Educational
Getting a free quality education from the internet is possible. This article is a multipage second version of my original pagerank 7 page about getting a free online education. If you have additional quality information or links post a comment. If your College, University or textbooks host interactive content without requiring payed login post a comment with the links. Though these courses will not give you college credit at any particular university you get to learn from some of the best teachers in the world.
Ranked as the #1 public school in the United States, Berkeley offers podcasts and webcasts of amazing professors lecturing. Each course has an RSS feed so you can track each new lecture. For printable assignments and notes you can check the professors homepage, which is usually given in the first lecture or google his name. Even though the notes, homework and tests are not directly printed in the berkeley website, as they are in MIT and other courseware sites, it's not a problem to find them. I personally tried to use it for John Wawrzynek's machine structures class and the nutrition courses.
Berkeley Videos are in .rm format and real player can be a pain. It asks you to register real player, spawns on startup. Instead, download a free program called media player classic with the real alternative plugin. Media player classic is fully featured and much easier on the computers memory. The real alternative plugin download seems to come with an older version of media player classic, so updating media classic is optional.
Download: Real Alternative Plugin
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is ranked 7th nationally in the United States. Many of the courses do not have video lectures. Instead, they have notes in PDF format along with tests and homework.
Since MIT OCW is heavily based on opening PDF files it's recommended you download FoxIt Reader, a freeware PDF reader that's many times faster than the bulky and slow adobe acrobat. Also Ghost Script in combination with GSView is able to read pdfs, and post scripts files.
Download: Foxit Reader
Carnegie Mellon is a private research university ranked equal with Berkeley. Though registration is not required they have a registered user mode that allows you to keep track of your scores and progress. Currently 11 courses are offered. The courses are basically ebooks in a frame-based easy to use navigation system with an occasional powerful interactive Java Applet for practice and testing.
Utah State uses the same content management system as MIT OCW with large available course listing.
Tufts University in Massachusetts uses the same content management system as MIT OCW with large available course listing.
European site called Open University's OpenLearn supported by The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Contains many online course and a different style content management system. I was unable to find anything interactive or any streaming media, though it does have forums for each course. Appears to function mostly as a large educational ebook library.
Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health offers health based lecture notes and assigments. You'll find the JHSPH OCW website uses the same content management system as MIT OCW. The notes are formatted much more cleanly but I haven't seen exams, and their search bar seems to be broken.
CNX.org is an open-content library of course materials developed by Rice University. It has a huge database of content which is very useful for people who know what they're looking for. It does have ebook style higher level courses courses you can choose from.
Initiative is led by Foothill College which contains 8 free courses.
Contains posted lectures and classnotes. Some of the courses even contain video lectures.
From the creators of wikipedia, Wikiversity describes itself as being a community seeking to create and use learning materials and activities. Wikibooks is also incredibly powerful already containing everything from a detailed guide to learning French to Organic Chemistry and Nanotechnology.
Contains 1354 educational resources at the time of posting.
Visit: Archive.org EducationFree online courses given as long as you buy the required reading material. Unfortunately barnes and nobles university is now barnes and nobles book club.
Downloading iTunes is required to use this site. It contains lectures from professors, interviews and more.
Visit: Stanford on iTunesAudio lectures available in windows media and real media format. Click the text and not the RSS icon to download the lectures directly.
Visit: Purdue University PodcastsSmall list of audio lectures by Southwest.
Visit: Southwest Tech PodcastsUniversity of california Podcasts.
Visit: Southwest Tech PodcastsWestern Kentucky University Podcasts
Visit: Western Kentucky University PodcastsSmall collection of podcasts from the College of DuPage.
Visit: College of DuPage PodcastsHas a 56 lecture video podcast on the hindi along with a forbidden-to-download french workbook audios.
York College offers 4 podcast courses.
Visit: York College Podcasts.Small Podcast by Los Rios Community College with several courses.
Visit: Los Rios Community College PodcastSeems to only feature one podcast lecture free per semester with a flashy site.
Visit: Philosophy PodcastI'll keep this list relatively short.
