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Free Online Video Education from Top Universities
pkrumins writes "Over the past few years, some of the world's top universities have started offering free video recordings of their lectures.
Being a student, I have enjoyed them and collected them in my bookmarks — until recently I talked to few people, and they did not know about it! So I decided to create a blog about free video education online. I am mostly focusing on physics, mathematics and computer science video lectures."
I generally frown on slashdot submissions of "check out my blog!" but the topic is valid. Why not link to some usefull info directly rather than submitters blog?
Does anyone know of any good Human Physiology lectures online? I have a contract with a professor to read and learn the material over the summer independently, and was wondering if there were any free lectures available.
http://chrono.posterous.com/
This really only applies to those that CARE about furthering their studies. God knows how many people completely ignore their lectures to begin with, let alone find enough time to watch them online. I do suppose it can give some of them a second chance for catching up on that "missed" lecture.
Oh come on teach! Algebra? I'll never use that...
Good. Cheap. Fast. Pick Two.
At the Big 10 University I went to ... we had online videos of the classes available ... but they were mainly designed for off-campus students (not on-campus students). Yet, I noticed in the classes that did have the online videos ... that the in-class attendance was much lower ... and students were missing out on the in-class interaction cause they chose to skip and just watch the vids. I for one, tried those online vids, and didn't like them. I get much more out of the class when I can interact and stop to interrupt the prof if I have a question.
The Berkeley CS61 lectures are available as free podcasts on iTMS, by the way.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Interesting concept, but I don't think those are credit courses. I'd like to take the entirety of college via something like this, or an over-the-web curriculum. Instead, I wait for something like Wikiversity, and perhaps other projects. I helped build this Internet instead of going to college. I'd like to get a some kind of diploma for it -- use the Internet to complete the rest of my education. Wikipedia has been a great non-credit way to make up for my some of my lack of schooling.
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
For a compilation for links, I'd rather check a list compiled by a group of people instead of a single blog. A specialized blog may contain links of higher quality over all, but a dynamically-updated list maintained by a large group of users will be updated more often and may contain a larger variety of links. For example, here are del.icio.us links for video+course and online+course tags.
python>>> q="'";s='q="%c";s=%c%s%c;print s%%(q,q,s,q)';print s%(q,q,s,q)
For the full college course experience, one could watch these while suffering a hangover, playing Solitaire, holding three or four different conversations via text message or IM, and doodling on the desk.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Christof Koch, a neuroscientist at Caltech, has some online lecture videos from a course he teaches each year on the neural basis of consciousness. They're pretty neat, and give a nice overview of visual neuroscience. There's lots of fun stuff about how splitting the brain splits consciousness, experiments which probe at our inner "zombie agents," and so forth.
my kids are 6 and 8 now. I wish I had access to top univeristy lectures when I was in high school. it would have kept me from being bored out of my head by the drivel spoon fed in public school.
I expect that the mass, nearly-free communication from the Internet will significantly shift our assumptions about education and the ages at which people get different levels of training.
Right now, people are kept out of the professional workplace as long as possible and it has been increasing over time (subtle pressures to reduce competition from young people mostly drives this). more degrees, etc mean you are 22-25 ish before you are treated as "acceptible" in the professional workplace. This is completely ABSURD biologically, where one can compete as an adult (strictly biologically) at about age 16-18. Most primiltive humans had "adluthood" rituals even younger.
With widely available content, advanced degrees will mean less - I mean if you can walk into an engineering firm at age 17 and have taken and understood all the MIT classes on structural engineering - OF COURSE they will hire you in a second. They would pay you less maybe than a EE major, but who cares, the 17 yo will do it in a second. This is mirrored in current higher education and funding too. Most professors are more multidisciplinary (belonging to mutliple depts.) and funding is becoming more collaborative (like the NIH roadmap). THe result is lower importance on specific disciplines.
For my own kids, the world will change so much by the time they will be ready for college, I'm not really thinking the same rules will apply to them when they get to be 17 or 18.
We'll see....
Well, maybe not...
>you are 22-25 ish before you are treated as "acceptible"
>in the professional workplace. This is completely ABSURD
>biologically,
We never see ourselves as others see us, which is where it all goes wrong.
Sometime in your late 20s or early 30s, you generally wake up one day and realize that a) your body is slowly turning into soft squishy copralite, b) your actions (or inactions) can affect others and c) nobody wants to deal with your clueless model of the universe. This may come before or after item d) - realizing that you are not superman after all.
Of course, you may be one of the golden children who learn early...
or not.
I've hired (and fired) almost a hundred 17-22 year olds to do entry level adult jobs. The reason for firing is almost universally because they can't act like grownups under pressure. I've come to believe that the arrogance and bulls**t that causes stupid mistakes is simply part of growing up, and I don't hold it against anyone anymore.
But my experience is just like every manager in the working world, and it's why a high IQ and a modicum of verbal skills in one or two subjects doesn't mean you're now ready to play in the big leagues. It takes a lot of time to beat the sharp edges off a walking sawblade, and most employers would rather let someone else "interact" with you until you understand the unwritten ground rules for being a grownup with a job.
Of course, maybe you'll never lose that edge - in which case, you'll either become a successful business owner... or a guy who can't keep a job.
I pity the guys who hired me as I climbed the ladder - It led to a wad of cash and running two divisions... not great, but not bad. But I know that every arrogant monkey I have to deal with is my penance for having been one (just like them).
PS -
Having said that, I would gladly drop my house, my $500K retirement plan and everything I own to be 21-25 again. Especially if I can keep what I've learned...
I sometimes think it's a good thing for evolution that we all slowly lose our looks as we get smarter. A 50 year old mind in a 23 year old body would be a dangerous thing.
"Questions should be for forums/usenet/office hours after class, not during lecture."
Fortunately for the education system, you're not a teacher. People learn the way they learn, and have you sitting in judgement isn't helping. For you I would recommend a private instructor. You can go at your pace. Monopolize the teachers time, and don't have to worry about those pesky "slow learners" interrupting your quality time.
Any free videos from the Barbizon School of Modeling?
Questions should be for forums/usenet/office hours after class, not during lecture.
Assuming a perfect lecturer.
I've had plenty of profs skip important points they 'just knew', forget lines from their notes, and even be completely wrong. It's useful for the class to respectfully engage in these cases.
I understand about the student who completely missed the last 5 minutes for whatever reason, and a good lecturer will know to when to defer that until later. He'll also adapt the lecture based on the questions being asked - sometimes it's clear when clarification/amplification is necessary.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
There quite a lot of videos available at MSRI but they are more on the lines of workshops and not university course material.
My first experience with online course content was actually a tangential link from a slashdot comment to an MIT online course. I watched a couple of episodes--er, lectures. (One of the universities in my hometown has long had a cable channel to broadcast its lectures whether or not you are a student. I remember switching between the equally-captivating cognitive psych teacher and the Joe Schmo show)
I like it a lot, as you go to (undergrad) university (classes) not to learn, but to get a piece of paper that says you've been taught.
Learning is far easier when it's free.
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
I'm glad to learn of this blog. The physics professor I work for currently has me working on a project to put his lectures online, so it's very useful to me to see how others do it. I knew about the MIT and Stanford web sites, but I see that this blog catalogues other less well-known math and science online lecture sites.
Your fantasies contain the seeds of important concepts.