Skip to main content

5 Great Sites with Free Video Lectures from Top Colleges

Learning is a pursuit which can only be positive for us. Even if we learn something that we don’t think we need to know, it may serve you in an unexpected way at some point in your life.
Not all of us can stay in school forever though, so I present to you some of the great sites for college and university level video lectures. No offense meant to people from other countries with top notch institutes, yet a lot of these sites are from the United States of America. Of course, there’s always the Video Professor too!

WebCast UC Berkeley

free java video lecturesBerkeley has a long reputation of being progressive in education technology. I think you’ll love this site due to the sheer number of free java video lectures that are available. Some of the titles that appeal to me, that aren’t ordinary Intro To courses, are the Foundations of American Cyber-Culture and Psychology of Dreams.
Definitely not going to find those courses at my local college. Something else that is appealing is that you can subscribe to these courses via RSS.

MIT Video Lectures (Open CourseWare)

free video lecturesAnother legendary university for its contributions to society, especially Richard Stallman’s concept of Freeware, MIT has a plethora of courses and video lectures available to the public.
Of course, there are a ton of technical lectures, otherwise it would be the Massachusetts Institute of Stuff, yet there are many wonderful lectures in the humanities and liberal arts. In the languages, you could learn French, German, Chinese, Japanese and other cool languages.
It’s a bit difficult to determine exactly what courses have video content, since they use a catch-all categorization of multimedia. Either way, access to this knowledge without huge tuition fees is a beautiful thing.

COOL McGill

free java video lecturesCOOL stands for COurses OnLine. Cheesy? Yes. Cool? Oh yes.
Of course I had to include this since it is a Canadian university, in Montreal, Quebec. McGill is known as one of the premier medical schools in North America, so you’ll find that a lot of the courses there are based in the life sciences – things such as chemistry, biology and physiology. You’ll find other courses in other disciplines here, too.

The University of Oxford on iTunes U

video lecturesDid you know about iTunes U? I didn’t. Often I’m the last to know though. Even cooler than iTunes U though is the fact that Oxford is on there. Oxford. One of the oldest universities in the world. Illustrious, grand, even regal.
Is it any better than any other top notch university? I don’t know. However it was ranked 4th in the world in 2008. So the ability to access the knowledge of their academia is definitely a privilege. I urge you to check it out.
Oxford also has the number one lecture on iTunes U right now, from Marianne Talbot with her “Romp through the history of philosophy“. Look it up. It’s good.

iTunes U

video lecturesSpeaking of iTunes, this has to be the best collection of video lectures on the Internet. Why? Because there are so many lectures from so many world class institutions gathered under one umbrella. I’ve tried to access the site through my web browser with no real luck, so it seems to me that you will need the iTunes client.
As you can see from the graphic, Duke, Cornell and other great schools are represented here as well as Wharton, Yale, and Stanford. On top of that, there are great lectures from museum personnel and research institutes. I guess I know what I’m downloading this week!
I hope you enjoy this list as much as I did researching it. Go ahead and try watching a few lectures. You know, you tend not to fall asleep as much when you have been at a pub crawl the previous night.

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How To Hide Text In Microsoft Word 2007, Reveal It & Protect It

Sometimes what we hide is more important than what we reveal. Especially, documents with sensitive information, some things are supposed to be ‘for some eyes only’. Such scenarios are quite common, even for the more un-secretive among us. You want to show someone a letter composed in MS Word, but want to keep some of the content private; or it’s an official letter with some part of it having critical data. As important as these two are, the most common use could involve a normal printing job. Many a time we have to print different versions of a document, one copy for one set of eyes and others for other sets. Rather than creating multiple copies and therefore multiple printing jobs, what if we could just do it from the same document?  That too, without the hassle of repeated cut and paste. We can, with a simple feature in MS Word – it’s just called Hidden and let me show you how to use it to hide text in Microsoft Word 2007. It’s a simple single click process. Open the docum...
1 comment
Read more

Boom, the startup that wants to build supersonic planes, just signed a massive deal with Virgin

Have you heard about Boom? Boom is a relatively new startup that’s aiming to build something pretty crazy. They’re not building an app… or a social network… or even some new gadget for the Kickstarter crowd. Boom wants to build planes. Really, really, really fast planes. Specifically, they’re trying to design and build a supersonic passenger plane that goes 2.2x the speed of sound. If all goes to plan, they’ll be able to shuttle people from New York to London in 3.5 hours, and SF to Tokyo in 4.5. Sound crazy? I wouldn’t disagree. It’s worth noting that the company is in the very early days for something as intensive, massive, and hugely expensive as designing and producing a passenger aircraft. They’re still working on their first prototype, and hope to fly it by late next year. But it’s also worth noting that the team behind the plane has some serious talent in its blood: the company’s 11 employees have collectively contributed to over 30 aircrafts — having worked on thin...
Post a Comment
Read more

Fun Tools to Translate Your Name into Japanese Calligraphy

Japanese calligraphy is an artistic writing style of the Japanese language. Its Chinese origins can be traced back to the twenty-eighth century BCE. Calligraphy found its way into Japanese culture in 600 CE and is known as the karayo tradition. For Westerners, calligraphy is forever fascinating. However, it takes years to learn how to properly draw the signs. Two basic principles must be known to understand Japanese writing: there are different writing styles and different alphabets. Kaisho for example, is a writing style most commonly used in print media. Tensho on the other hand is used in signatures. Other writing styles are Reisho, Gyosho and Sousho. The alphabets include Kanji, Hiragana, and Katakana. Katakana is used for writing foreign words. It can also serve to highlight words, in analogy to capital letters as we know them from the Roman / Latin alphabet (Romaji in Japanese). Each Kanji character has a meaning of its own, while Hiragana or Katakana characters merely repres...
Post a Comment
Read more