Education
and learning should be a lifelong process and the Internet is your
chance to get a university level education for free, regardless of where
you are in life, according to this article, which recommends these three websites
to get started:
1. Khan Academy
2. Coursera
Kahn Academy is one of, if not the, best websites out there. It's because of them I improved my math skills.
ReplyDelete"A free college education". Yep. Sure. Because what universities provide is what you can find in any book in the library.
ReplyDeleteWell, stranger things have been said here before.
How do you provide proof of achievement for such learning?
ReplyDeleteIsn't what the Universities are really selling is a piece of paper that says " Yep..he learned all this stuff "?
The title of the post is slightly misleading. One has always been able to acquire "free" knowledge if willing to work for it and seek it out. But getting quality college credentials is not likely to be free.
ReplyDeleteThere are better free online college course offering websites than some of those listed.
Academic Earth is useful and has been around a while, but may not be able to maintain financial support indefinitely if member institutions peel off and form their own proprietary offerings and technologies. It is being threatened by newcomers like EdX -- (MIT and Harvard) -- and Coursera
Coursera (Stanford, Princeton, UMich, Penn) shows a lot of promise but has just gotten started and should be observed.
Khan Academy is in fact a set of short, tutorial length explanatory videos. The level of instruction varies between remedial secondary level up to AP high school level and remedial college level.
Khan is a good way to fill in the gaps of one's early education. As such, it performs a more broadly useful service than most of the others.
There are thousands of quality academic lectures and lecture series online which are not organised as college courses. The best education is what one gives to oneself. But that takes work, and is never easy or truly free.
yup...
ReplyDeleteMIT is on the right track:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-13/mit-begins-offering-free-online-course-with-certificate.html