10 Free Online Education Resources

Long ago, in a galaxy far away, when the internet was still unexplored by most people, and the world wide web was still just a menu item on services like Compuserve, I spoke and dreamed of a time when anyone, anywhere, could get a free online education – degrees earned at home through the marvels of telecommunication…

We’re still not there yet. I don’t know of a university offering online bachelor degrees for less than an outrageous fee. But if you’re like me and you’re more interested in the knowledge than the paperwork, the choices have become more and more amazing each year. Here are 10 of my favourite resources for a free online education:

1. MIT – One of the first I ever logged into, many moons ago, MIT has one of the best selections of quality courses for a free online education in the world.

2. The OpenCourseWare Consortium, has a huge selection of online courses, brought to us by MIT and over 20 other universities from around the world. Most of the course are available as free audio or video lectures.

3. Yale University – for those looking for something more from the Ivy League.

4. iTunes U is accessible from Apple’s iTunes Store for your iPhone, iPod or iPad.

5. Wikiversity and Wikibooks both have a wealth of information contributed by users from around the world.

6. Textbook Revolution is an a great resource for free textbooks, and several courses ranging from physics to history.

7. The Open Learning Initiative offers courses in a wide variety of subjects ranging from economics, biology, math and physics.

8. The Khan Academy has over 1600 videos on subjects primarily in math and science.

9. Literature.org is a great resource for classic literature.

10. Project Gutenberg Last, but certainly not least, Project Gutenberg is a not-for-profit resource which has 33,000 books online, for free, accessible to anyone in the world in ascii and html format, as well as audio.

Certainly there are many more free online education resources. I just wanted to share with you some of my favourites. Happy learning!