by Author Name Withheld 228

Created on: November 05, 2010   Last Updated: November 18, 2010

Thank goodness for technology and its birth to the internet. Without it, many of us would starve without the updated news from the web, or would not have a quick recipe to download for dinner, or have access to learning on our own schedule. With this needful jewel, you can achieve learning all that you can without paying paying a dime. All thanks to the web. Here are some sites that give you access to all  the learning material you’ll ever need.

About.com

About.com has been around for fourteen years.  There are nearly 800 guides to show you how to do anything from “parenting, healthcare, and cooking to travel and languages."(About.com, n.d.) It is a rich resource filled with information from experts in their respective fields. The beauty of About.com is that you can have newsletters delivered to your email as well as daily or weekly lessons, and you can always unsubscribe when you want to, but why would you? It’s free learning.

Xplana

A relatively new platform for learning is Xplana.com.  In fact, it incorporates social networking with learning new things. For example, once you log on you will find subjects on the left panel ranging from agriculture and animals to social sciences.  Based off of your own learning style, you may upload documents from students, teachers, and tutors in text, video, or audio formats. If you have a skill or knowledge in an area, you can upload and share too! Xplana uses the power of networking to recreate knowledge for everyone.

Open culture.

Openculture.com has one mission: bring together scattered content and make sure it is accessible to everyone. Oftentimes while trying to learn, we do a basic Google search and this brings us to results that may not be credible. We find ourselves fishing for the right credible content. Dan Coleman, the lead editor for the Open Culture, is director and associate dean for Stanford University’s Continuing Studies program. The site, however, is not formally associated with Stanford University. The appeal of Openculture is that you can upload links to them via their email so they may review them. This shows they care about the content they will post on their site. Most of their material though is accessible via audio/visual formats, mainly through iTunes and Youtube.

MIT Open Courseware.

MIT(Massachusetts Institute of Technology) has a really innovative and cost effective way of teaching you online. Through their open courseware portal. From there you may access free courses from the last few years or later for free! You can learn about Literature and Cinema while also studying Sciences and Technology. The catch is this: make sure to have the following technology: Adobe Acrobat Reader, video viewing capability such as Media Player, RealPlayer, or Quicktime, and have plenty of quiet time because you will be learning from the professors of MIT!

Get very excited about this time in the digital age. More course offerings and websites are springing up and your time for learning conveniently is now.

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