The Digital Treasure Trove of Free Education
A note of gratitude for this privilege of our online world. #MayIWrite — Day 17
This week I am making my official inaugural foray into the world of open source learning, and I’m so excited about it!
I’ll be taking a course through the University of Iowa, ‘Writing Identities and Social Issues in Fiction and Nonfiction’, along with other students from all over the world. Orientation began on Monday and the course will begin in earnest tomorrow. It’s a fantastic opportunity to learn and make new connections.
The landscape of education is rapidly shifting and open source learning plays a huge part.
Many years ago, early in my journey as a home learning parent, I learned about Khan Academy — a fantastic resource for really straightforward math & science learning from beginner to advanced content. Then I began to hear about MOOCs (Massive Open Online Course) being offered at top universities such as University of Toronto, Stanford, Princeton and dozens more from around the world. Coursera is a mouth-watering resource for MOOCs (I’m not kidding that looking through course catalogs makes me salivate) and the sheer volume of opportunity found there is mind-boggling.
It seems that more and more our world is shifting to a very content-based way of valuing knowledge and education. Obviously there are many areas where formal education is valuable and necessary (medicine is one discipline that comes to mind), but the diversification of our access to higher education does affect the landscape of our working world. Knowledge is not gained by exchanging dollars, it is gained by engaging with new information. Where guidance, collaboration, and mentorship are available there is no reason that the quality of that education cannot equate to what can be attained by paying for courses and degrees, and doing this learning is ripe with benefits!
I have written about the value of life-long learning here:
Why don’t you take half an hour, right now, to browse through those links to quality free education? Maybe you’ll get to enjoy that same spark that I’m reveling in. Here, I’ll even re-post them now:
(I have no connection to or affiliate benefit with either of these resources, I just really enjoy them!)
I know that for me, expanding my horizons and revving up my brain is in the top tier of things that make me feel really alive. I hope this will spread the joy. Happy learning and let me know in the comments if you have other favourite sources for MOOCs!
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