The Learn Tracker
...life-long learning: structured, organized, searchable...

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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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.

June 2015 Learn Certificate
Watched and took notes on 17 college lectures:
Learned 6 vocabulary words:
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Learned about 6 people:
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Corrected 11 misspelling:
focussing, absense, formidible, Pentetuch, Agememnon, Myceneeans, sedamentary, semetric, essense, Themisticles, Agammemnon
Recorded 73 Flashcards from MOOC lectures:
  • when was the Battle of Marathon
                        
  • Added to this (FRENCH)
                        
  • and I was going to say (FRENCH)
                        
  • but they can never do less (FRENCH)
                        
  • by supplementing (FRENCH)
                        
  • closely and even inextricably linked (FRENCH)
                        
  • feature a subsidiary dimension (FRENCH)
                        
  • in order to assure (FRENCH)
                        
  • it must be approached from two perspectives (FRENCH)
                        
  • more extensive than those arising from treaties on human rights (FRENCH)
                        
  • often ignored and misunderstood (FRENCH)
                        
  • once they have subscribed to these commitments (FRENCH)
                        
  • regarding compliance with the rights in question (FRENCH)
                        
  • remain free to establish a more superior protection (FRENCH)
                        
  • runs out at the state level (FRENCH)
                        
  • that they freely ratified (FRENCH)
                        
  • they thus aim to replace them in some way (FRENCH)
                        
  • to encompass the entire faculties (FRENCH)
                        
  • using a supra-state control (FRENCH)
                        
  • we must remember that (FRENCH)
                        
  • we saw earlier (FRENCH)
                        
  • which aims to ensure respect for fundamental rights (FRENCH)
                        
  • which arise from international law (FRENCH)
                        
  • which is quite commonly held (FRENCH)
                        
  • which relates to the respect of international conventions (FRENCH)
                        
  • who ensure priority to the protection of rights (FRENCH)
                        
  • will tend to provide only a minimal net of protection (FRENCH)
                        
  • with regard to the implementation of fundamental rights (FRENCH)
                        
  • A boy points to a man who pulls a fish from inside another one (SPANISH)
                        
  • Bruegel makes them all seem very concentrated in what they are doing (SPANISH)
                        
  • By pressing the plate onto a paper (SPANISH)
                        
  • Despite their apparent realism (SPANISH)
                        
  • He is a key painter in the birth of this type of painting (SPANISH)
                        
  • In the bottom left corner (SPANISH)
                        
  • In the foreground, a group of figures eat (SPANISH)
                        
  • It is part of a group of six scenes (SPANISH)
                        
  • Some work harvesting the straw (SPANISH)
                        
  • The big fish devour the small (SPANISH)
                        
  • The branches overlap on other trees (SPANISH)
                        
  • The lovers that (SPANISH)
                        
  • The rounded eyes of the fiture by the tree watching us (SPANISH)
                        
  • The triumph of death (SPANISH)
                        
  • This positive outlook appears to be found here (SPANISH)
                        
  • We don't see the faces of some of them (SPANISH)
                        
  • a fish with legs carries another in its mouth (SPANISH)
                        
  • a hot summer day (SPANISH)
                        
  • a metal tool (SPANISH)
                        
  • became very popular (SPANISH)
                        
  • belong to (SPANISH)
                        
  • crude and unsophisticated life (SPANISH)
                        
  • cutting off the head of a pilgrim (SPANISH)
                        
  • designed (SPANISH)
                        
  • explain its content (SPANISH)
                        
  • figures and actions (SPANISH)
                        
  • genre painting (SPANISH)
                        
  • in respect not only physical but psychological and moral (SPANISH)
                        
  • is lost (SPANISH)
                        
  • is sensed in this painting (SPANISH)
                        
  • leaving on it a replica (SPANISH)
                        
  • look, son, I always knew that (SPANISH)
                        
  • made numerous drawings (SPANISH)
                        
  • must have thought (SPANISH)
                        
  • one must see his other paintings in this series (SPANISH)
                        
  • reminding him that (SPANISH)
                        
  • see themselves as part of a whole that works in harmony (SPANISH)
                        
  • showing ordinary people busy in their daily chores (SPANISH)
                        
  • that belongs (SPANISH)
                        
  • that they were made for an urban public (SPANISH)
                        
  • there are farmers (SPANISH)
                        
  • to influence the way we see them (SPANISH)
                        
  • we belong to something infinitely greater than us (SPANISH)
                        
