Making Learning Lifelong and accessible
Why post school education matters
I was fortunate enough to have a good education at school & college. I was even more fortunate to have a father who understood and impressed on me the importance of continually improving my level of education by his example.
When you are working, with a home to run & a social life it can be really difficult to find time to expand your horizons. Life won’t wait for you however – the amount of knowledge is expanding all the time, employers expectations increase and last decades premium paid career is this years minimum wage job.
That’s why I relish the opportunity given to us by the new trend towards on-line courses and MOOCs as they are known.
The pages below give my suggestions for a list of some of the best of these.
Coursera
https://www.coursera.org/
Coursera runs on-line courses with video lectures, assignments and student forums that run to a schedule and give you a certificate on successful completion. I recently took Lada Adamics Social Network Analysis course and found it both hugely enjoyable and challenging. If you enjoy a traditional style of course with a 21st century deployment you may find Coursera a good option.
Academic earth
http://www.academicearth.org/
Lectures from some of the best lecturers from some of the best universities in the world. If you want a sample of how engaging these can be that also demonstrates the limitations I can thoroughly recommend taking a look at Paul Blooms Psychology lectures.
Khan Academy
My thoughts on this resource here : Have you met Sal from Khan Academy?
Code Academy
Code Academy teaches programming in JavaScript, Python, Ruby and HTML/CSS. It’s a good resource where lessons build on each other to giving you plenty of opportunity to practice programming whilst keeping the whole experience fun.
W3Schools
http://www.w3schools.com/
W3Schools is one of the most popular sites on the internet. If you Google W3schools you will find that there are plenty of opinions as to its quality. I have used it for years and just because it isn’t perfect doesn’t mean it doesn’t fulfill a useful role. Make up your own mind!
W3C DevCampus
The World Wide Web Consortium has it’s own on-line resource which can be accessed at the link above. It teaches to the De-facto web standards being as these guys are responsible for writing the standards.
TED Talks
Personally I love TED talks.
You never know what you will learn and most are informative and engaging.
Skillshare
http://www.skillshare.com
Skillshare boasts:Learn From Anyone, Anywhere.
Is your favorite site missing?
let me know in the comments below and I’ll look into adding it above.
Martin House Consulting 