More Knowledge Resources

Yesterday’s Daily Freedom, “Your Own Path,” which discussed the fact that however you acquire the knowledge you need to achieve whatever you seek in life, ultimately, you must be self-taught, and as an independent individualist, the traditional means to knowledge were unlikely the best. I provided some resources for acquiring the knowledge one desires and needs there. This Daily Freedom will provide some more.

The following are all free Open Course Ware resources provided by universities, like the MIT resource provided in the last Daily Freedom. This is the same course material provided in regular university courses, but no degree, or certificate, or any kind of credit is provided, only the knowledge.

• MIT OpenCourseWare: MIT offers a whopping 1800 courses online.

• Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health OpenCourseWare: Learn about public health preparedness, mental health, and more from Johns Hopkins.

• Tufts OpenCourseWare: Get courses from Tufts in medicine, international relations, arts, and sciences.

• UMass Boston OpenCourseWare: UMass Boston has courses in special education, history, and more.

• Notre Dame OpenCourseWare: You’ll learn lots from Notre Dame’s extensive collection of open courses.

• Utah State OpenCourseWare: Utah offers a variety of course departments, from engineering to education.

• UC Irvine OpenCourseWare: Get technical training and more from UC Irvine’s courses.

• Free Carnegie Mellon Courses Online: Carnegie Mellon University offers a number of free online courses and materials through a program called Open Learning Initiative. OLI courses are intended to allow anyone at an introductory college level to learn about a particular subject without formal instruction. Course options include such offerings as statistics, biology, chemistry, economics, French and physics.

• Stanford Courses on iTunes U: Stanford University, one of the world’s leading academic institutions, has joined forces with iTunes U in providing access to Stanford courses, lectures and interviews. These courses can be downloaded and played on iPods, PCs, and Macs and can also be burned to CDs. If you don’t have iTunes, you can download it here for free.

• Free UC Berkeley Courses Online: UC Berkeley, one of the best public universities in the nation, has been offering live and on-demand webcasts of certain courses since 2001. Hundreds of UC Berkeley courses, both current and archived, are now available as podcasts and webcasts. Courses cover a range of subjects, including astronomy, biology, chemistry, computer programming, engineering, psychology, legal studies and philosophy

• Free Kutztown University Courses Online: Kutztown University’s Small Business Development Center offers the largest collection of free business courses available on the web. Course topics include accounting, finance, government, business law, marketing and sales. Comprehensive text, interactive case studies, slides, graphics and streaming audio help to demonstrate the concepts presented in each course.

• Free USQ Courses Online: The University of Southern Queensland in Australia provides free online access to a number of different courses through yet another OpenCourseWare initiative. Courses from each of the five faculties are available, covering a broad range of topics, including communication, science, career planning, technology, teaching and multimedia creation.

The following are some slightly different knowledge resources:

ALISON Free online training courses is based in Galway, Ireland. Has many courses, many in practical areas as well as academic areas, all free. You only need to register. It is a for profit organization and explains how it works here.

GCF (Goodwill Community Foundation) LearnFree.org Many very simple basic practical courses for every day life, and using Microsoft computers and programs. Might be useful if you homeschool.

Online courses from the world’s top scholars Has many lectures which can be viewed immediately.

Books

Books have always been, and still are, the major repository of human knowledge and that best source for gaining knowledge to this day. Many books are available directly on line. Here are some resources for online books.

The Online Books Page is one of the oldest and best resources for all kinds of books.

Project Gutenberg is probably the largest repository of online books.

Online Libraries provides links to “25 Places to Read Free Books Online.”