gHacks technology news » university http://www.ghacks.net A technology blog covering software, mobile phones, gadgets, security, the Internet and other relevant areas. Mon, 23 Nov 2009 22:22:46 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 en hourly 1 The Open Courseware Movement Offers Free Education Online http://www.ghacks.net/2009/06/29/the-open-courseware-movement-offers-free-education-online/ http://www.ghacks.net/2009/06/29/the-open-courseware-movement-offers-free-education-online/#comments Mon, 29 Jun 2009 13:31:36 +0000 Melanie http://www.ghacks.net/?p=13972 Not everyone takes a college class just for the credit toward their degree, there are actually a lot of people who love taking classes just to learn something new, because they are bored, or because they wish to prepare themselves a little better for future classes. Among these people there are those with no money to put toward school, who don’t have a car, or want to take a class at 1 AM. Whatever the reason, the Open CourseWare Movement has helped thousands of people who are interested in taking classes online take them for free. Because of the Open CourseWare Movement, students can take classes online without enrolling to a school or paying anything. Those wishing to take a class can do so immediately without waiting to hear back from some advisor or waiting for the bursar’s office to approve a payment.

The Open CourseWare Movement allows students to find courses online that fit their needs. Because of the large amount of schools currently serving free online classes, students can choose from literally thousands of courses. These aren’t just your every day, run of the mill colleges either! Universities such as MIT, Yale, and Stanford are among those that offer free courses online. Even colleges and universities in different countries such as Japan, Israel, and Spain are participating in the program. Because of this, many courses are offered in languages other than English.

For a college to qualify for the Open CourseWare program, they must offer at least 10 courses free online. The courses must contain everything a student needs, including the reading material (students who use this don’t have to pay for books) for it to be a part of the program. Whether it’s a class taken for fun or to learn something new, it’s a good idea for students to look for classes from universities known particularly for that course or major. This helps ensure that the student will get the best education they can. Different courses are taught in different ways. Many courses have video lectures, just audio, or just course transcripts. It’s important for those looking to take a class through the Open CourseWare program to look for classes that fit their needs such as a video class for those who learn better visually than by reading.

The goal of the Open CourseWare Movement is to get as many colleges and universities to participate as possible so that more people are given the chance to learn online. There are many ways that those who’ve benefited from the Open CourseWare Movement can help such as donating, passing on the word, or just taking a course to better themselves. It is usually a good idea to open a search engine and search for “open courseware” to find universities and colleges that offer these free courses.

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2009/06/29/the-open-courseware-movement-offers-free-education-online/feed/ 7 Hide And View Private Websites At Work http://www.ghacks.net/2008/08/04/hide-and-view-private-websites-at-work/ http://www.ghacks.net/2008/08/04/hide-and-view-private-websites-at-work/#comments Mon, 04 Aug 2008 08:44:29 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/?p=5639 If you visit private websites, those that are not related to your work, at your workplace you have to be careful. Most companies will react on private web surfing which could lead to a kick in the butt and the search for a new job. It’s not only the supervisors that have to be taken care of, coworkers can also spy and report on you.

That’s were Vanishd comes into play. The service hides your private website by placing a authorized websites, for example Google Search, in front of it. Don’t worry, it’s not about placing a browser window over another browser window which could be done manually as well. It’s about merging two browser windows and providing a link to a sneak peak window that lets you watch through the first authorized browser window to view the second.

Vanishd adds a button to the first window. Once that button is pressed it will provide access to a rectangular are that can be moved with the mouse that shows the contents of the private website.

vanishd

The user can change the size of the viewing window with the mouse wheel and the viewing window will automatically disappear if he moves the mouse out of the browser window or right-click in view mode.

View mode is the default mode that allows you to view the contents of the hidden page. If you want to interact with it you need to click the left mouse button which switches to interactive mode. This mode allows you to interact with the website normally.

The officially supported browsers are Internet Explorer, Safari and Firefox 2. Firefox 3 is available in experimental mode and seems to make some troubles with flash contents.

