Useful URLs on Accessibility from Norm Coombs

Book chap1 tlt.gs/y63u; 3/11 2pmET tlt.gs/frlv free online discussion of 5 key questions and exchange of tips, recommendations, and resources.

FridayLive! Bookgroup session today 2pm ET 3/11.  Norman Coombs, author of Making Online Teaching Accessible: Inclusive Course Design for Students with Disabilities , Jossey-Bass, 2010.   Register for free Additional info, prep available:  tlt.gs/accessfrlv311

• Web site about Section 508 Federal standards for Information technology accessibility http://section508.gov
• Web accessibility guidelines produced by the Web Accessibility Initiative http://www.w3.org/WAI/
• Guidelines for publishers producing accessible books for public schools http://aim.cast.org/learn/policy/federal/what_is_nimas
• Web site of the Digital Accessibility Information System http://www.daisy.org/
• Web site of EASI (Equal Access to Software and Information http://easi.cc
• Standards for the Creation of Accessible Materials: National Instructional Materials Accessibility Standard (NIMAS). "NIMAS is a technical standard used by publishers to produce source files (in XML) that may be used to develop multiple specialized formats (such as Braille or audio books) for students with print disabilities."  http://aim.cast.org/learn/policy/federal/what_is_nimas

"suggest.. four year colleges adopt community colleges and have a symbiotic relationship with them"

From "How Higher Education is Breaking the Social Contract and What To Do About It" by  Daniel Yankelovich
Recommended "It's a must read!" by JM in comment to TLT-SWG blog posting "Higher Ed in Crisis Requiring Radical Change?" 

QTs5 How remember/meet needs of students with disabilities?

Book chap1 tlt.gs/y63u; 3/11 2pmET tlt.gs/frlv free online discussion of 5 key questions and exchange of tips, recommendations, and resources.

FridayLive! Bookgroup session today 2pm ET 3/11.  Norman Coombs, author of Making Online Teaching Accessible: Inclusive Course Design for Students with Disabilities , Jossey-Bass, 2010.   

Question 5: When you don't actually see your students, how might you help remind yourself to remember extra steps to help students with disabilities such as using proper document markup, adding text tags to images and providing captions and transcriptions for students with hearing impairments?

Tips??????????????????  

Join us today. Register for free 

Additional info, prep available:  tlt.gs/accessfrlv311 


Above, from Questions and Tips from Norm Coombs

QTs4 Images, Tables, Spreadsheets, Videos, Audio for students with disabilities?

Book chap1 tlt.gs/y63u; 3/11 2pmET tlt.gs/frlv free online discussion of 5 key questions and exchange of tips, recommendations, and resources.

FridayLive! Bookgroup session today 2pm ET 3/11.  Norman Coombs, author of Making Online Teaching Accessible: Inclusive Course Design for Students with Disabilities , Jossey-Bass, 2010.  

Register for free Additional info, prep available:  tlt.gs/accessfrlv311

Question 4: How do you imagine you may need to make special course modifications to support students with disabilities?

Tip A: Images and accessibility. Pictures are important for visual learners and for many students with learning disabilities. Be sure to use a text tag for pictures so adaptive technologies can identify the image for screen reader users.

Tip B: Tables and spreadsheets can be difficult for students who are blind or those with learning disabilities. Be sure that they are the best way to convey your particular content or use another format instead or in addition. When using tables or spreadsheets you can help by providing a summary as well as explaining the table's header layout.

Tip C: Multimedia used well is an excellent teaching tool. Avoid using multimedia merely for glitz. Provide captions for videos and transcriptions for audio so the content is accessible for students with hearing impairments.


Above, from Questions and Tips from Norm Coombs

QTs3 Can you easily make course elements clearer for students with disabilities? ALL students?

Book chap1 tlt.gs/y63u; 3/11 2pmET tlt.gs/frlv free online discussion of 5 key questions and exchange of tips, recommendations, and resources.

FridayLive! Bookgroup session today 2pm ET 3/11.  Norman Coombs, author of Making Online Teaching Accessible: Inclusive Course Design for Students with Disabilities , Jossey-Bass, 2010.  

Register for free Additional info, prep available:  tlt.gs/accessfrlv311

Question 3: Can you envision ways to modify your course content to communicate more clearly for all students, but especially for students with communication barriers including those exaggerated by a disability such as being blind or deaf?

