Free classes for the interested.

[Skidmore]

I discovered this site this morning and am going to check into it further. Just wanted to post a possible resource for others. It looks interesting.

http://www.openculture.com/freeonlinecourses

[ret5hd]

1. Thank you.

[NuclearDem]

2. I also strongly suggest anyone looking for these sorts of things to check out iTunes U.

Lots of good free podcasts and taped lectures from major universities. I blew through all of Columbia's history department through them.

[KurtNYC]

5. thanks for that.

[Democracyinkind]

15. Second that. Great history courses from Yale!!

[alfredo]

23. It's a good resource.

[livetohike]

3. Thanks!

[davidpdx]

4. I've taken a few classes on Coursera

and they have been quite interesting. I am working on a doctorate, but took a few extra law classes through Coursera just because they are interesting. Now that I have started my dissertation I have very little time to take part in them.

[Half-Century Man]

6. Very cool

I have lots of time and very little money, so.....score.

[Mira]

7. Just looked and saved. Thank you. EXCITING! n/t

[westerebus]

8. K&R

[Lochloosa]

9. Bookmarked to catch any future recommendations. Thanks,

[postulater]

10. thanks. great resource.

[swilton]

11. Bookmarked & K&R

[Hotler]

12. Thank you. Very cool. n/t

[NV Whino]

13. Thanks!

This looks great. Just sent it on to a friend as well.

[mopinko]

14. true story

my son is extremely smart, but ended up dropping out of high school with depression.
he sat on the couch for several years, just letting his brain wander the web, and get fat.
it was just about that time that mit started opening their courses.
by the time he got through a year of physics and the first couple math courses, he was ready to go back to school.

graduated top of his class at uic.
he's getting a phd in math at u utah.

this is gonna be a revolution.

[Skidmore]

16. I hope it stays free.

Someone will find a way to profit from it and still keep physical universities financially out of reach.

Happy for the great outcome for your son. I wish him well.

[mopinko]

28. seems like it has to.

how can you put that genie back in the bottle?
i know back then you could watch the courses, or you could pay a fee, and plug in to tutoring, etc, take tests and get credit.

but just the knowledge? there are so many paths to informal education, i think we will just expand our use of testing for knowledge, rather than accepting a piece of paper.

he also learned several computer languages, including perl, ruby and java.
but that's the family business, so....

[Skidmore]

29. I was happy to see that they have a section for K-12 kids too.

And films, auidiobooks, books. A full range of learning experiences.

[mopinko]

32. that's great news for homeschoolers like we were.

there are a lot of us out here with amazing children that we just cannot turn over to factory schooling. but back when we did it, most of the resources were slanted toward the xtian end of things.
what we could have done with this.
sigh.

[klook]

20. Wonderful. Education saves lives.

Really glad to hear about your son's turnaround. Thanks for telling us about it.

[mopinko]

31. i wouldnt say turn around so much

more like he was in a dip. we had homeschooled for 8 years because he was educating himself faster than a school would have kept up.
sorta broke his heart how f'ed up school was. he always sort of thought it was gonna be learning on steroids.

but he got back on his feet.
4 years of college. he flunked one class, first semester, psyche 101. because he just immersed himself, and fell behind. went back the next semester, took it over, got an a.
got all a's after that expect for a b in second year german his last semester.
and he took german, even tho he already had a good bit of japanese when he got there. (another thing he learned on the web).

magna cum laude.
a mother cant hear sweeter words, i can tell you.

[randr]

17. OpenCulture also hs an incredible video library

[Stellar]

18. K&R

Hey, thanks for sharing!

[klook]

19. Open Culture is a treasure trove of fascinating info - for example, John Lennon's home demo tapes --

Hear John Lennon Sing Home Demo Versions of “She Said, She Said,” “Strawberry Fields Forever,” and “Don’t Let Me Down”

I visit the Open Culture site frequently, just to get my mind expanded and my outlook refreshed by posts such as:

• The Importance of Kindness: An Animation of George Saunders’ Touching Graduation Speech,


• Curious Alice — The 1971 Anti-Drug Movie Based on Alice in Wonderland That Made Drugs Look Like Fun,


• Take a Virtual Tour of the Dictionary Shakespeare May Have Owned and Annotated, and


• Henry Rollins: Education is the Cure to “Disaster Capitalism”.

[kelliekat44]

21. Thanks. I have one too. Free coding lessions.

http://www.codecademy.com/dashboard

[handmade34]

22. K&R n/t

[alfredo]

24. I'm downloading the lectures on digital photography. Thanks.

[tblue37]

25. LOTS of great free ebooks available there! nt

[treestar]

26. So cool !

A lot of interesting things there.

[yeoman6987]

27. Absolutely wonderful

Thank you so much. I already did a basic Spanish lesson after clicking on the link. It is an awesome link.....I am so appreciative of you doing this for us.

[Tree-Hugger]

30. K&R

Thanks!

[Tanuki]

33. Thank you! You've helped more people today than you will ever know! n/t

[Skidmore]

34. Pass it on.

Knowledge is freedom.

[FarCenter]

35. I have completed a course on edX and on Coursera, and I'm taking a Udacity course.

The edX course was MITx 6.00.1x Introduction to Computer Science and Programming Using Python. It operated very much like an introductory college course, with lectures, problem sets and exams due on regular deadlines. This encouraged one to keep up. The lectures were pretty good, as were the problem sets. I had no previous experience with Python, and took it to learn the language.

The Coursera course was Computer Networks from Washington University. It also had a definite schedule with deadlines, but the deadlines were more relaxed. This allowed one to take vacation, etc. without missing problem sets or exam deadlines.

The Udacity course is a University of Virginia introductory computer science course using Python. Udacity is even more relaxed about deadlines. I had started this course and then stopped working on it while I took the MIT course.

All three courses are lectures by a professor seated at a desk interspersed with graphics, computer displays, etc. that illustrate the lectures. Lectures tend to be from a couple minutes to 15 minutes, interspersed with quizzes and exercises. This keeps you pretty well engaged, and an advantage of the format is that you can pause, rewind, replay when you find yourself distracted and not paying attention.

Philip Guo has a research paper on video formats done for edX. http://www.pgbovine.net/edX-video-production-research.htm

I generally agree with his conclusions, but I think that there could be less video of the lecturer and more illustration. Also, audio quality is not as good as it should be, and the tone, speech pattern, accent, word choice, etc. of the lecture's audio should be given more focus. There were some studies in the mid '80s that indicated that a combination of pictures, illustrations, and audio was as effective for learning as video.

I didn't find the forums, discussion groups, etc. very useful. If MOOCs are spending a lot of money supporting communication between students, it's probably a frill to be limited. There was some response by TAs to questions that was useful.

[duhneece]

36. kicked to save nt

[niyad]

37. k and r

[Skidmore]

38. Kicking this for additional exposure.