By now wiki needs no introduction but reminding people about some of its subsites can be useful.
WikipediaIt's sad that google answers no longer exists ="/.
Anytime you're looking for interactive help search for forums of the subject your looking for on google. There are millions of willing and helpful people that can help you. If you make the people feel you're coming off as just saying, "TEACH ME EVERYTHING", or "DO MY HOMEWORK, URRGENT ITS DUE TOMORROW", you won't be helped. I know it seems obvious but too many people do this, especially in Yahoo answers.
Not all sites use ugly notation and weird java applets to explain math problems. You can get help from friends and have fun at the same time using instant messengers that have "whiteboard" features like yahoo messenger and msn messenger. There's even Ajax Based Whiteboards which require only javascript. Search video sites like youtube and google video. Also search for animations on google. For example:
Algebra Flash Google SearchThe same applies for higher level subjects like calculus. In general I recommend the site Webmath.com. Their 100 solved integral problems helped me a lot for AP calc in high school.
You could always buy used books from amazon or your local half priced books but many times the books are out of copyright and can be obtained free. Even if they're not, there are many free online textbooks created by volunteers that are just as effective. When the open courseware lectures tell you to do a homework from a textbook you don't have, search for the topic currently being discussed in the free textbook and work out all the practice problems you can.
Visit: Textbook Revolution: Free Non-Copyright Textbooks OnlineP2P networks such as Emule / Frostwire and torrent trackers such as Mininova and Ebook Share often host ebooks and online audio books. Some are out of copyright, but some are blatantly illegally redistributed, so beware. Try using Google Books to confirm a copyright).
Upload your photography, drawings and even poetry into support forums for feedback and experience.
DeviantartDigital editing is extremely useful in both art and photography. Most people use photoshop but there's also a freeware program called Gimp that is equally as powerful as photoshop.
Download: Download GimpIf you want to learn to program, the internet is infinitely better than any university or any one text book you could find. There are insane amounts of tutorials and explanations in every way imaginable.
(preg) Replace foo with the programming language you'd like to learn. Sorry this is so generic, but it holds true with any programming language you can imagine. I highly recommend learning python as a first language because it's flexible and closer to english than any other programming language I've seen. Many kids and teens often want to make their own games. I recommend Macromedia Flash for beginner game creators. For advanced tutorials try the Game Programming wiki.
Search peer 2 peer networks, google video and youtube for tutorials and free media and tutorials. Arrange by shared/rating/viewcount to find the best of the best.
Taking a music theory class is required to get a music major and most the focus is on interval identification. The real power is mastery in identification which can let you play songs by ear. Perfect pitch is NOT required for people to play songs completely by ear. Only relative pitch is needed.
Tons of features including interval training. Runs on both windows and linux.
Download SolfegeThe Ear Training software is no longer being sold or distributed. It was a commercial product but the shareware version didn't have any restriction on how long you could use it. The only benefit of buying was added scores & statistics/user management. All the ear training parts of the program are completely functional.
Download Teoria 2 from archive.org. Archive.org can be slow so please be patient.Tiny 100k open source java program. Identify intervals, chords, scales and tuning.
Download Ear Toner
Simple interface with powerful features. Its mainly for interval identification, but you can tweak to *try to train perfect pitch.
Download Functional Ear TrainerClean looking open source program made with java. Identify intervals, chords, and scales.
Download TeteThe Java based programs may need a javasound bank. I don't think they use your default midi software because java is OS independent. You may need to download soundbank-deluxe.gm or lesser to hear anything. The normal install directory for windows is:
C:/Program Files/Java/YourJavaVersion/lib/audio
I thought I should pop this in, since it's such a powerful software. Make your own songs with the freeware open source program, audacity.
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/Very popular site, but not all that great compared to downloading the software.
Good Ear's WebsiteJava based site for practicing intervals.
Java Ear TrainingFlash based eartrainer
Ear Plane Flash Ear TrainAwesome site full of content. Multilingual.
Music Theory WebsiteDown for now...