  • which leads our view towards the bottom (SPANISH)
                        
  • you should go to the museum (SPANISH)
                        
Tuesday, June 2, 2015
Watched and took notes on MOOC lecture:
JESUS IN SCRIPTURE AND TRADITION, University of Notre Dame
•
one can understand Christianity by focusing on three questions
•
1. who is Israel?
•
2. who is Jesus?
•
3. who is the Church?
•
answering each one of the questions has implications for answering the other two... view all notes
Thursday, June 4, 2015
Watched and took notes on MOOC lecture:
BUDDHISM AND MODERN PSYCHOLOGY , Princeton University
•
the concept of the not-self
•
two ways to understand it
•
1. intellectual: reading about it
•
2. experiential: meditating on it
•
the discourse on the not-self... view all notes
Friday, June 5, 2015
Watched and took notes on MOOC lecture:
HISTORY OF ROCK, 1970-PRESENT, University of Rochester
•
the two founding fathers of funk and black pop in the 1970s
•
1. Sly Stone
•
2. James Brown
•
came out of 1950s into 1960s
•
groove-based approach... view all notes
Watched and took notes on MOOC lecture:
DESCUBRIENDO LA PINTURA EUROPEA DE 1400 A 1800, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
•
Pieter Bruegel el Viejo
•
nació hacia 1525 y murió en 1569
•
aparte de pintor, fue un gran dibujante
•
trabajó principalmente en Bruselas y en Amberes
•
sus ideas sobre los seres humanos y el mundo eran propias del Renacimiento... view all notes
Saturday, June 6, 2015
Watched and took notes on MOOC lecture:
INTRODUCTION AUX DROITS DE L'HOMME, Université de Genève
•
selon une tendance qui est assez communément répandue, les droits de l'homme eclipseraient les droits fondamentaux d'origine nationale
•
ils auraient ainsi vocation en quelque sorte à les remplacer
•
cette vision n'est pas exacte
•
les rapports entre les droits fondamentaux et les droits de l'homme sont effectivement souvent méconnus et incompris
•
pour comprendre cette articulation, il faut aborder deux perspectives... view all notes
Sunday, June 7, 2015
Watched and took notes on MOOC lecture:
THE BIBLE'S PREHISTORY, PURPOSE, AND POLITICAL FUTURE, Emory University
•
most Biblical archeologists and historians of ancient Israel no longer work with the periodization of the Biblical narrative
•
Biblical narrative
•
the patriarchs
•
Abraham, Isaac, Jacob
•
the matriarchs... view all notes
Wednesday, June 10, 2015
Watched and took notes on MOOC lecture:
GREEKS AT WAR: HOMER AT TROY, Colgate University
•
the Iliad
•
product of an oral tradition, as with the the Odyssey
•
composed over 500 years after the events they describe
•
most scholars believe there is some historical kernel that got preserved in the memory of the Greeks
•
was handed down from one generation to another... view all notes
Vocabulary:
scholion, n. [σχόλιον] grammatical, critical, or explanatory comments which are inserted on the margin of the manuscript of an ancient author ⇒ "A Byzantine scholion to the play Andromache suggests that its first production was staged outside of Athens, though modern scholarship regards this claim as dubious."
venizelism, n. [Βενιζέλος] one of the major political movements in Greece from the 1900s until the mid-1970s, named after Eleftherios Venizelos (1864-1936), its key characteristics were opposition to the monarchy, alliance with western democratic countries, support of Greek nationalism, and emphasis on political, social and economical modernization, mixed economic policies, and an open economy ⇒ "Giorgos Seferis' father was a staunch Venizelist and a supporter of the demotic Greek language over the formal, official language (katharevousa)."
People:
Giorgos Seferis (1900-1971)
[Γεώργιος Σεφεριάδης]
  • a Greek poet-diplomat, one of the most important Greek poets of the 20th century, and a Nobel laureate
  • he was a career diplomat in the Greek Foreign Service, culminating in his appointment as Ambassador to the UK, a post which he held from 1957 to 1962
  • his father was a staunch Venizelist and a supporter of the demotic [δημοτική] Greek language over katharevousa [Καθαρεύουσα], the formal, official language
  • 1914 family moved to Athens, 1918 to 1925, studied law at the Sorbonne
  • in 1922, his home town, Smyrna in Asia Minor, was taken by the Turkish Army after a two-year Greek military campaign on Anatolian soil, after which many Greeks, including Seferis' family, fled from Asia Minor, the sense of being an exile from his childhood home would inform much of Seferis' poetry, showing itself particularly in his interest in the story of Odysseus
