Welcome to the Online Education page

Online Education programs have exploded in the past six months. I've been listing them on the technology page, but as there are so many other technology resources there, I've decided to give online education its own page in order to make it easier for people looking for the various types of online education to find what they want. I'm going to make four sections here as a start. The first section will be free interactive university courses; the second section will be step-by-step video lessons; the third section free online educational videos; the fourth section will be free online university lectures. Feedback is welcomed as always.

Free Interactive University Courses

Academic Earth is a San Francisco-based organization with the mission of giving everyone on Earth access to world-class education. They plan on doing this by providing an “educational ecosystem that will give internet users around the world the ability to easily find, interact with, and learn from full video courses and lectures from the world’s leading scholars.” Essentially, Academic Earth is a portal for online videos of full university courses. But, as I noted in my May 9th post on online educational videos, most of the courses offered on Academic Earth don’t involve any interaction with the independent learner, and the IL doesn’t receive any recognition for following a course and listening to all the lectures. For me that’s OK, but for people who want a certificate or university credit, most of the offerings on Academic Earth won’t work

 Coursera, is one of the coolest of the free university course sites. A wide variety of courses are offered in the sciences, social sciences and humanities. I've already started on on sociology, and I've signed up for three more. A definite site to check out if you are interested in taking university courses online. Universities that participate include Princeton, Michigan and Standford.

edX, is the fruit of a Harvard/MIT collaboration. This organization is has been developed by Harvard and MI and will function to improve education at both campuses, but it is a separate entity. EdX will use an open-source learning platform. According to the edX website, these online classes will be free and open to anyone around the world who has access to the internet. Students who complete a course will be eligible for a certificate of completion although this certificate will not have the name of Harvard or MIT on it. While a complete list of available classes is not available at this time, the universities plan on offering a range of courses “across disciplines.”

 Udacity, offers a variety of university level courses for free and for fee with the emphasis on fee these days.These are all tech courses like physics, statisitics and computer science, so the range of options is not as great as with Coursera, but if you have a desire to take one of these courses, definitely stop by and sign up.

Udemy is another portal for online educational videos. Udemy’s mission is “to disrupt and democratize the world of education by enabling anyone to teach and learn online.” You can find some of the same educational videos here that you’ll find over at Academic Earth and a few of the other websites with educational videos. Some of the courses are free, while others cost anywhere from $5 to $250. Courses range from university level courses like the one discussed below to practical courses like how to use Photoshop or build a blog. Courses are organized by topic headings such as technology, business, design, social sciences, etc. Each topic has a scroller so that you can check out all the courses without leaving the course page – this is a nice little touch that many other portals don’t have.

But, the big difference from other educational video websites is that you can create your own courses using text, video, audio, PowerPoint, PDFs and zip files. Udemy provides the technology to help you weave all your materials into a coherent course. First, you pick a topic, then add content and finally publish and promote your course. You can charge subscribers to take your course or you can offer it for free.

Step-by-Step Video Lessons

 Brightstorm, is another site with step-by-step video lessons for math, science and English. There are over 2,500 free videos. Brightstorm also has paid content like math homework helper, ACT and SAT test preparation and a few AP courses.

 Codecademy, was founded by a few tech heads who wanted to teach programming by having students do actual coding. A wide variety of lessons are offered. Tracks are series of courses that build on each other. The four tracks available are: JavaScript Fundamentals; Web Fundamentals; JQuery and Code Year. Individual courses are also offered. If you want to learn how to program, or are teaching your students programming, this site is a great resource.

 Just Math Tutorials, is a great site with videos that take students step-by-step through solving a variety of calculus problems. This site is just so perfect for teachers to have as a resource that it is listed on this page under several categories. There are also videos on factoring, trig, statistics, algebra and arithmetic.

 Khan Academy, is one of those amazing sites that will help change the way teaching is done both in the United States and around the world. First, it offers free lessons for anyone in the world. It has over 3,200 videos on subjects from math to economics to history to test preps. Students and teachers from around the world use these videos. Check them out if you haven't already.