Prolobe WebsiteThis program is awesomeness. Even with all the amazing freeware programs this really is worth registering. It has a massive amount of features including a jazz ear trainer in a simple interface, despite only being 12mb. It is constantly updated, and multilingual.
http://www.earmaster.com/download/sch.htmI hate auralia, but you can try it. Download Auralia 3 Demo and the Musition Sampler. It's hard to find Mac ear training software, so this may be the only option for some people. They also have a 250$ notation software similar to Finale2007 and Noteworth Composer.
A tiny lil prog with a not so tiny $50 price tag. Looks like it hadn't been updated since like 2000.
Download Personal Ear Trainer$35 Interval Game for kids.
Download interval Loader57$ ear training program. Has a bunch of nifty features, but I don't consider it better than the freewares mentioned above.
Download EaropeSimple $20 ear trainer for Mac and Windows
Download DolceMmm... bad, but popular.
Ear Power$40 software for mac and windows. Pretty crummy interface and very few features.
David Burge has a really gay voice that you have to listen to for 8 entire CDs. I hate this guy. He can talk for hours, about nothing. He can spend a CD telling you how powerful you would be, if only you had relative pitch/perfect pitch. He stops lessons for story telling time of boring anecdotes. David Burge just tells you to practice singing intervals over and over, and then gives you a little quiz on CD.
Save $389, their "list price", and just practice with a one of the freeware programs above. Sure throwing away $389 on a horrible program can get you motivated enough to send time practicing, but you won't improve anymore than just using the freeware. If he took out all the fluff his course would be 1 cd long with a short booklet of exercises. The rest of the stuff is pure hype to make the bloated price seem reasonable.
Haven't tried it, but he has a jazz eartraining course.
It may be annoying for awhile bet set your default windows sounds to intervals. For example Major 7th for minimizing a window or Major 6th to Maximize it. If you constantly have your ipod on or are always playing music, find the intervals on your favorite songs. Slowly key out the melody on piano and count the half steps. It won't take long and it will be a permanent reference.
Many of the above are available on p2p networks. Ear training software is annoying to pirate though because many of the companies release updates often, correcting all kinds of program problems from initial releases. What a pain it would feel like knowing the program you have has errors, and you're training with it!
Before you search your favorite serials, serialz, proggies, burned OEM, pirated direct downloads, crack, warez, demo cracks, torrents, keygen sites, or look for a "patch" for the latest software version, instead use the full version freeware programs. Most the time, the freeware is just way better.
I have a lot to say, and a lot of resources collected on the subject. I'll devote another article about perfect pitch training.
Speed Math Trainer can be played embedded in html or from the swf source [fullscreen].
Small: http://www.jimmyr.com/blog/speed_math.html
Put This Video on Your Myspace or Blog:Please retain all links and the name Jimmy Ruska in the program.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/speed-math/You must download flash 8 to use this program.
You can download it to your desktop:
Forgive the lack of effect in my voice, the screen capture thing and video uploader was being annoying so I had to make/upload the video several times.
If I see people are watching my videos through the statistics google offers I'll add more tutorials like 3 or 4 digit multiplication.
Go to the bottom of this page and use the comment box.
Go to the bottom of this page and use the comment box.
Right click and save as to put on your desktop.
Version 1 swf 70kClick on one of the addition or multiplication text title's. It'll make the intro disappear. From there it says "Type 1 to Start".
Clicking "e" in the submit box will restart the level and start the timer.
I got these links from Grey Matters Mental Gym which Featured this page in an article. Thanks Scott!
Part 1: Introduction, Adding 2- and 3-digit numbersTo add rapidly start from left to right.
Put This Video on Your Myspace or Blog:The following tips are taken from the book "Rapid Math Tricks and Tips" (c) 1992 by Edward H. Julius. The tips themselves are public domain and the author's direct explanation or examples are not used. This is not the full list of tricks. Mistakes listed here do not reflect the author of the book.
Simply double the number twice and adjust the decimal, because 2x2=4
Double it three times, because 8 is 2 x 2 x 2
Divide by two and adjust decimals, because 5=10/2
Multiply the tens digit by a whole number, then attach 25 to the end.
