Free Udemy Video Course: Brazil for Beginners

Check out this free video course titled "Brazil for Beginners," presented on Udemy by Marshall C. Eakin of Vanderbilt University. It consists of 17 sessions, 15 of which are lectures of about 20 minutes each.  The first session is a brief introduction to the course, and the final one is a short written note. 

Professor Eakin has devoted his career  of more than 30 years to the study of Latin America, with a major emphasis on Brazil. He has lived and studied in Brazil.

So far, I've watched the first two lectures. He manages to cover a lot of content in each lecture.  

I'd describe his lecture style as deliberate more than dynamic, but he obviously knows what he's talking about and the lectures contain so much information that they are interesting. 

While viewing the video, you can type notes in a sidebar notepad, and you can then download the notes in the form of a data file that can be opened with a spreadsheet app such as Excel or Numbers.  I found that it was easiest to get the notes to appear the way I wanted them in Numbers, then copy and paste them into Pages before printing. 

The video format that Udemy uses doesn't work well at all on my iPad or Apple TV. It starts out fine, but by the last 5 or 10 minutes, the image turns into digital blocks.  So far, I haven't had any problems viewing the lectures on my Mac.

But I'm not complaining. The course is, after all, free, and Dr. Eakin is offering a valuable resource.

Highly recommended for those who want a good overview of Brazilian history.