Tip A: Modularize your content. Use simple English, avoid long paragraphs and complicated sentences with multisyllabic words. Usually use active rather than passive verbs

Tip B: Organize content and online page layout with clear logical structure using standard document markup codes. Similar appearing structure can be achieved by specific font features or by using header and other markup code features. When markup code is used, the meaning of the structure is embedded in the page and can be passed through to browsers and to adaptive technologies permitting students with disabilities to navigate efficiently.

Tip C: Use images when they support and strengthen the content. While images can add both interest and advance meaning to an online lesson, avoid using them for mere decoration since that may actually distract from the content. They actually will help students with learning disabilities.

Tip D: Use multimedia when it supports and strengthen the content. While it can add both interest and advance meaning to an online lesson, avoid using it for mere decoration as that may actually distract from the content. Multimedia can also help students with learning disabilities.

Above, from Questions and Tips from Norm Coombs

QTs2 How grade inferior work from student with disabilities? Today 2pm online free

Book chapter1 tlt.gs/y63u; 3/11 2pmET tlt.gs/frlv free online discussion of 5 key questions and exchange of tips, recommendations, and resources.

FridayLive! Bookgroup session today 2pm ET 3/11.  Norman Coombs, author of Making Online Teaching Accessible: Inclusive Course Design for Students with Disabilities , Jossey-Bass, 2010.  
Register for free Additional info, prep available:  tlt.gs/accessfrlv311

Question 2: If you had a student with a disability in your course, how much difficulty would you have in marking his/her work as inferior if it actually deserved receiving such a grade?

Tip A: Expect the same quality work from students with disabilities as from others. Giving students with disabilities extra help may be important, but passing them along based primarily on their disability and not their work is not a favor to them nor to the other students

Tip B: Build personal relations with staff from the office/center for students with disabilities. They can help you with accessibility and students' personal issues. When you have a student trying to manipulate you, these staff people could intercede to support you.

Above, from Questions and Tips from Norm Coombs

QTs1 Afraid of having a student with disabilities in your course? FridayLive! discussion 3/11

Our FridayLive! Bookgroup session today at 2:00pm ET today 3/11 will host Dr. Norman Coombs, author of Making Online Teaching Accessible: Inclusive Course Design for Students with Disabilities [published by Jossey-Bass Oct 10, 2010]. Register for free and make sure to read the first chapter.

We'll be posting some core questions and tips that are featured in Norm's book and which he'll be asking participants to discuss in the live session.

Question 1: Do you have any fears or reservations about having a student with a disability in one of your online courses? If so, are these merely rational and logical issues or do they mask other personal issues you may have and not thought about?

Tip : Be a good teacher! Students with disabilities are students and better teaching makes learning easier for everyone

Tip : Focus on teaching students and not on teaching with technology. It is easy to become preoccupied with the delivery technology and forget that it is about students and not technology

Tip : Provide a welcoming and supportive presence. Virtual interactions can be either depersonalized and remote or can create a sense of immediacy and availability. Students with disabilities, even more than many other students, may fear rejection rather than acceptance from someone in authority
More of Norm's questions coming on the blog and in the session this afternoon.

Colleges Lock Out Blind Students Online - Chronicle 12/12/10

Book tlt.gs/accessibilitycoombs online discussion 3/11 2pmET tlt.gs/frlv  
Many expect technology to assist those with disabilities and increase access, but ironically some tech "improvements" create more barriers at the same time as lowering previous ones. 


 Two Chronicle articles (Dec 2010) provide apt background for Norm Coomb's Bookgroup FridayLive! this Friday 2:00pm ET.  Coombs, CEO of EASI, and author of Making Online Teaching Accessible will share his thoughts on inclusive course design.  We hope you will join us. Register by clicking the FridayLive! button.


Why, despite ADA legislation and a generally receptive attitude towards individuals with disabilities, is it still so hard to comply, to make access more universal?   Getting beyond the nod is apparently really hard.  We've all read articles about obstacles to accessibility.  These two articles are no exception. 
http://chronicle.com/article/Blind-Students-Demand-Access/125695/
http://chronicle.com/article/Cal-States-Strong-Push-for/125683/


What was especially interesting was the juxtaposition of the individual and institutional obstacles with some significant successes.  