Add the two digits your multiplying by 11 together and put their sum in the middle of the same two digits. 12*11=?, 1+2=3,solution 132
Divide by four, and adjust the decimal. Because 2.5=10/4.
Multiply times 4 and adjust the decimal.
Substract the number by one and call it value 1, then substract the number from 100 and call it value 2. Put the two values together.
Write the number twice and adjust the decimal. 64*101=6464
Divide by 8, adjust decimals. Because 5/4 or (10/8) is 1.25.
Multiply 8, adjust decimals. Because 5/4 or (10/8) is 1.25.
Multiply the value your multiplying times nine, time 10 instead. Take that solution and substract the value your multiplying times nine from it. 9 x 21, we say 10 x 21 =210-21=answer.
Multiply times 10 and call it value 1, multiply times 2 and call it value 2. Add the solutions. 12 * 60= (10x60)600+(60*2)120
Multiply by 10 and get value 1, divide by 2 then multiply by 10 and get value two. 15*34 = (10x34)340+((34/2)*10)170
^ Top 10 Free Educational SoftwareNote that this list is mainly targetted towards windows users. That's not because I think windows is better, but it's because I know linux users already know this type of information ;).
Replace the bulky, unsecure bloatware called microsoft office with this freeware clone. Yes, if your computer crashes it makes save checkpoints every few seconds to recover data.
http://www.openoffice.org/Do you like to open rar, zip, and tar files without being prompted to register? Download 7-zip for a fast light weight compressor/decompressor of files.
http://www.7-zip.org/Do you value time, sanity and a fast computer? Download foxit reader so you can download pdf files and read them instantly. Adobe acrobat frequently crashes and makes my fast computer sound like its grinding away while lagging horribly trying to process the monster program.
http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.phpReplace your graphing calculator with your computer.
http://gcalc.sourceforge.net/Similar to winkey. Allows you to quickly and efficiently configure quick keyboard shortcuts to a variety of tasks.
http://hotkeybind.sourceforge.net/download.htmlUsed with plugins this is a fast light weight tool to watch all kinds of video formats. In recent years many hackers have targetted windows media player because of many glitches in the way it processes streaming media. MPC uses much less memory making it way faster for students who like multitasking.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/guliverkli/Are you a hardcore instant messenger? With gaim. all at once, you can connect to AIM and ICQ (Oscar protocol), MSN Messenger, Yahoo!, IRC, Jabber, Gadu-Gadu, SILC, Novell GroupWise Messenger, Lotus Sametime, and Zephyr networks. Gaim supports plugins!
http://gaim.sourceforge.net/about.phpThe p2p trio can help get archived tutorials and instructional materials. P2P software CAN be educational. I found it very useful for learning french and finding sheet music (searching archives on emule). Be sure to check copyrigths before you download something =P. This combination of freeware is probably the most efficient.
http://www.emule-project.net/home/perl/general.cgi?l=1&ga=1&rm=downloadThis will help suppliment #8. Believe it or not there are now large and commercially competitive freeware antiviruses. For individual files you want to scan for viruses try Jotti Malware Scan and Virus Total.
http://www.clamwin.com/Little known powerful file that allows you to configure the windows key in windows. You can go to your favorite sites, open common files, and play your favorite music at the combination of two keys.
http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file/fid,5506-order,1-page,1-c,alldownloads/description.htmlTodo lists, calendars and such.
http://sourceforge.net/search/index.php?words=flash+cards&sort=score&sortdir=desc&offset=0&type_of_search=soft&form_cat=18Many students learn material with flash cards. There's been thousands of flash card like programs made to help you memorize content quickly and easily. In fact, I even made an online quiz maker myself in php, though it's not the most straight forward to learn >_<.
http://pauker.sourceforge.net/pauker.php?target=download&lang=enAdd rss feeds from blogs/image galleries of friends. You can add open courseware rss feeds as well for in progress courses.
http://www.google.com/ig?hl=enTurn thoughts into reality with google. Be persistent and you'll almost always find what you're looking for or at least learn a little bit more about how things work in the process.
