I’m the kind of person who sadly has a hard time relaxing. I can’t, for instance, just walk my Golden Retriever. It’s too boring watching her sniff the same bushes and tree trunks every day.
I used to try to read a newspaper or magazine on these walks, but turning pages when the wind is blowing or the dog is pulling on her leash is tough. So I switched to listening to podcasts and audio books and right now I’m happily in the middle of Freakonomics.
I also like to be entertained when I’m cleaning my office or other mundane tasks. To keep my mind busy, I sometimes listen to TED lectures which I’ve mentioned before on my blog.
Today, however, I wanted to mention a cool site that a friend of mine at the University of California, San Diego, shared with me last week. It’s RSA Animate. RSA stands for the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, which is a 250-year-old British charity that “encourages public discourse and critical debate by providing platforms for leading experts to share new ideas on contemporary issues.”
RSAnimate brings together lectures from experts and hand-drawn animation that it quite entertaining and informative. I’ve posted an example from Sir Ken Robinson who is talking about the failure of education in a video entitled, Changing Education Paradigms. I love this guy.
Lynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of The College Solution and she also writes a college blog for CBSMoneyWatch. Follow her on Twitter.
