My name is Edward Tanguay.
I have a Bachelors degree in Philosophy, a Masters in Education, and am currently working as a web developer in Berlin, Germany.

I watch over 200 college-level MOOC lectures per year in subjects such as history , psychology, science, religion, art, philosophy, and IT development in English, German, French, Spanish and Italian, and record my notes here.
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Learning Activity by Month:


The primary goal of this Learn Tracker project is to build a web site which serves as one place to record the notes of everything that I am learning from MOOC classes, to foreign languages, to useful code examples and technical how-to notes, so that I not only have an overview of what I have learned, but can search and recall these notes at any time.

The secondary goal of this Learn Tracker project is to work together with companies, universities, and MOOC providers to build software that allows employees, students, and learners to record what they are learning in an efficient way so that it serves not only as (1) a record of what they have learned, but also (2) a place for them to review and search what they have learned.

Since January 2013, I have watched and recorded notes on over 300 MOOC lectures from over 30 different courses in both English and French, and have watched and recorded notes and flashcards on over 50 foreign language videos in Italian, French and Spanish. (I am curently still adding notes I took from 2013 and plan to be caught up by the end of January 2014.

October 2013 Learn Certificate
Watched and took notes on 17 college lectures:
Tuesday, October 1, 2013
Watched and took notes on MOOC lecture:
A BRIEF HISTORY OF HUMANKIND, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
if human rights are just a story that we create and believe, isn't there a danger that the social order will collapse?
the answer is yes, which is why the social order of humans is much less stable that the social order of chimpanzees, or wolves, or ants which have their rigid social structures, i.e. how to deal with large numbers of strangers, hard-coded into their genes, and it is why we humans have had so many revolutions and wars and upheavals in our history whereas animals haven't
yet the social order cannot be changing all the time, otherwise you could not build cities, kingdoms, empires and modern states
therefore humans invest a lot of time, effort and money in stabilizing the social order and the stories that uphold the social order
physical force... view all notes
Wednesday, October 2, 2013
Watched and took notes on MOOC lecture:
THE FALL AND RISE OF JERUSALEM, Tel Aviv University
fertile crescent
cradle of ancient Middle Eastern civilizations
4500-2000 BC: rise of civilization
social and economic powers grew on both sides of the crescent
Sumer, Akkad, Babylonia, Phoenicia, Assyria and Egypt were the dominant cultures until around 335 BC with the conquests of Alexander the Great... view all notes
Thursday, October 3, 2013
Watched and took notes on MOOC lecture:
INITIATION À LA PROGRAMMATION EN JAVA, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
ces différentes parties sont composées à
l'aide du signe plus
si on veut affichez un saut de ligne, on utilise la commande println, autrement on utilise la commande print
on peut aussi afficher un valeur d'une expressions
pour faire un addition des numéros dans une chaîne, on doit utiliser les parenthèses... view all notes
Friday, October 4, 2013
Watched and took notes on MOOC lecture:
A HISTORY OF THE WORLD SINCE 1300, Princeton University
pepper, from preciosity to necessity
the way we use pepper today:
from berry, harvested green
left to ferment to allow the skin to flake off, so the insides can darken and shrivel
crucial for masalas in India and grilled meats in the Arab world, and Romans loved their pepper... view all notes
Saturday, October 5, 2013
Watched and took notes on MOOC lecture:
A BRIEF HISTORY OF HUMANKIND, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
throughout history, in order to build a large kingdom or city or modern state, humans needed (1) enough food, (2) an imagined order, and (3) techniques for storing large amounts of information
up until the agricultural revolution, all information needed was stored in the human brain
but as societies grew larger and larger, two things happened
1. amounts of necessary information also grew which had to be stored
e.g. a town of 5,000 requires much more information processing than a band of 50 people... view all notes
Monday, October 7, 2013
Watched and took notes on MOOC lecture:
SøREN KIERKEGAARD: SUBJECTIVITY, IRONY AND THE CRISIS OF MODERNITY, University of Copenhagen
Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
first existentialist philosopher
fondness for metaphor, irony and parables
how one lives as a "single individual"
priority to concrete human reality over abstract thinking... view all notes
Tuesday, October 8, 2013
Watched and took notes on MOOC lecture:
INITIATION À LA PROGRAMMATION EN JAVA, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
le type des expressions est important
si j'écris la valeur 1, cette valeur est de type int
si j'écris 1.0, cette valeur est de type double
on peut écrire 2e3, et c'est équivalent à 2 fois 10 puissance 3, c'est-à-dire 2000
un piège... view all notes
