Free online education - websites and channels

Education is crucial for the progress of society. However, education is not available to everyone and because of that many problems occur.  But all around the world there are enthusiasts who aim to make education available to everyone. Their strategy is to migrate knowledge and the process of learning from libraries and classrooms to the Internet. This is a list of good courses and lectures that are available on the Internet free of charge and to everyone.

1. Courses

Coursera - Probably the largest course based website. Most lecturers teach on well known American and world Universities. Lectures are composed of videos and slide shows and many have mandatory homework assignments, although homework is often not crucial to passing the course.

Udacity - Similar to Coursera. Less courses and topics covered though.

Edx - This website was started by Harvard and MIT. Unlike the previous two, the courses are quite demanding and require serious study.

Open Courseware Consortium - The most comprehensive list of websites with lectures and courses. A database of free online education in a way. Give it a go.

Open Culture - Another list of free courses.

1a. Interactive courses

These sites offer a different learning methodology.

Codeacademy - Learn to code by getting advice from a bot :). Step by step process, very practical and highly interactive.

Livemocha - Quite an amazing website for language learning! Apart from regular lectures there is the possibility of chatting with native speakers or language professionals. They can offer you advice and tell you what you are doing wrong, evaluate your homework and tests. In a way, this website is much like a social network. You may add contacts, chat, send mails and messages to other users, while learning a language.

2. Video lectures from top Universities on Youtube

Most channels contain entire semesters!

MIT - Science, math, technology. MIT is the leading world University in these areas. Topics range from basic programming to more complex stuff, like quantum physics. Courses are also available on their website with homework and quizzes as an addition - MIT website.

Berkeley - University of California, Berkeley's channel. Many good lectures on law, computer science and humanities.

Stanford - The most interesting playlists in my opinion are: 'Particle physics', 'Special relativity' and 'String theory' with professor Leonard Susskind, a well known theoretical physicist .

UCLA - University of California, Los Angeles.

Yale - Yale University, Connecticut. There are even more lectures on this channel: YaleCourses. Compared to other Universities, Yale playlists contain a lot of courses in humanities. This is not such a surprise considering the fact that Yale is rather well-known in those areas.

NPTEL - A channel led by seven science institutes from India. Primarily focused on programming and IT.

UNSW (University of South Wales)  - Another good channel for IT enthusiasts.

Academic Earth - Lectures from Yale, Stanford and Berkeley on a separate website.

3. Online Tutors

Khan Academy - Math and science for all ages. A very popular channel you've probably already heard about it. The channel was initially meant to help Salman Khan's son should he ever have trouble in school. :)

Salman Khan, former financial analyst and founder of Khan Academy, made over 1400  video tutorials for primary school and high school students.

TutorVista - Chemistry, physics and math.

MathTV - Math.

PatrickJMT - Math.

IntegralCALC - Integral calculus.

4. Ed digests

Content suitable for everyone. No prior knowledge about the topic is required to watch the presentations or read the articles. Basically, these sites retain aspects of popular media forms like TV shows and documentaries, while maintaining focus and relevancy.

TEDxTalks - TedX offers short 20 minute presentations about important topics. Lecturers are usually well-known scientists, authors, artists, human rights activists, politicians etc. TEDx is also a fertile ground for novel ideas to gain momentum. Before you read it in the papers, chances are that a new, interesting idea was first presented at TEDx.

TEDEducation - TED's channel devoted to presenting important findings by creating interesting animations. Great for young people and children.

ForaTv - Lectures, debates and conversations about stuff that bothers us and matters.

BigThink - Very similar to Fora and Ted, but with a more vibrant community. Plenty of great user debates happen at bigthink.com. Guests like e.g. Michio Kaku, a renowned physicists sometimes communicate with users directly.

Note

Let me know about any other good websites in the comments section and I'll update the post. Thanks for reading and if you found this article useful or interesting, share it around.

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