Some websites do not work with Vanishd including Google Mail or Yahoo Mail. It should also be noted that the contents of the hidden website will appear in the browser cache.

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2008/08/04/hide-and-view-private-websites-at-work/feed/ 8 Google Code University http://www.ghacks.net/2008/03/19/google-code-university/ http://www.ghacks.net/2008/03/19/google-code-university/#comments Wed, 19 Mar 2008 13:47:30 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/2008/03/19/google-code-university/ Google Code University is an excellent resource for Computer Science students and programmers in general. All videos and Powerpoint presentations published at the University are released under Creative Commons. Four different kinds of courses are available right now, they are Ajax Programming, Distributed Systems, Web Security and Languages.

Each section is divided into two subsections that link to the presentations and videos. The Powerpoint presentations have to be downloaded to your computer while the videos are embedded on the website itself. Most tutorials on the website are clearly aimed at users with some background knowledge.

If you take a look at the C++ tutorials in the Language section you see that they are not beginners tutorials for instance. The first tutorial is named C++ Threads while the second and last New Features in the Next C++ Standard. Nothing a beginner to C++ programming would want to start with.

The videos however are excellent, the C++ Threads video for instance has a playtime of 1 hour 29 minutes. Strangely though the other video which was hosted on Youtube is not available anymore which is the only video that was not available. All other videos were hosted on Google Video and ran fine.

The website has a Curriculum Search as well which should help to find teaching material. It’s basically a custom Google search.

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2008/03/19/google-code-university/feed/ 1 Online Free Classes http://www.ghacks.net/2008/01/18/online-free-classes/ http://www.ghacks.net/2008/01/18/online-free-classes/#comments Fri, 18 Jan 2008 13:35:31 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/2008/01/18/online-free-classes/ I love articles that list educational stuff like classes, videos or podcasts. 200 Free Online Classes to Learn Anything is one of the resources that I really like. It is basically a link list with 200 links and short descriptions of free online classes. The classes are divided into categories like Natural Science, Math and Business & Finance and mainly lead to Universities and schools that are offering those classes on their website.

All classes are in American or British English depending on the University or school that hosts the course. Most courses do not simply display textual contents but also multimedia like audio recordings, videos and flash presentations. The list has some links to even more courses at the end including a link to 1800 Open Courseware courses at the MIT for instance.

I guess this is an excellent opportunity to take courses that you are interested in without having to actually attend University or pay a fee. No signups are required either to access the courses.

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2008/01/18/online-free-classes/feed/ 3 Large List of Podcasts that teach you something http://www.ghacks.net/2006/12/11/large-list-of-podcasts-that-teach-you-something/ http://www.ghacks.net/2006/12/11/large-list-of-podcasts-that-teach-you-something/#comments Mon, 11 Dec 2006 15:32:18 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/2006/12/11/large-list-of-podcasts-that-teach-you-something/ There are not many people I know that do not have a mp3 player. Many use the player exclusively for music and probably never heard of the term podcasts before. The best way to explain podcasts is to compare them to radio shows. Some hosts talk about certain topics, you listen to jingles, to music sometimes that is played during breaks.

Not all podcasts are like radio shows of course, some look much more like audio lessons, like university courses without the classes. And this is what I will be talking about now. I found a great website that has three large lists of links to websites that offer podcasts that teach you something. That something is either languages, cultur or university courses. It is up to you of course to decide what you want to learn and hear, just download all the podcasts you like and transfer them to your mp3 player. All podcasts are encoded in mp3 format which makes it possible to have even large lessons take up just some megabytes.

Let us take a look at the three possibilities:

Languages: Links to podcasts that teach you 14 languages including German, French and Japanese. Most of the courses are for beginners, I suggest you read the explanation at the website that compiled the list before you download the podcasts.

University Courses: A compilation of links to colleges and universities (US) that offer free podcasts of some of their lectures. You find a wide variety of courses such as law and social sciences.

Culture: Many links to interesting podcasts and even audio texts. Concentrates on art, pop culture and media. Great.

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