 The online student center at Arizona State University is based on a Facebook type application which isn't user friendly to those with visual impairments.


On the other hand, Darrell Shandrow, the focus of the piece, was willing to be vocal and demanding in spite of the institutional and even family resistance.  And CSU, the focus of the second piece, pressed "Apple, Google, and Blackboard to improve their software or lose the ability to reach Cal State's 430,000 students."  These efforts took time and persuasion and the work of advocates who weren't satisfied with a nod to accessibility.  




http://chronicle.com/article/Blind-Students-Demand-Access/125695/
http://chronicle.com/article/Cal-States-Strong-Push-for/125683/

Sample MP3 audio & automatic text transcript

Free online accessibility book discussion 3/11 2pm ET  tlt.gs/frlv 

Used Philips "Voice Tracer" Digital recorder to produce and upload audio file to my computer.  Used Dragon Naturally Speaking 11 Premium to produce text transcript.  DID NOT EDIT AUDIO OR TEXT AT ALL.  

If the links below don't work as expected, go instead to the Google Sites Web page from which this was copied and pasted:   http://tlt.gs/4bcf

---------------------------------------------------------------------

SAMPLE AUDIO FILE (MP3) AND TEXT TRANSCRIPT PRODUCED AUTOMATICALLY

Has technology advanced enough so that people who have little technical expertise can now produce adequate quality versions of BOTH text and audio for the same information without doubling their efforts?  

Can the quality of BOTH the two elements produced - the sound recording and the text transcript -  of sufficient quality to be useful in making  online information more effectively accessible to people who have difficulty with vision or hearing?  

PURPOSE:   This Web page provides an audio recording and a text transcript of that recording.  Both were produced and made available on the web with very little time or expense. We welcome comments about the adequacy of the quality of these two elements for making online information more widely and fully accessible to people who have vision or hearing deficits.  We welcome suggestions about tools and services for producing sound and text transcripts with some or all of these characteristics:

1.  Produce better quality than these examples

2.  Have an even lower threshold for learning how to use - especially, for learning just enough to BEGIN to use in the simplest but worthwhile ways

3.  More widely available, accessible, or inexpensive

The recording that you can play here has been uploaded as a small MP3 file of 50kb  to this Website.

Following this paragraph is a control that allows you to play the audio recording with one click.  

Below that is a text transcription of the recording.  That transcription was produced by Dragon 11 Premium on March 7, 2011.  That software had been trained for about one hour a few months ago by Steve Gilbert to reduce errors when transcribing his voice recordings from a digital recording device.  

HERE IS THE AUDIO

HERE IS THE TRANSCRIPTION:

Flow this is Steve Gilbert, president of the TLT group.  I'm recording without any editing or redoing I want to see how well this works.  I'm talking a little more forcefully than I would normally but I'm using my works digital recording device.  I'd like to know if doing this once without any retakes or changes is adequate with dragon transcription

END OF TRANSCRIPTION

• Click here for more info about  Making Online Teaching Accessible: Inclusive Course Design for Students with Disabilities by Norman Coombs
• Click here for more info about the free online discussion of this book Friday March 12, 2011 2pm ET
• Click here to download a copy of the mp3 

Help online accessibility for disabilities? Record audio online free?

Try my Broadcastr.com test for FridayLive 3/12? http://t.co/mJZ6iti

Using the preceding link, can you easily play the brief recording I just made?
----------------------------

"...the service lets users record, publish and geo-tag stories to share...
"To use Broadcastr, just record your story, review and re-record (if needed), add some tags and pin it to a location. You can create playlists to group recordings, and users can follow particular storytellers or share stories via e-mail, Twitter and Facebook.
"The Web site has a few loading and interface bugs..."
- from "Create your own walking tour with Broadcastr" by Hayley Tsukayama Wash. Post 3/6/11




"Broadcastr offers an application that lets people record audio stories tagged to specific geographical locations around the world. The storytellers, Broadcastr hopes, will both create compelling tales and imbue places with new meanings through the voices of strangers. ...
"Broadcastr is yet another logical evolution in the democratization of media and storytelling,...


