I started a few new online courses on Coursera last week. The first one was the Ancient Greece class and it’s been rather slow-going. I signed up for this mostly for the benefit of Lego Lover but I rather doubt we’ll be there for the long-haul. The lecture videos aren’t particularly engaging and it feels like forever to finish just one. I also think some of the reading is going to be a bit much for Lego Lover so it might be an early casualty. The second course is History of Rock and Roll Part 1. I enrolled in this a while ago, then unenrolled and decided to try again after all since the Scientist is doing this course this time. That one is quite engaging and relatively light work so far. I’ll know a bit more once the quiz is released. There’s also Dino 101, which is completely for the sake of Lego Lover. So far, this has been the best course suited to Lego Lover. It’s not particularly complex, easy enough to be handled even by upper primary students. It’s quite engaging so Lego Lover and I are both enjoying it considerably. He really loves the subject matter too, which is funny because he didn’t when he was much younger like many of his same-aged peers.

The big challenge right now is the class on Modern and Contemporary American Poetry. I have never gotten into poetry in any way but I’ve always felt that I must be missing something since so many people love poetry. I don’t know that this particular set of poetry is the best starting point but I thought it would be good to challenge my notions of poetry and see if I can gather up some better appreciation and perhaps enjoyment of it. This first week has been about Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman. I am familiar with both but doubt I’ve read either of these poets in the past so knew nothing about either. I’ve only watched the videos about Dickinson so far but it’s been interesting how they can spend half an hour discussing such a short poem. I won’t say this is without merit but I guess that blows me away to some extent. One thing I did after watching the discussions of her poems was to go and read about her, which might be been more practical beforehand as it puts her work in better perspective.

I ended up dropping out of the Modern and Postmodern class that was so philosophy-based as I got behind on the reading and then the video lectures so there didn’t seem much point carrying on. Perhaps I will make attempts at reading on my own and try the class on its next offering. Assuming something else doesn’t catch my attention. At the very least it go my mind working in ways it hasn’t for years. Not even when I was back in school to do my masters in library and information science….