Free Online Educational Videos

Full Documentary is a website which has full streaming documentaries, most of which are appropriate for use in the classroom. The website doesn’t host any of the videos. Basically, they just organize them for easy accessibility. Categories include: History, Society, Nature, Science, performing Arts, Mystery, Economics, Health, Conspiracy, Environment, Religion, Politics and News, Music, Business and Philosophy. There are many excellent videos here, including one on my favorite place – Bali. Check this site out.

 howstuffworks, is a website with videos, as well as articles and graphics, about how things work. Thousands of subjects are covered including science, history, geography, adventure, technology, entertainment and more. Lots of good resources for teachers here.

 neoK12, has educational videos, lessons, games, quizzes and interactional diagrams. Videos include physical science, social studies, life science, math, earth and space, English, history and more. I used this site for videos during my teaching days. Definitely one of the best resources for teachers who want educational videos to use with their students.

 TeacherTube, is a website that has thousands of instructional videos on a wide range of subjects. This site is free and was started by a teacher and then added members of his family to help develop the site. These videos can be used with students or in a professional development setting for teachers. In addition to the videos, there are also photos, audio files and documents. What differentiates TeacherTube from most of the other sites with educational videos is that anyone can upload their own videos to the site.

 WatchLearnKnow, is another website with free educational videos. WatchLearnKnow has over 33,000 videos organized into over 3,000 categories, such as Language Arts, Mathematics, Social Studies, etc. These videos are appropriate for students from Kindergarten through Grade 12. The strong point about this website is that the organization makes it easy to find relevant videos that are kid safe. Each video has a ranking, description and suggested age level. You can even set up your own classroom on the site where you can collect and categorize the videos that you want your students to watch. You can also create student accounts where you can assign videos and track your students’ viewing of them. Definitely a website to go to if you want to use some videos in your teaching.

Free Online University Lectures

 Academic Earth, has a huge collection of university video lectures. You can follow complete courses in social science, art and architecture, astronomy, biology, chemistry and more. This is a wonderful resource for independent learners, high school students who want to prepare before they get to college, teachers who want to add to their skills set and anyone else who values learning. The only problem that I have with Academic Earth is that I haven't figured out how to download the videos without going to the original site and doing so.

 Open Yale Courses, is the home for video, audio and text transcripts of introductory courses taught by Yale professors. All courses are free for downloading. Among the course offerings are psychology, English, biology, chemistry, history and more and more. While independent learners can follow an entire course, no class credits or certificates are awarded. This is purely learning for learning. But, it is cool. Check it out.

Utubersity is a site that organizes the educational videos hosted on YouTube. The idea behind Utubersity is that because it can be quite difficult finding educational videos on YouTube, Utubersity does it for you. They classify and tag educational videos so that it is easier to find what you are looking for. The website is a community-based project, and they welcome help from anyone who is interested. According to the Utubersity website, there are over 150 universities that offer more than 5,000 courses free of charge through the Open Courseware movement.

Videos are organized into three categories: Lectures, Documentaries and Conferences. Each category is subdivided according to discipline, such as anthropology, history, mathematics, etc. The home page offers visitors three additional categories: Newest Videos, Popular Videos and Featured Videos. If you’re interested in online education, it will be well worth your time to check out Utubersity.

 webcast.berkeley, has video and audio versions of courses available online for free. Classes go back to 2005 and include ones currently being taught. From just a quick survey of a few courses most of them seem to be audio only, but take a look as there is a wide range of disciplines covered.

Online Educational and Learning Activities

 WannaLearn.com, is a portal for a wide variety of sites that feature learning activities. These sites may have learning activities that use videos, animations, illustrations or just text. The topics may be academic, work-oriented or just fun, like the magic sites. Topics include: academic, spiritual and paranormal, personal enrichment, business and careers, fitness and health, sports and leisure, crafts and hobbies and more. Worth taking a look at, especially if you want to learn something outside of academic subjects.