We’re pleased to announce the launch of our new Moodle e-learning website for Stoic Practice:
Modern Stoicism
Anyone can register on this site and we’d like as many people as possible to take part in the development forum, while we refine the design of our forthcoming e-learning course on Stoic practice. We plan to pilot the new course in about six weeks’ time, hopefully. Please share your ideas and give us feedback on the sample course materials that will be posted shortly. In the meantime, there are a few bits and pieces to look at and a lot more to come over the next few days. For example, check out this HTML5 slideshow of Epictetus’ Handbook in plain English. Well, the first few paragraphs, at least. Would you like to have the whole thing in this format? Does it work okay on tablets and other devices?
Slideshow: Epictetus’ Stoic Handbook
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I found the slide show of Epictetus’ Stoic Handbook extremely helpful. It worked very well for me in this format…
Catherine Boyle
I too thought the slide show was great – both in format and content. I was able to read it from my iPhone which was very convenient.
I especially appreciate that the slide show ends with a practical exercise to develop the concepts. This seems like it would make it an effective learning tool.
You wrote, “Would you like to have the whole thing in this format?”
I would prefer not to have the whole thing in this format. An alternative I’d prefer would be a downloadable file I can open with Google Drive or LibreOffice. It can still be a slideshow-style presentation, but in its current form, these are the drawbacks:
– unknown presentation length (11 slides or 100 slides?), making personal planning/pacing difficult
– no previous-slide, first-slide, last-slide options, making real-time review cumbersome, especially when more than 11 slides are there to cycle through
– click-anywhere-to-advance feature, making copy+paste for notes impossible and keyboard shortcuts impossible, too
– next-slide animation, again, slowing real-time review
– no window resize options, limiting options for the visually-challenged or easily-distracted
Please note I highly respect your efforts and the content you’ve produced. It’s why I’m taking the time that I am to help make it even better.
Thanks, Samuel. I should clarify: it’s not either/or; we’ll have more than one format. So there will be downloadable files as well. As for the slides… We can specify the number easily enough. It’s also fairly easy to add navigation buttons – this is just a prototype and those can be added in later. Actually, it’s not impossible to copy the contents – you just have to be quick. You can copy it from the plain text version anyway, if we supply that for download. Window-resize: it might be possible to go full-screen, I’ll look into it.
I think most of those issues are solved just by providing a link to an optional plain text (or similar) download, which was the plan anyway, time permitting! 🙂
Best,
Donald
Thanks for the reply, Donald. I’m pleased to hear an alternative form of the slideshow will be available. I don’t know if plain text files conserve formatting like bullets and bold type, but it will be nice for review and reference.
Thanks, again, for making this course happen. Judging by the introductions in the course forum, there’s a clear demand for this material.
Thanks. Well, there’s a form of plain text called “Markdown”, using a minimal form of mark-up, that preserves formatting including bullets and bold type. It converts very easily into HTML and other formats but is easier on the eye for human readers than HTML. So, I’ve just put the Stoic Week 2013 Handbook in Markdown.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markdown
This is good. Have been using paper copy of the Handbook since December and it is falling to pieces. Keep doing the daily exercises – each time I get a deeper insight. For me it is everyday I begin again!