"Broadcastr describes itself this way:  'We tweet. We blog. We YouTube. We connect on Facebook. What about our voices? Now, we broadcast them. Broadcastr is a new Social Media platform. Anyone, anywhere in the world, can record, index, listen to, and share audio via a map-based interface. From the historical to the hysterical, the hilarious to the anecdotal, Broadcastr amplifies all our voices.'"
- From "Broadcastr Unveiled: Storytelling Goes Social, Local and Viral"  By ALEX SALKEVER Posted 4:00 PM 12/18/10 See full article from DailyFinance:http://srph.it/eCLDLt

Vision Worth Working Toward = VWWT

A "Vision Worth Working Toward" is more than an expectation and less than a prediction.  It must be an inspiring but plausible goal that participants can work toward and make visible progress - soon.  tlt.gs/VWWT 

"... half of all students score below median!" ... what to do?

"It's come to my attention that half of all students score below the median on EVERY test!

Can that be a coincidence, or is it the result of incompetent teachers or a teachers' union conspiracy to subvert the Republic?" - Facebook: John Stuckey 20110303

Certainly never happened in my courses!

Steve Gilbert

Higher Ed in Crisis Requiring Radical Change?

"...technology can move so fast that institutions must either adapt or die..." Colleges & universities? Banking, music, newspapers?

"...the pace of change of options presented to higher ed by social/networked technologies far outstrips the pace of pedagogical change and institutional innovation in higher ed.

This Friday we'll discuss Social Networking in/for higher education - FridayLive!  Free online 2pm ET March 4, 2011.  We'll also consider how the pace of change varies among individuals, institutions, and industries.... [and countries? cultures? civilizations?]  The inventors, pioneers, vanguard enthusiasts who have unusual roles in these changes, may also have unusual perspectives, hopes and fears.  Hopes for the most utopian consequences, fears of the most pedestrian distortions.
Right now we can see a remarkable sequence of international events - clashes between political systems, individual initiatives, and emerging communities - that vividly demonstrates how motivation and need can accelerate the use of new technologies. Urgency has overcome the thresholds of apparent complexity that usually delay rapid implementation.

Above paraphrases and excerpts email exchange among Derek Bruff , Jim Julius & Steve Gilbert today (3/2) in preparation for FridayLive! March 4, 2011 2pm ET free online discussion/Webcast/Webinar.

Also see Bruff's discussion of "participatory culture" in his blog posting of Jan 29, 2011: What Happens When Everyone Has a Voice | Teaching with Classroom Response Systems

"I just want the world to make sense" Social Networking for the Overloaded

Blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Wikis, Listservs, Groups, Discussion Boards, ... What do these things really do?   Why? How? Who cares?  Who should care?  How do they help/hinder teaching and learning?  How could they?

Social Networking in/for higher education - FridayLive!  Free online 2pm ET March 4, 2011.

I doubt that most people who have been using Twitter recently knew they were using "hashtags" or "widgets"  - especially those using some of Twitter's simplest and most effective capabilities to coordinate recent political activities in the Middle East. [ Simplest explanation of Twitter hash tags I've found yet!]  See below for more...

Also see the Overloadtiorium:  "If working 24 hours a day isn't enough, you have to work nights."

JUST WANT THE WORLD TO MAKE SENSE

"...I just want the world to make sense.  ...There it was, the one thing everybody wanted, and the one thing nobody got. ... She'd lived a life that made the unpleasant truth easy to avoid - and now she must have run into something that made it so clear, she couldn't get around it." - Jane Haddam, Not a Creature Was Stirring, Doubleday, 1993, pp. 77-78

MISLEADING TERMINOLOGY
Labels first assigned to important new tools and functions of "social networking technologies" are often selected by those who are immersed in the technology itself and who are prone to extend insider terminology and create cute acronyms.  Gratuitously cryptic terminology can make new tools seem more complex and mysterious than necessary - especially to the next wave of potential users.  We hope to provide explanations and examples that reduce these linguistic obstacles and enable educators to take advantage of these tools' emerging capabilities to support improvements in teaching and learning.
This criticism is irrelevant and the need for simpler intermediate explanations vanishes when the new users are desperate.   That was powerfully demonstrated in the Middle East early in 2011.
POWER OF SOCIAL NETWORKING TECHNOLOGY IN MIDDLE EAST 2011
"Unedited, raw, anonymous and emotional, Egyptian voices are trickling out through a new service that evades attempts by the authorities to suppress them by cutting Internet services." - from "New Service Lets Voices From Egypt Be Heard," By CHRISTINE HAUSER, New York Times, Published: February 1, 2011

"... anyone can tweet by simply leaving a voicemail on one of these international phone numbers (+16504194196 or +390662207294 or +97316199855) and the service will instantly tweet the message using the hashtag #egypt.  

