Superficially speaking it’s about men racing shopping carts down steep hills in Canada who also collect bottles and cans to make a living.

While this may be reason enough to watch it (great shots of people racing shopping-carts at 70 km/h), there’s a lot more to it than that. As the narrator and director (who has an interesting story himself) gets to know these people better, what motivates them to live without regular jobs or income, or why they choose risk and adrenaline over safety and stability, an interesting picture unfolds in which the viewer is allowed to experience life through their eyes, without pity, false glorifications or moralizing.

And while some of the people portrayed in this feature-length film do suffer from various hardships such as alcoholism and lack of medical care, there are others who manage surprisingly well on 20 dollars a day.

It’s a film about freedom and an immediacy of life we rarely experience in modern civilization. It’s hard to say anything else about this movie than just: Watch it! Below you can find the YouTube version, the HD stream and DVD can be found here.

About the author: André Klein was born in Germany, has grown up and lived in many different places including Thailand, Sweden and Israel. He has produced two music albums, performed and organized literary readings, curated an experimental television program and is the author of various short stories and non-fiction works.

Are You Ready for the 21st Century ? from Michel Cartier on Vimeo.

About the author: André Klein was born in Germany, has grown up and lived in many different places including Thailand, Sweden and Israel. He has produced two music albums, performed and organized literary readings, curated an experimental television program and is the author of various short stories and non-fiction works.

a lesson by Jeremiah Bourque. (intro via “open-source audio” @ archive dot org http://ow.ly/1zaRH)

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This is just one example of many lesson packs soon to be released as digital downloads in Learn Out Live’s shop, affordable for everyone, no shipping costs , coming straight from our linguistic laboratories to your desktop.

About the author: Jeremiah Bourque is a professional Japanese and English language tutor. Former professional Japanese to English translator, culminating in translating the “Slayers” light novels (1 through 8) for TOKYOPOP. Has written about strategy, politics, history, and many subjects large and small.

If you are already familiar with what Media Literacy might mean or even formed your own definition of this mind-boggling new concept, you may have heard about or even experienced the “copyright confusion” yourself. Or maybe you just like to create video clips or music and have wondered many times: “Is it allowed to use such-and-such material in my work?”

In a world where a lot of information is freely available people are more insecure than ever as to what materials they are allowed to use in their own creative projects and what might get them into serious trouble.

The following video contains an introduction to the topic, featuring perspectives from both students & teachers and shows that a lot of creativity is being held back by a “climate of fear“. Actually the copyright situation isn’t as bad as most of us think. As an example, the video explains the concept of fair use and summarizes it in quite a nice way:

“Legally quoting or copying somebody else’s words, images and music without paying or asking permission as long as it benefits society more than it hurts the copyright holder.”

The bendable nature of such a sentence is obvious, but on the other hand fair use is just one example of how the copyright situation is actually more friendly than most people think. So, if terms like “fair use”, “Creative Commons” or “Public Domain” are completely new to you, it’s high time to get informed and reclaim your creative power! If you have any questions we are here to help.

About the author: André Klein was born in Germany, has grown up and lived in many different places including Thailand, Sweden and Israel. He has produced two music albums, performed and organized literary readings, curated an experimental television program and is the author of various short stories and non-fiction works.

We find ourselves living in an intricate network of all kinds of media, both textual and audiovisual which are overlapping and forming new permutations every day.

Media Literacy is an umbrella-term for this field and the skills it implies. I’ve already posted a few articles here on this blog about this topic and want to continue this ongoing discussion by sharing contents from different mediums dealing with the issue in order to foster awareness and inspire new creative approaches.

Let’s start with a video which contains a very nice introduction to “media literacy and related concepts” produced by  Murray State University graduates in 2009.

About the author: André Klein was born in Germany, has grown up and lived in many different places including Thailand, Sweden and Israel. He has produced two music albums, performed and organized literary readings, curated an experimental television program and is the author of various short stories and non-fiction works.

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About the author: Jeremiah Bourque is a professional Japanese and English language tutor. Former professional Japanese to English translator, culminating in translating the “Slayers” light novels (1 through 8) for TOKYOPOP. Has written about strategy, politics, history, and many subjects large and small.

This is the first part of a two-part lesson (number 4). For a complete listing of all lessons, please click here.

About the author: Anton Kunin is a passionate teacher of the French language on all levels from Beginner (A1) to Advanced (C1) and holds a DALF C1 diploma in French and a CAE (Certificate in Advanced English)

Yes, it’s Super Bowl Time. But if you ever thought that the Super Bowl is all about Loud Yelling and little about learning, check this out: English Idioms explained through Football. Find the whole series here!

About the author: Jeremiah Bourque is a professional Japanese and English language tutor. Former professional Japanese to English translator, culminating in translating the “Slayers” light novels (1 through 8) for TOKYOPOP. Has written about strategy, politics, history, and many subjects large and small.

MIT, Harvard, UCLA, Yale, Oxford and many others by now have their own quickly growing lecture portals with access to thousands of lessons, and yes – in most cases it’s completely free.

So one might ask: Why pay thousands and thousands of tuition fees if you can attend lectures by top professor and specialists online? For university food, heating costs, rent, etc? Probably not.

Will the university of the future just be some kind of mass-transit online platform with no or minimum physical contact? Maybe. But there’s a serious question here. In what ways does sitting together in a physical classroom actually justify the costs, stress levels and time involved around this setup?

About the author: André Klein was born in Germany, has grown up and lived in many different places including Thailand, Sweden and Israel. He has produced two music albums, performed and organized literary readings, curated an experimental television program and is the author of various short stories and non-fiction works.

We added a fresh new presentation to our video program, namely a presentation and introduction of the Hebrew language. Ever wanted to know why Hebrew is called “the Holy Tongue”? What is the relation to Abraham and the “River Prath”? Check out this beautiful video made by our Hebrew department and get a first taste of this immensely old and deep language, pointing back to the beginnings of human civilization.

About the author: Eti Shani was born in Israel, studied General History and Political Science at Haifa University and has been teaching Hebrew for more than 10 years both for beginners and advanced students with a special interest and experience in ancient scriptures, culture & Judaica.

Today we bring you a pretty funny albeit “on-point” presentation about entertaiment video games vs. educational games, what’s the difference, why the latter often involves so little fun, wants to “club you with the point” and the first might sometimes leave you feeling empty after hours of playing. Also an interesting concept of “Tangential Learning” is being presented here, so don’t be mislead by the whacky characters, there’s actually some great ideas here.

Thanks also to Marian Heddesheimer who found this video on the blog of the Technical University of Graz, Austria.

About the author: André Klein was born in Germany, has grown up and lived in many different places including Thailand, Sweden and Israel. He has produced two music albums, performed and organized literary readings, curated an experimental television program and is the author of various short stories and non-fiction works.

If you are learning Arabic this little application might come in handy. Simply speak into the microphone and the Arabic Language Buddy will print out the translation in Arabic letters and you can even listen to the correct pronounciation. Although it might be awkward to pull out an iphone in compromising situations, and we recommend learning basic phrases by heart and practice with a human teacher, gadgets like these can help spend the time on boring bus rides and give immediate satisfaction to questions as “How do you say again….?”

About the author: André Klein was born in Germany, has grown up and lived in many different places including Thailand, Sweden and Israel. He has produced two music albums, performed and organized literary readings, curated an experimental television program and is the author of various short stories and non-fiction works.