audible is supposed to be great. I buy many on amazon.

Great audiobooks are: Seamus Heaney's reading of his own Beowulf translation and the dramatized Shakespeare plays from Arkangel.

[swimmermom3]

Some of you suggested using TC lectures to accompany The Iliad, The Odyssey, etc...

 

Do you get the cd, dvd, or audio download?

 

Also, how do you incorporate these into the reading of the work? Read a bit, listen a bit, discuss, repeat?

 

We've never used these, but I am considering this for my son over the summer while he's recovering from surgery.

 

Also, if I should have him do an audio book or two...where do I get those?

 

Thanks,

Robin

 

 

Robin, please pm me your address and I will send you my DVDs for the Iliad. I finished them earlier this year with my last student so we are done. You don't really need DVDs for Elizabeth Vandiver's lectures. If you buy hard copies of TC lectures, you can resell them which defrays some of the cost. However, it usually works out financially on some of the less expensive courses to just get a download. Not only do the hard copies cost more but shipping is $10 per course unless you have a free shipping code.

 

You can check the website for help choosing between video and audio. If a course has 200 images, I won't bother. If it is a history course with a 1000 images, I'll probably choose video.

[Julie in MN]

Most of the folks I read about either prefer download (cheaper) or CD (use in the car).

 

We're the oddballs and like DVD. Even though it's usually just a professor standing there, we find that audios just go in one ear and out the other, whereas the videos cause us to focus and give our attention to the speaker.

 

When I do use an audio, I tend to listen to it more than once. This works fine if we're on a long car trip for one listen and then I listen around the house or on short car trips the other time.

 

Julie

[swimmermom3]

Sorry, I forgot the other part of your post.

 

Elizabeth Vandiver lists which book to read with each lecture. For the Iliad, the first two lectures provide background information and then the student would read Books I-II before the third lecture, Books III-VI for the fourth lecture. The Essential Reading assignment appears at the end of the lecture so be sure you look ahead to get the right assignment.

 

You will have a fair amount to talk about from each lecture. There are questions at the end of the lectures, but we seldom used them. We do make copies of lectures for my son to highlight and make notes on. My son really likes her notes compared to some of the other TC professors. I think we took about five weeks per each book of Homer, but this is because of working around the ps schedule where my son attends part time.

 

You asked in another thread about how to incorporate the study of literary elements into individual works. I'll use The Iliad as an example.

 

First, it's good to have a road map and I use the same book regentrude mentioned: Essential Literary Terms with Exercises. We don't do any of the exercises in it. What we do is a bit over the top, but it works for me since my student routinely upsets my plans. A couple of years ago I made a Word document out of the table of contents. Starting this year for his freshman year, any time we come across a literary device, my son reads the appropriate entry in the book and then puts the definition into the Word document. He includes an example of where he found it.

 

In lecture one of the Iliad, you learn that to the Greeks, "epic" meant any long poem in dactylic hexameter. There really isn't a great explanation of dactylic hexameter in ELT, but if I remember right, Dr. Vandiver gives an example and talks about why it doesn't work in English. Ds included that info in the Word document along with a marked line from Homer.

 

Under "epic" my son gave both the ancient Greek definition and the modern definition and he added a list of works as he reads them.

 

There is some terminology that is included in the Iliad lectures that is not in ELT. They'll pop out you when you read the notes. The second lecture talks about oral tradition and some elements that are common to it like "formulas" which can include "epithets" (isn't in ELT, but should be-just add it in). Another term is "type scenes." Spend just a bit of time with what you learn about oral tradition in these lectures and you will develop a better understanding of how some of Hebrew Bible is written. I can send you a list to work from for the Iliad when I send the DVDs.

 

I think I mentioned in the other thread how if you have LLoLOTR, now is a good time to pull out Unit 5 on Exploring Epics and review it. If you don't have it, I can probably find some links that contain the same information.

 

If you are reading the ancients, you are going to probably read at least four epics, so I expect the student to have a good grasp on the what they are and the literary elements that are involved as well as what oral traditions entail and the problems of modern translations. You'll be covering the information over the course of the year and when it is part of your reading, you don't need to do practice exercises. After a while, it will become second nature to be on the lookout for elements to discuss.

 

Because I never really know what my son is going to read, I use our EST list as a road map to show where we have been and where we still need to go. The theory is that by the end of high school, ds will have a good working knowledge of all major literary devices without a lot of painful effort.

 

Well, again that's the theory. :tongue_smilie:

 

Does this make any sense or have I overwhelmed you? I overwhelm myself upon occasion.

[Candid]

We are audio downloaders.

 

I used them differently from most folks. Since I was teaching a Tapestry co-op, I listen for myself and the used the material to teach in co-op. I didn't use it all because the time we had on works was less than the length of the lectures. Instead I culled out bits that worked with the Tapestry discussions. I also used her reading ancient Greek so they got a sense of what it sounded like.

[JumpedIntoTheDeepEndFirst]

We've used both DVD and CD. Only the art history is truly dependent on DVD. I will say that DVD is helpful for the math and science as you can see the equations being worked and relevant images.

 

The downside to downloads is the inability to sell or use a swapping service when you are done. The downloads do transfer easily to iTunes-just follow their directions. The folks at the help desk are both polite and helpful if you run into any issues. The upside is that the kids can't scratch the discs. :)

[Robin in DFW]

Thanks everyone. I can get quite a few of these through ILL. The problem is getting to keep them long enough to get through them! Now, off to look up some audiobook suppliers.