Category: Learning

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Bookmark this online book resource

Does anyone still bookmark sites? (I rarely do since I got Pinboard.in, worth every penny of the one-time fee. You can also set it up to automatically save the links you ‘favorite’ from Twitter.)

Either way, keep a hold of this link:

Princeton Theological Seminary’s Theological Commons

As some of you have noticed, when I post a public-domain book, I link to the read-in-browser version, hosted at the Internet Archive. Internet Archives worked with Princeton Theological Seminary to scan and host more than 33,000 items. (A recent fire at their scanning plant cost $600,000 in damage; give if you can.) You can read these at Internet Archive, but I think the search feature at the Theological Commons, and since I seek out theologial works, that improved experience — including searching within books — is a big help. (You then get forwarded to Internet Archive.) And there are plenty of interesting works there.

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Where I learned the most at the University of Georgia

With due respect and recognition to my excellent teachers at the University of Georgia, the best education I got — certainly the most sustained and character-forming part of my education — was in my membership in the Demosthenian Literary Society, the University’s oldest student organization. Something like a mix between a fraternity and a debate club. Tomorrow is its 209th anniverary; tonight is its All Night Meeting, which also serves as its alumni reunion. I wish I could be there. I made some of my oldest and dearest friends while “cultivat[ing] a correct mode of speaking and qualify[ing] through practice to express our views in an effective manner.”

I mention the Society less to reminisce than to think of the kinds of experiences non-residential college students miss, and the thrust towards online-delivery education. I don’t disapprove of online delivery, because without it some people — more and more I bet — won’t get a post-secondary education at all. So I’m suggesting real-life and social supplementation like my own well-loved society. Not such an odd idea: workingmen’s, mechanics’ and ladies’ literary societies once peppered the country and were unrelated to colleges. They could be free-standing or related to another organization, like a church. A thought.

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Self-learning and independent scholarship links

I’m quickly running down a web-search hole following up on my last post about alternatives to college. I’ve been thinking about this subject since the 1980s and even considered an alternative-to-college, though much lower tuitions and a pieced-together scholarship package let me go to the University of Georgia at very little cost. But I graduated 20 years ago next month, and it’s far more expensive now.

Rather than opine about what I’ve found, I’ll just list the resources. Some are about learning alternatives; some are about service alternatives.