  • in 1967, when the repressive nationalist, right-wing Regime of the Colonels took power in Greece, followed by two years marked by widespread censorship, political detentions and torture, Seferis took a stand against the regime by making a public statement that "This anomaly must end"
  • Seferis did not live to see the end of the junta, but he become a popular hero for his resistance to the regime
Saturday, June 13, 2015
Watched and took notes on MOOC lecture:
ALEXANDER THE GREAT, Wellesley College
•
for most of its early history, Macedonia was a potential superstate
•
fitfully slumbered through most of that early history waiting for someone to come along and master its fiercely independent tribes and harness its rich resources
•
that person turned out to be Alexander's father, Philip II
•
the sheer size of Macedon potentially made it into a dominant power in Greece and even beyond
•
the Macedon city-state... view all notes
Watched and took notes on MOOC lecture:
JESUS IN SCRIPTURE AND TRADITION, University of Notre Dame
•
Jacob became the twelve tribes of Israel
•
Leah
•
although the first born, was the less beloved of Jacob's two wives
•
she gave birth to Jacob's first sons Reuben, Simeon, and Levi
•
Rachel... view all notes
Monday, June 15, 2015
Watched and took notes on MOOC lecture:
A HISTORY OF THE WORLD SINCE 1300, Princeton University
•
early 19th century, new concepts of citizenship
•
always present, especially in the colonies
•
especially in the slave utterly bereft of rights and the master who enjoyed among other things the right to brutalize and rape slaves
•
Dominican Republic
•
the question of exclusion and inclusion is poised and electrified... view all notes
Friday, June 19, 2015
Watched and took notes on MOOC lecture:
OUR EARTH: ITS CLIMATE, HISTORY, AND PROCESSES, University of Manchester
•
history of the Earth
•
events in billions of years ago
•
4.57 Earth's formation (Hadean Eon)
•
3.8 first evidence of oceans (Archaen Eon)
•
2.5 oxygen-rich atmosphere (Proterozoic Eon)... view all notes
Vocabulary:
stromatolites, n. [stroh-MAH-toh-lights] from the Greek στρώμα (mattress) and λίθος (rock), layered bio-chemical accretionary structures formed in shallow water by the trapping, binding and cementation of sedimentary grains by biofilms, or multi-layered sheet of microorganisms, especially cyanobacteria, a phylum (or division) of bacteria that obtain their energy through photosynthesis ⇒ "By producing gaseous oxygen as a byproduct of photosynthesis, cyanobacteria are thought to have converted the early reducing atmosphere into an oxidizing one, causing "rusting of the Earth" and dramatically changing the composition of life forms on Earth by stimulating biodiversity and leading to the near-extinction of oxygen-intolerant organisms, and thus stromatolites provide ancient records of life on Earth through fossil remains which might date from more than 3.5 billion years ago."
Saturday, June 20, 2015
Watched and took notes on MOOC lecture:
HISTORY OF ROCK, 1970-PRESENT, University of Rochester
•
Reggae is often grouped with black pop music of the 1970s
•
but Reggae music is not really African American music
•
it's music that comes out of Jamaica
•
Jamaica
•
Tuesday, June 23, 2015
Watched and took notes on MOOC lecture:
UNDERSTANDING EINSTEIN: THE SPECIAL THEORY OF RELATIVITY, Stanford University
•
"make things as simple as possible, but not simpler"
•
Occam's Razor
•
we don't want to multiply hypotheses unnecessarily
•
strike a balance between explanatory power and over-complexity
•
"Our experience hitherto justifies us in trusting that nature is the realization of the simplest that is mathematically conceivable."... view all notes
People:
Paul Dirac (1902-1984)
English theoretical physicist who made fundamental contributions to the early development of both quantum mechanics and quantum electrodynamics, and predicted the existence of antimatter
  • among other discoveries, he formulated the Dirac equation, which describes the behavior of fermions (quarks and leptons [electrons])
  • also did work that forms the basis of modern attempts to reconcile general relativity with quantum mechanics
  • he was the first to develop quantum field theory, which underlies all theoretical work on sub-atomic or elementary particles today, work that is fundamental to our understanding of the forces of nature
  • he proposed and investigated the concept of a magnetic monopole, an object that was not yet known empirically, as a means of bringing even greater symmetry to James Clerk Maxwell's equations of electromagnetism
Wednesday, June 24, 2015
Watched and took notes on MOOC lecture:
THE ANCIENT GREEKS, Wesleyan University
•