 No Internet connection is required. People can listen to the messages by dialing the same phone numbers or going to 

twitter.com/speak2tweet. "  - from "

Some weekend work that will (hopefully) enable more Egyptians to be heard" 

Posted by Ujjwal Singh, CoFounder of SayNow and AbdelKarim Mardini, Product Manager, Middle East & North Africa, on Google Blog 

1/31/2011 02:27:00 PM  

Eat 100,000 poor children; Add 5 students to each top teacher's class?

2 Modest Proposals?

1.  Sell 100,000 children per year to be "stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; ..." - from "A Modest Proposal for preventing the children of poor people in Ireland, from being a burden on their parents or country, and for making them beneficial to the publick." by Jonathan Swift 1729 - more text, citation below.

2.  "...get more students in front of top teachers by identifying the top 25 percent of teachers and asking them to take on four or five more students.   Part of the savings could then be used to give the top teachers a raise." - from "How teacher development could revolutionize our schools" by Bill Gates 2011 - more text, citation below. [Where might these 'savings' come from? From firing and not replacing 25 percent of the non-top teachers? - Steve Gilbert, 2011]

Citations/More...

1.  "... hundred thousand may, at a year old, be offered in sale to the persons of quality and fortune, through the kingdom, always advising the mother to let them suck plentifully in the last month, so as to render them plump, and fat for a good table."  Swift, Jonathan. “A modest proposal.” 1729. Quotidiana. Ed. Patrick Madden. 19 Dec 2007. 17 Feb 2010 http://essays.quotidiana.org/swift/modest_proposal/

2.  "...Our goal is a new approach to development and evaluation that teachers endorse and that helps all teachers improve.

"The value of measuring effectiveness is clear when you compare teachers to members of other professions - farmers, engineers, computer programmers, even athletes. These professionals are more advanced than their predecessors - because they have clear indicators of excellence, their success depends on performance and they eagerly learn from the best.

"The same advances haven't been made in teaching because we haven't built a system to measure and promote excellence. Instead, we have poured money into proxies, things we hoped would have an impact on student achievement. The United States spends $50 billion a year on automatic salary increases based on teacher seniority. It's reasonable to suppose that teachers who have served longer are more effective, but the evidence says that's not true. After the first few years, seniority seems to have no effect on student achievement.

"Another standard feature of school budgets is a bump in pay for advanced degrees. Such raises have almost no impact on achievement, but every year they cost $15 billion that would help students more if spent in other ways.

"Perhaps the most expensive assumption embedded in school budgets - and one of the most unchallenged - is the view that reducing class size is the best way to improve student achievement. This belief has driven school budget increases for more than 50 years. U.S. schools have almost twice as many teachers per student as they did in 1960, yet achievement is roughly the same.

"What should policymakers do? One approach is to get more students in front of top teachers by identifying the top 25 percent of teachers and asking them to take on four or five more students. Part of the savings could then be used to give the top teachers a raise. (In a 2008 survey funded by the Gates Foundation, 83 percent of teachers said they would be happy to teach more students for more pay.) "

- Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Washington Post, Feb 28, 2011, p A15; online at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/27/AR2011022702876.html

Perfection: Take away or add?

"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery From The Quotations Page

And Gracie Allen "Always removed a piece of jewelery when going out so she wouldn't be 'overdressed'"  -- Wikipedia entry about Gracie Allen

Thanks to Avery Boyce for 1st quote above, Steve Ehrmann for 2nd!

Stand up. Move now! "Are you using your laptop unsafely?"

Lacking self-discipline, I force myself to get up and move every hour when working on computer.  

How? Remote Timer!

WHY?  [more below from UC Berkeley]
Laptop configuration is not ergonomically desirable. Sitting without moving much for longer than 60 minutes is not healthy for human beings. That probably includes raptly attentive students during college lectures!
GOAL
So, I always have my computer monitor physically detached from my computer keyboard - whether desktop or laptop - even when traveling (bring extra keyboard with laptop - put laptop on overturned ice-bucket on desk in hotel room). And I avoid zombie-like immobility when working.

