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.
Hundreds of free, self-paced university courses available:
my recommendations here
Peruse my collection of 275
influential people of the past.
View My Class Notes via:
Receive My Class Notes via E-Mail:

VIEW ARCHIVE


Contact Me via E-Mail:
edward [at] tanguay.info

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.

July 2015 Learn Certificate
Watched and took notes on 13 college lectures:
Learned 1 vocabulary words:
...loading...
Learned about 2 people:
...loading...
Corrected 10 misspelling:
decendent, priveleges, illigitimate, remanents, ideosynchratic, Agemmemnon, dispicable, focusses, simultinaity, forsaw
Thursday, July 2, 2015
Watched and took notes on MOOC lecture:
ALEXANDER THE GREAT, Wellesley College
there were prominent 4th century Greeks who didn't consider the Macedonians to be Greek or Hellenes at all
or they made this claim for rhetorical reasons
what we know is that the Macedonian kings, including Alexander, could speak, write, and read Greek fluently
although some sources indicate that Greeks couldn't necessarily understand Macedonians
because Macedonian was probably a dialect of Greek... view all notes
Watched and took notes on MOOC lecture:
OUR EARTH: ITS CLIMATE, HISTORY, AND PROCESSES, University of Manchester
mineral
naturally occurring
something like glass or concrete would not be a mineral
solid crystalline substance
something like opal is not a mineral, which is simply an amorphous form of silica or non-crystalline solid, lacks the long-range order characteristic of a crystal... view all notes
People:
King Archelaus I of Macedon (469-399 BC)
[Ἀρχέλαος]
  • king of Macedon from 413 to 399 BC, he was a capable and beneficent ruler, known for the sweeping changes he made in state administration, the military, commerce, and the arts
  • moved the Macedonian capital from Aigae to Pella and founded Macedonian Olympian Games in Dion, among other reasons because the Greek Olympic Games were forbidden to barbarians, or outsiders, including the Macedonians
  • completely reverse Macedon's relationship with Athens, as they experienced a crushing defeat at Syracuse in late 413 during which most of their ships were destroyed, Archelaus generously supplied the Athenians with the timber they needed to rebuild
  • issued high quality coinage
  • was a man of culture and extended cultural and artistic contacts with southern Greece
  • hosted great poets, tragedians, including Agathon [Ἀγάθων] (no works survived) and Euripides (who wrote his tragedies Archelaus and The Bacchae while in Macedon), as well as musicians and painters, including Zeuxis (no works survived), the most celebrated painter of the time
Monday, July 6, 2015
Watched and took notes on MOOC lecture:
JESUS IN SCRIPTURE AND TRADITION, University of Notre Dame
image of Joseph as shepherd
he's shepherding the flocks with the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah (Leah and Rachel's slaves)
this a strange detail because we know that Joseph is a favorite of his fathers
the ranking of children in terms of prestige followed birth order
and the most prestigious wives would be Leah and Rachel... view all notes
Vocabulary:
prescind, v. to withdraw one's attention, stop thinking about something, to leave out of consideration  "But if we look at the larger context of the chapter, we'll see that Joseph's father Jacob is not innocent in the tensions that are welling up within his family, as Jacob, after all, is the paterfamilias, the head of the family, and it is his responsibility to make sure that order is kept, but he prescinds from this responsibility by not rebuking Joseph for his actions, and in fact exacerbates tensions which we will see are going to beset this family."
Thursday, July 9, 2015
Watched and took notes on MOOC lecture:
THE WORLD OF THE STRING QUARTET, Curtis Institute of Music
the history of the string quartet
how did it come to be
the term needs to be defined precisely to answer the question
development was as long one
hard to identify a starting point... view all notes
People:
Alessandro Scarlatti (1660-1725)
Italian Baroque composer, famous for his operas and chamber cantatas, and considered the founder of the Neapolitan school of opera
  • it is said that modern opera begins with Scarlatti and the history of modern music commences with the Neapolitan school, insofar as that music speaks the language of the feelings, emotions, and passions
  • in 1702 Scarlatti left Naples and did not return until the Spanish domination had been superseded by that of the Austrians
  • lived and composed in both Naples and Rome
  • Scarlatti's music forms an important link between the early Baroque Italian vocal styles of the 17th century, with their centers in Florence, Venice and Rome, and the classical school of the 18th century
  • he shows an almost modern understanding of the psychology of modulation (changing form one tonic to another) and also frequently makes use of the various phrase lengths
  • was the father of two other composers, Domenico Scarlatti and Pietro Filippo Scarlatti
Saturday, July 11, 2015
Watched and took notes on MOOC lecture:
GALAXIES AND COSMOLOGY, Caltech
dark matter
Fritz Zwicky (1898–1974)
1933
Caltech
realized that the mass of the Coma Cluster was 400 times the amount of mass in its visible stars... view all notes
Tuesday, July 14, 2015
Watched and took notes on MOOC lecture:
THE BIBLE'S PREHISTORY, PURPOSE, AND POLITICAL FUTURE, Emory University
the end of the Last Bronze Age and the beginning of the Iron Age
marks major shift in material culture of central hill country
beginning in 13th century
both sides of the Jordan River... view all notes
Saturday, July 18, 2015
Watched and took notes on MOOC lecture:
JESUS IN SCRIPTURE AND TRADITION, University of Notre Dame
Israel is another name for Jacob
Jacob had 12 sons
The Joseph Story
the last 14 chapters of the book of Genesis
chapters 37 to 50... view all notes
Watched and took notes on MOOC lecture:
A HISTORY OF THE WORLD SINCE 1300, Princeton University
market revolution
merchants didn't need anymore state sanctions to enjoy their privileges
there emerged a new ideology of free trade
Ali Pasha (1769-1849) made deal with the British to get access to markets
drew inspiration from Adam Smith... view all notes
Tuesday, July 21, 2015
Watched and took notes on MOOC lecture:
THE ANCIENT GREEKS, Wesleyan University
Xerxes I (519–465 BC)
486 BC: took over Persia on the death of his father, Darius
capital in Perseopolis
determine to get revenge on the Greeks for the defeat that they inflicted on his father's troops
begins his rule with enormous power... view all notes
Thursday, July 23, 2015
Watched and took notes on MOOC lecture:
ALEXANDER THE GREAT, Wellesley College
Philip II of Macedon's (382–336 BC) military reforms
affected Macedon's ability to wage war significantly
gave Macedonians massive advantagess over
the Hoplite city-states
forces of Persian kings... view all notes
Watched and took notes on MOOC lecture:
REASON AND PERSUASION THROUGH PLATO'S DIALOGUES, National University of Singapore
what is a contradiction
logical contradiction
p and not p
"The ball is red all over and the ball is not red all over."
"I am six feet tall and I am not six feet tall."... view all notes
Friday, July 24, 2015
Watched and took notes on MOOC lecture:
GREEKS AT WAR: HOMER AT TROY, Colgate University
Homer's vision of war is idiosyncratic
doesn't dwell upon the causalities
participants either die instantly and painlessly or make spectacular recoveries
they don't get shipped back to Greece crippled, blinded, mutilated or insane as in real wars
reasons for this... view all notes
Watched and took notes on MOOC lecture:
A HISTORY OF THE WORLD SINCE 1300, Princeton University
the prophetic Taiping Rebellion led to one of the world's bloodiest civil wars
reflected also the destitution that swept across China in the middle of the 19th century
but poverty and hunger, two of the most proximate causes of this upheaval, are not mere happenstance
except for e.g. unexpected climactic shocks
but on the scale and at the sustained level of what it was in the mid 19th century China... view all notes
show all recorded days