There's tons of searches I can use, from fairly simple to very long. Use these exact searches on google.
It's usually best to learn from multiple sources when you're trying to learn something complicated. Search google for as many resources as you can and compile a list of resources before you get started. It should feel like you hit a brick wall if you get stuck learning a concept in one particular resources.
^ TOP 10 Ways to Become More Efficient With Firefox Put This Video on Your Myspace or Blog:The only useful button in firefox is the tools button, otherwise everything else can be accessed with common quick keys
The media manager, firefox forward button, stop button, and profile have no quick key, as far as I know.
While your writing in your favorite forum using firefox you can use several editing quick keys. CTRL+Z is undo, so if you accidently delete a paragraph, CTRL+Z becomes your best friend. Shift+CTRL+Z is a redo button, so if you write something and click ctrl+Z one too many times and it eats another paragraph, you can fix it all with Shift+CTRL+Z.
Before posting anything on a forum, add your post to the clipboard with an infinitely short but stress saving key combination. CTRL+A (select all) CTRL+C (copy). This way if your comp got unplugged or disconnected, or if the server just went down, you'll have a copy of your work that you can post again later (though rewriting almost always turns out a more elegant phrasing).
UPDATE: Here's a bigger list of firefox quick keys by CNET.
Head over to the firefox most popular skins page. I personally like the whitehart theme best. Spend some time testing out themes you like.
Right click your toolbar and click customize. Remove and add objects to take up less room. The firefox toolbar doesn't have to be bulky.
This is my ultra minimalist firefox setup with the navigations and bookmarks toolbar disabled (unchecked). I'm not saying you should do the same, but showing people that firefox can look clean and doesn't have to look bulky with tons of extensions. I have google spellcheck and google pagerank, which are incredibly useful. The back button has been removed since I can just click backspace, and so has the refresh button (F5). The rest of the buttons regular toolbar buttons have been removed, eg. file, edit, bookmarks, view with a userChrome.css hack that goes in C:/Documents and Settings/your name/Applicationdata/mozilla/profiles/somerandomfolder/chrome/. Renabling the default userChrome is easy though, just delete it.
Many extensions cause memory leaks and make firefox more intolerable, but there really are some I can't live without like google toolbar for spellcheck and pagerank. Siteadvisor is great to protect new computer users from malware and customize google is really nifty. VideoDownloader is extremely useful for people who have fast connections and enjoy watching videos from youtube and google video.
Rather than adblock, adblock plus, filter.G and other ad blockers I heavily recommend the windows hosts blocker. Using a firefox extention makes firefox parse (scan) the code of each page you look at then remove the ads, this makes firefox more slow/unreliable especially with large pages and many tabs.
Another extension I can't live without is TAB MIX Plus, here's why...
Many of these features you have to enable for them to become active once you've installed the extension by clicking tools -> Tab Mix Plus. Check out the help page.
I've made a Best firefox extensions ever list. Also be sure to see the official most popular extensions list.
To open your bookmarks click ctrl+B, you're halfway there. Now learn about LiveBookmarks on FIrefox. Click the little RSS button and now everytime you check your bookmarks you'll see if there's anything new or interesting that's been posted on your favorite sites.
JavaScript is great but certain aspects of it are simply annoying. Sometimes script kiddies or idiots create really bad code resizing a window to 0x0. If the 0x0 window is closed last it saves that as your default window size and only lets you open firefox maximized unless you resize firefox with command line. Resizing, moving, and hiding stuff in anyway is very irritable. Editing the javascript settings and using the javascript features on tab mix plus can prevent frustrations.
I don't want...
This is one of the most powerful tricks hardly anyone uses. Firefox quick seaches are easy to add. For example, go to imdb.com, right click their search engine, click add a keyword for this search, set the keyword as imdb... Now type "imdb Drunken Master" in the address bar. Viola, instant search.
I have a lot actually, not that I ever use them often, but when I do I feel special.
There's a lot of scriptlets available to do useful things. For example, on forms sites like Yahoo Main, Passport.com and others add features to prevent you from being able to save your passwords onto your browser (form autocomplete=1). To add it you have to drag it to bookmarks 0.o... that's where people get confused.
