A very important source of learning

When I am awake but have not gotten out of bed. When I am trying to sleep but I can’t. When I am caught in a traffic jam. When I am washing clothes or sweeping the floor. I listen to mp3 lectures/talks.

 

Washing clothes, mopping the floor, or taking an evening walk doesn’t require much thinking. But if my ears are plugged to my mobile phone, it becomes like I am attending a world-class lecture in USA or UK. Many people would travel and spend lots of money to attend lectures.

Listening to mp3 talks through my phone has been a very important source of learning for me. I picked up the habit through friends in North Delhi, somewhere in 2007-08. We were a Christian group. We shared the lectures/sermons/talks through pendrive, Bluetooth, emails, or web links. 

Reading books strain the eyes. But listening to mp3 can be done with the eyes closed. Reading books take time. In lectures, we get to hear in a nutshell the key messages. You can’t take your book to all places. But your phone goes wherever you go.

When you are caught in a bad traffic jam and you are afraid you are wasting precious time, you can come out of it an enlightened person. Turn mundane times into great learning times.

There are so many websites where mp3 talks are uploaded for download. They are usually free. Good news sites like The Guardian or BBC have them. They are called podcasts. Type PODCAST in google and you’ll get lots of links. Universities have them. Prominent individuals have their own talk shows and radio programs. Organizations, Forums, Churches, etc have them. 

You can also go to youtube, download the video talks, convert into mp3 (need a converter software, easy to do so anyway), then transfer to your phone.

For a start, try these sites, http://www.veritas.org/talks/  http://tonycampolo.org/media/ http://ntwrightpage.com/ http://veritasriff.org/archive/ http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/series/global-development-podcast http://www.who.int/mediacentre/multimedia/podcasts/en/index.html http://www.ted.com/

I hope this post helps.