Staying smart, e-learning, and living in a foreign country

So having just graduated most students would luxuriate in the lack of material they have to process on a daily basis. After years of education and learning I was initially quite satisfied to be free from the world of education and curriculum. Having started teaching English I get to see curriculum from the other side and try and figure out ways to transfer the knowledge from myself to my students. However, teaching five year olds the basics of English pronunciation and grammar can become somewhat tedious after years of analyzing the history of ancient civilizations and the pantheon of human thought.

That being said I have a keen interests in staying active in my intellectual pursuits and sometimes all I really want is some English content which is a little more complex than the formulaic C movies they are so fond of playing on the television here. As such, there's a number of things I've been doing to stay in touch with acedemia besides developping my teaching skills. The most useful and vital point of access for me has been the internet and in particular the number of excellent podcasts available on the internet. As such I list my top 5 listens and give a brief synopsis of each.

1. TVO Big Ideas - an online discussion series free from the television of TVO to your headphones. The topics are quite broad and written for an educated audience who might not be familiar with particular technical aspects of the discussion.

2. Stanford Faculty Lectures - Similar to Big Ideas, although the sound quality is a lot more spotty and sometimes the lectures are not written as much for a public audience

3. This Week in Tech (TWiT) - An IT news and commentary show with the latest in news from a number of in the know journalists. Hosted by Leo Laporte from TechTV my favorite personnage on the show has to be the always grouchy John C. Dvorak

4. CBC Radio: The Best of Ideas - Similar to the TVO series of lectures I find the topics are generally of less critical analysis and will sometimes venture into the realms of fancy and speculation. Nonetheless, a good show for interesting talking points. The show hosted by Paul Kennedy is fond of issuing series of discussions including one on organic food, healing through mindfulness, and a history of leftist thought.

5. IT conversations - not one podcast but many separate discussions check out the Accelerating Change 2005, and Globeshakers with Tim Zak. It's a part of the Gigavox Media network.

As a side note you may want to download an RSS feed reader which is a program that downloads many of these podcasts. Myself I use iTunes to manage my audio files and RSS feeds but there are many other sources available online.