Education (Week 4 Blog)

This week's blog concerns education. I chose to write about it because obviously, it's something we're all interested in as we are all working on our Bachelor's degree. This is a little bit of a different spin on education though. I'm writing about FREE education. See Below

So a few weeks ago I was at the doctor's office and picked up Reader's Digest to keep me occupied while I waited. The little book was so full of such good information that I simply could not read everything by the end of my appointment. I ended up going to the grocery store to buy my own copy and ended up reading the entire book by the end of the night. I even purchased a subscription! One of the articles in the magazine really inspired me. Here's why.

The name of the story was "College for Free". America's top professors are putting their courses online. STOP! What do you mean free I thought. I'm paying hard core cash to get my education and you can get a University education for free. I thought I had lost my mind! Unfortunately I cannot obtain my BSN degree fro free, but I can continue to get an education without paying a fortune for it. I continued reading and learned the author of the story decided to do an experiment where he would try to learn as much as possible in 30 days. he accomplished this through several different online sites. (See Below)

Khanacademy.org (My favorite of all the sites listed)- Mostly math and science courses all taught by one man named Salman Khan. He was once a hedge fund analyst with multiple degrees from Harvard and MIT. Now he has his own web-site and shares all of his knowledge for free. (Mostly science and math) I think this site is amazing for parent's and junior/high school students too. It's great for parents to review algebra to be able to help their kids through their homework. Step by step process on each different type of problem. Not to mention it has great practice problems for the CAHSEE high school exit exam! My son is in physics right now. I've convinced him to use Khan Academy as a supplement to his current course. It's absolutely AMAZING!!! If you look at nothing else I talk about... look at this website!

Openculture.com- Has free audio books and language lessons. Has 150 free textbooks, and 340 free movies all online!

Youtube.com/education- Go to this website and then click "channels" It takes you to Stanford University, UC Berkley, and UCLA to name a few. All have free university courses. It also has courses available from 300 colleges and universities from 10 countries in seven different languages!!

Academicearth.org- Has just about everything you would want to learn (chemistry, psychology, international relations, law, test preparation). It even has 6 free video courses on medicine and healthcare, one of which is human anatomy dissection.  

Ok... I've gone on long enough. For some reason, making education free makes its interesting for me. It makes me want to carry my laptop everywhere and learn as much as possible. Overall, all of these sites seem to have something to offer to everyone young and old alike. Trust me... you have to check it out.