Foxit pdf reader is much much faster at opening PDF documents. There's literally like PDF download extension that warns you "this file is a pdf document and will take ages to load, are you sure you want to open it!?". Just download FoxIt, uninstall adobe reader, then go to tools -> Options -> View & Edit actions, then set Foxit as default pdf reader for the MIME type PDF. No more worrying, waiting, and lost hair from adobe crashing the browser as it disgustingly tries to embed adobe into firefox on an accidently pdf click.
Most of the time firefox will crash or hang because of memory leaks, meaning the memory used by the program will continue to grow and grow. There's no reason your firefox should be using 250mb of ram and 99% of the processor (check ctrl+alt+delete with windows or type "top" on linux command line).
To lower your firefox memory usage type about:config in the address bar. Search for and edit these values, if they dont exist, create them:
browser.cache.memory.capacity 4 to 8 mbPersonally I like disabling java which I reenable if I find an applet really worth the time. Java slows down the browser and eats a ton of memory. Closing the applet page does not release the memory. Run crescendo instead of quicktime as my default midi and mp3 player. For videos run media player classic with real player and quicktime alternative. Download media player classic last from the sourceforge page, because quicktime and real alternative have older versions.
There's a list of command line arguments in MozillaZine and an official help page. Most people don't need to use this but it can be useful. For example if you have some kind of key or voice macro program, you can add a command line reference to open a new tab when you click or say something. Its main benefit is for developers and webmasters who use it to access consols to debug and inspect sites or firefox itself.
^ Amazing Free Documentaries And VideosI *think* I've seen them all over the course of a year. I hadn't seen a single bad one.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/view/This list of steps can apply researching most all languages. I have some external links to specific languages below.
Emulation basically makes playing consol games possible on your computer. Read more about it on Wikipedia. Playing games can help me learn a languages? In respect to reading and grammar, absolutely. The old role playing games of the past are completely text dependent. Super nintendo games are mostly targetted because they are of small file size and there are many fan sites like emuverse and Snakeyes that offer translation patches in multiple languages for any game. Awesome titles include Super Mario RPG, Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana 3, Star Ocean, Tales of Phantasia, Breath of Fire 1 and 2, Romance of the Three Kindgoms, Final Fantasy 2 - 5. Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced (EU) for GBA and Zelda: Majora's Mask for N64 are among many exceptions of other consols that have multilingual games.
Beware of peer to peer networks. They can offer some great stuff but you have to check copyrights before you download anything because many of the programs may be illegally redistributed. For more about p2p networks check out my best peer to peer networks article.
You can save the above BMI program by right clicking here and click save target as. BMI is intended for people who dont workout, have an average build, and are over 20 years old. There's a childrens BMI calculator on about.com. There's other calculators made more recently using other formulas to calculate ideal body weight.
Check your percent body fat with a doctor or trainer in a local university.
Male:Low: 6-10% fat
Optimal: 11-17% fat
Moderate: 18-20% fat
Obesity: Greater than 25% fat
Female:Low: 14-18% fat
Optimal:19-22% fatModerate: 23-30% fat
Obesity: Greater than 30% fat
You need to lose 3500 calories per pound
Here are some educational sites/programs I've made.
Programmed in php with its own content management system.
Eliteskills Poetry And Writing ClubMy attempt at an online quiz creator. A quiz page programmed in php which generates a quiz page. Because no database is used I am very proud of this creation.
Quiz CreatorCheckout my Mp3 and files search that uses google to find music/albums, anime, games and movies with direct downloads. It's very safe and easy to use, just search for a song, then right click save as to download it.
See my new funny pictures blog. I accidently deleted some of the old blogging software which I made, so I just rewrote everything from scratch. This blog won't be updated anymore =/.
I make video tutorials on a variety of topics on youtube. Please help me out by adding me as a friend if you have a youtube account. It really helps.
Clicking the links above will give you a random but extremely high rated video. There are over 15,000 awesome videos indexed so click as many times as you'd like.
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