domestic politics in Athens
•
not idle during the Persian wars
•
Miltiades
•
very respected
•
victory at Marathon... view all notes
Vocabulary:
trireme, n. [τριήρης] an ancient vessel and a type of galley (a low, flat ship with one or more sails and up to three banks of oars, chiefly used for warfare, trade, and piracy) that was used by the ancient maritime civilizations of the Mediterranean, especially the Phoenicians, ancient Greeks and Romans, the name means "with three banks of oars". ⇒ "What Themistocles did was to persuade the Assembly not to spend the proceeds from the newly discovered silver mines to build a wall, but to build ships, specifically triremes, the Greek war ship par excellence."
ostrakon, n. [ὄστρακον] a piece of pottery, usually broken off from a vase or other earthenware vessel, used in ancient Athens, each person of the voting public would scratch the name of a person on the shard of pottery in order to banish or exile that person from society from the city for a period of ten years, thus giving rise to the term ostracism ⇒ "In the late 480s, certainly at the instigation of Themistocles, one Aristides, the son of Lysimachus, was ostracized, this ostrakon showing one vote in his favor."
People:
Cimon (510-450 BC)
[KEE-mon]
  • Athenian statesman and military general in mid-5th century BC Greece, played a key role in creating the powerful Athenian maritime empire following the failure of the Persian invasion of Greece by Xerxes I in 480-479 BC
  • son of Miltiades, the victor of the Battle of Marathon
  • elevated to the rank of admiral after fighting in the Battle of Salamis (against Persian Empire in 480 BC)
  • one of his greatest exploits was his destruction of a Persian fleet and army at the Battle of the Eurymedon river in 466 BC (now the Köprüçay river in Turkey)
Themistocles (524-459 BC)
[Θεμιστοκλῆς]
  • Athenian politician and general, one of a new breed of non-aristocratic politicians who rose to prominence in the early years of the Athenian democracy
  • a populist, having the support of lower class Athenians, and generally being at odds with the Athenian nobility
  • elected archon in 493 BC, he convinced the polis to increase the naval power of Athens
  • during the first Persian invasion of Greece, he fought at the Battle of Marathon, possibly one of the 10 Athenian generals in that battle
Thursday, June 25, 2015
Watched and took notes on MOOC lecture:
UNDERSTANDING EINSTEIN: THE SPECIAL THEORY OF RELATIVITY, Stanford University
•
concepts that are fundamental to the special theory of relativity
•
events, clocks, and observers
•
this concept is almost trivial in a sense
•
part of Einstein's genius was to look at these concepts that many people took for granted
•
what does it mean to observe something?... view all notes
Monday, June 29, 2015
Watched and took notes on MOOC lecture:
BUDDHISM AND MODERN PSYCHOLOGY , Princeton University
•
why is the idea that there is not a single self so important in Buddhist thought
•
how does it help end suffering or Dukkha
•
the view of some Buddhist scholars:
•
while the self will not be found in body, feeling, perception, mental formations or consciousness, that doesn't mean there isn't a self
•
some practicing Buddhists find this a more useful teaching instead of the idea that there is no self at all... view all notes
Tuesday, June 30, 2015
Watched and took notes on MOOC lecture:
GREEKS AT WAR: HOMER AT TROY, Colgate University
•
nothing is known for certain about Homer
•
there is a strong tradition that he was blind
•
this may be based on the idea that his poetic genius compensated for his blindness
•
19th century: two groups regarding historicity of Homer
•
the Analysts... view all notes
Vocabulary:
berserker, n. A crazed Norse warrior who fought in a highly destructively and frenetically violent way. In the Norse/Viking tradition a Berserker was a warrior of great strength and courage, who fought with wild ferocity. The word is believed to be derived from "bear sark", i.e a bear coat. That berserker fighting tradition, in which the warriors took on the spirit or even in their belief, the shape, of bears whilst foaming at the mouth and gnawing the edges of their shields, is the source of the Vikings' fierce reputation. It dates back to the first millennium but had died out by the 1100s and thereafter the word berserker didn't feature widely in the English language until the 19th century. ⇒ "Homer was the first person to put in writing the psychological fact of warfare that things happen on the battlefield that cause rational men to go berserk."
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