Open Culture

Open Culture is an online community that brings together hundreds of different high-quality cultural and educational media resources. It basically consolidates and organizes any kind of educational content out there and designates it to a course, e.g., Spanish, Physics, Literature, etc. They've been featured in the New York Times along with other online learning communities, including Busuu.com and Fluenz. Dan Colman started Open Culture in 2006. He's an extremely educated guy who, in his creation of Open Culture, has been following his passion by "bringing relevant, perspective-changing information to large audiences..." (All of us in APOC can understand from our Monday night guest speakers the importance of creating a community about something you're passionate about).

Last week I emailed Open Culture to inquire about a possible internship opportunity. Later that day, I received a direct email from Dan himself wanting to talk over the phone next week about a potential internship and some ideas that I may have in improving Open Culture's site. I couldn't be more excited to discuss with someone who has already established an online learning community! After perusing through Open Culture's site for some weeks now, I'm mostly disappointed in the inability for users to be able to make comments on the site's resources and material for a specific course, video, or podcast. Especially as a Spanish teacher, I want to be able to view immediately what resource works and doesn't work and why. And I want to know about it from a user's genuine perspective. Have a look yourselves: Open Culture. Please feel free to share with me (and Dan) about what you think!