Wednesday, October 9, 2013
Watched and took notes on MOOC lecture:
A BRIEF HISTORY OF HUMANKIND, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
history after the agriculture revolution can largely be understood by answering this question: how did humans organize themselves into large cooperative networks when they lack the instinctive ability necessary to sustain such networks?
the short answer to this question is that humans created imagined orders and invented writing which filled the gaps left by our biological inheritance
what were the impacts of these mass cooperation networks on the lives and relations of humans
for many, the appearance of these mass networks were a dubious blessings
these imagined orders were neither neutral nor fair... view all notes
Thursday, October 10, 2013
Watched and took notes on MOOC lecture:
EXPLORING BEETHOVEN'S PIANO SONATAS, Curtis Institute of Music
Beethoven was the first composer who had models to follow
although he may have dislike some of his employers, musically, at least, he had all the tools to thrive within the system
notably bad at taking orders
would have made a terrible court composer
was able to make decisions about his music in a way that Haydn and Mozart never could, particularly in their youth... view all notes
Friday, October 11, 2013
Watched and took notes on MOOC lecture:
A BRIEF HISTORY OF HUMANKIND, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
what accounts for all the different societies and hierarchies throughout history?
in most cases, hierarchies were based on historical circumstances and then simply perpetuated over many generations
Hindu caste system
the peoples of central Asia invaded the Indian sub-continent and subjugated the local population, created a stratified society in which they were on top
invaders were fewer in number than local populations... view all notes
Saturday, October 12, 2013
Watched and took notes on MOOC lecture:
A HISTORY OF THE WORLD SINCE 1300, Princeton University
Europe set for more sea trips to the Indian Ocean
the news of da Gama's discovery of the Indian Oceans turned into a rampage
da Gama, humiliated by his experience in Calicut, was determined to return
1502: second trip to Calicut
went through every ship in the harbor... view all notes
Saturday, October 19, 2013
Watched and took notes on MOOC lecture:
CARE OF ELDERS WITH ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE, Johns Hopkins School of Nursing
dementia
hallmark symptoms once it reaches a certain point
memory impairment
loss of ability to find words (aphasia)
changes in emotion (apathy and lack of interest in things)... view all notes
Monday, October 21, 2013
Watched and took notes on MOOC lecture:
A BRIEF HISTORY OF HUMANKIND, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
each society adopts specific social distinctions and imagined hierarchies
race became very important in American society, but was relatively insignificant to medieval Muslim society
caste was a matter of life and death in medieval India but in modern Europe it is practically non-existent
one hierarchy, however, which has been of supreme importance in almost all human societies is the hierarchy of gender
gender... view all notes
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
Watched and took notes on MOOC lecture:
CALVIN: HISTOIRE ET RÉCEPTION D'UNE RÉFORME, Université de Genève
Calvin ça n’est pas l’homme de la Réforme, c’est l’homme d’une réforme.
il y avait beaucoup des réformes à travers l'histoire, il y a d’innombrables réformes ecclésiastiques
la réforme, qu'est ce cela veut dire?
Calvin n'était le premier à vouloir réformer l'église
toutefois, il a dit qu'il voulait la réformer... view all notes
Wednesday, October 23, 2013
Watched and took notes on MOOC lecture:
A BRIEF HISTORY OF HUMANKIND, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
almost all societies throughout history have been patriarchal
divided societies into men and women and privileged men over women
one would think that this is such a universal phenomenon, it probably results from a biological reason and not from a chance, historical event such as the way the caste system in India developed or racial tensions in America
theories of why most societies have been patriarchal
THEORY #1: men are physically stronger than women... view all notes
Sunday, October 27, 2013
Watched and took notes on MOOC lecture:
CALVIN: HISTOIRE ET RÉCEPTION D'UNE RÉFORME, Université de Genève
-on associe souvent le nom de Calvin au concept de réforme à Genève
mais quand Calvin est arrivé à Genève, la réforme était déjà sur ses rails.
Genève est la seule ville de toute l'Europe qui conquiert et qui parvient à maintenir son indépendance, au moment de la réformation
l'ennemi numéro un de Genève c'est la Savoie.
les hommes qui se battaient pour l'indépendance de la ville de Genève... view all notes
Monday, October 28, 2013
Watched and took notes on MOOC lecture:
A BRIEF HISTORY OF HUMANKIND, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
while wolf or bee societies are very similar, human societies are very different from one another
even when living in the same environment, human societies have different imagined orders and different social hierarchies
what happened when these societies encountered each other?
various kinds of interactions
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