HOW - HOME OFFICE
Plug computer monitor power cables into a VERY long extension cord.
Plug extension cord into timer in an outlet in basement.

Set timer for 60 to 75 minutes.
One hour later, monitors go entirely black. No matter how intently I'm working, I must stop immediately, but my work is safe.
Walk through several rooms and up and down flight of stairs to get to the timer, reset it, and return to my desk.

Thus, I force myself to move and get at least a little exercise!

Have you found a better way that does not rely on self-discipline any more than this? Let me know.

WHY - ERGONOMICS@WORK UC Berkeley's Ergonomics Program for Faculty and Staff

"Take frequent stretch breaks every 30 to 45 minutes"

http://www.uhs.berkeley.edu/facstaff/pdf/ergonomics/laptop.pdf

FridayLive! 2pm ET 2/17/2011 Student Ratings: Paper -> Online; Free Online Webcast

Twitter - Starting A Revolution? International? Higher educ?

"Twitter co-founder Biz Stone ... how it was used recently in Egypt to help organize the revolution and how it has been used to spread democracy movements in other countries."
Fuller description of this interview, link to podcast, etc. avail at:
http://www.npr.org/2011/02/16/133775340/twitters-biz-stone-on-starting-a-revolution


No one can ignore the extraordinary pace and impact of Twitter's emerging role in international communications, politics, revolution.  But, what are the implications for teaching and learning?


What can we do with Twitter in higher education?  


Constructively - not merely forbidding it's use by students in some classrooms?  Recognizing its growing availability, accessibility, low cost.  


See recent work, discussions by Derek Bruff et al.
http://derekbruff.com/site/blog/2010/11/01/twitter-101-for-a-conference-backchannel/
http://twitter.com/#!/derekbruff

Frugal Innovations - The Workshop

1.  What?  Why?

Individuals each identify one or two shareworthy, low-threshold, shareable improvements in teaching/learning with technology from their own experience.

2.  Which One?
Form small group.  Discuss each others' improvements.  Select one for the group.


3.  How?       
Develop 1st draft of materials to introduce this improvement.


4  Who, When, Where?  Strategy
Develop plan for use of materials to share this improvement.
 "Why me?  Why now?"
TMI/TMO/TLT/TL$


Sample Workshop Plan/Resources - Evolving rapidly
Used at Lilly-Greensboro 2011 Conference - Feb, 2011
-----------------------------------------------------
Notes - to be integrated above soon!  SWG 20110209
Strategy

Satisficing

Local Politics

     priorities, resources, limitations, opportunities

Shareworthy, low-threshold, shareable improvement in T/L sample

 Produced today in Lilly Conf workshop.  More:  tlt.gs/FISELillyGSO2011

Frugal Innovations for Student Engagement: 

Collegial Sharing of ImprovementsLilly Greensboro 2011

10:15-11:30AM Friday, February 4, 2011

Example of a shareworthy, low-threshold, shareable improvement - produced by small group during workshop Feb 4, 2011

"Learn, Teach, Learn" Activity

1.  Students learn a new concept

2.  Students prepare to teach this specific concept to peer students, using "their own way of teaching"

3.  Students teach this specific concept to  [some? many? one? optional?] peer students

Copy of paper bookmark first draft produced by this group and scanned with permission: [click on this image to see larger more legible version]

Learning Cures Sadness...

"The best thing for being sad is to learn something."

Background:  Merlyn, responsible for raising the boy who is destined to become the king of England, is an unusual teacher.  Here, he advises young Wart/Arthur how to cope with frustration and sadness.

More of excerpt from T. H. White's The Once and Future King:

"The best thing for being sad," replied Merlyn, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then--to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting.  Learning is the thing for you. Look at what a lot of things there are to learn--pure science, the only purity there is.  You can learn astronomy in a lifetime, natural history in three, literature in six. And then, after you have exhausted a milliard lifetimes in biology and medicine and theocriticism and geography and history and economics--why, you can start to make a cartwheel out of the appropriate wood, or spend fifty years learning to begin to learn to beat your adversary at fencing. After that you can start again on mathematics, until is it is time to learn to plough."

Excerpt from T. H. White's The Once and Future King, Berkeley Medallion Edition, July, 1966, page 183.

[YouTube Recording of Steven W. Gilbert reading this excerpt.]