Free University Courses:
No this is not a catchy title to try and get people to read my blog – today The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has launched its first free course – MITx, an electronics course – which is entirely virtual. MIT aim to ‘shatter the barriers of education’. While there already hundreds of virtual online courses, this is the first that is completely free, without prerequisites; from a world leading institution! A University spokesperson has insisted that the courses will not be ‘watered-down’, but will be based entirely upon the campus based course. Successful students will even receive a certificate upon completion of the course.
MIT recognises that only a fraction of the students who want to study at the University are actually successful (through place restrictions, falling short of grades, financial and others) and consequently want to reach out to the rest of the world. This marks a significant stage in the development of education.
While iTunes U service – the academic version of iTunes – has over 500,000 lectures available for free download. The Open University and Stanford also have had more than 40 million downloads of free content.
Car Update
I bought a car! No more expensive/unreliable public transport for me! 🙂
After weighing up the options – and taking on board some advice from readers, I decided to make the investment… I am now the proud new owner of a Peugeot 307 – 49,000 miles, registered in 2003; with some nice extras: 5 disc changer, electric windows, A/C (not standard in the UK!!) – all for £1500 (about $2400). I am getting between 30-35 m.p.g. – which is not too bad for stop and start London traffic. Starting to put together an emergency fund for repairs / maintenance etc.
One more thing to add to the car update – I spent a long time comparing quotes from insurance providers for my new car. Before accepting one, I decided to phone my current insurer to ask for a phone quote (usually more expensive than online) to add an extra car to my policy (wife’s car). They undercut the best quote I had by about £50 ($80); coming in at around £450 ( $720). Chancing my luck, I challenged the quote and managed to negotiate to just over £300 ($480)!!! 😀 It seems like by adding an extra car to an existing policy, gives insurers a lot of room to negotiate!
Presenting Tip:
I have to do a lot of presentations with my job – which I think is great (more to come on this) – but my single best tip is as follows:
Buy a slide remote & laser pointer device
These are really cheap and can be bought for about £8 ($13) on ebay – an excellent investment. It looks so much more professional when slides seamlessly transition behind you, without having to bend over a laptop / mouse. The laser component of the device can accurately ‘pin point’ the area of interest of the slide without having to ambigiuously point (or jump and point)!!
Blog Update
Thanks everyone for visiting and coming back! In only a couple of weeks I now have about 20 people visiting each day – which I think it fantastic!! It certainly gives me motivation to keep writing – and more often!!
PS – Does anybody ‘get’ the Picture of this Post? It’s really quite clever 😀
I saw somebody wif that on a shirt on vacation. what duz it mean? :s
I don’t get the formula but nevermind. I was more interested ijn the presenting tip: it never occured to me but will try. Risking to get lost in technology (btw I am a really good presenter and the strength is not technological).
I totally agree with you that the skill in presenting is all down to the individual and the technology simply aids this. Have you read the book – the presentation secrets of Steve Jobs? This talks about minimising slides to a couple of words and how important it is to not read of them! So many people fail at this point.
I consider myself to be a good presenter too and find that the remote work wonders; it enables you to keep the audience fully engaged without breaking eye contact to look down to a keyboard or a mouse to change slides. The built in pointer is a bonus.
The formula actually simplifies to ‘M I T’ Ill be geeky and explain it (sorry if you dont care) M = e/c^2 (from Einstein’s theory of relativity e=mc^2) ; The square root of minus 1 is i ; from the ideal gas law t = PV/nR – quite clever really 😉
Damnit, I knew this. You stole my thunder! 😀 I freakin’ love me some science. So, this thing is legit huh? They always used to make it very clear that the Open CourseWare materials were free but did not constitute any kind of qualification. Does this mean they’re now actually allowing you to study and come out of it with a free certificate that proves you’ve done the work? If so, that really is a breakthrough in education. Where do I sign up?!
Congrats on the car! I also have an 03, it’s a Malibu. Used cars are gloriously inexpensive; I’ll never buy new.
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@Ash – Yes! This is legit – and supposedly you get an official certificate upon completion! Open courseware is good, but as you say the certificate would look good for your CV! http://6002x.mitx.mit.edu/ – I signed myself up! I am curious to see what is next (this course is an electronics one) – You must admit it would look awesome on your C.V. ‘I participated in MIT’s online course pilot scheme and have certifcates in…’ !
@Joe – Agreed – it never fails to amaze me the amount of people driving about in brand new cars – especially those that are still renting and don’t own a home. There are some people I know who have Mercedes SUVs who still live with their parents!!
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Yeah, I checked it out. It says the pilot won’t involve testing, which is a bit disappointing. I’d be lying if I told myself I had enough time to do this course though especially as I’d need to brush up on physics and differential equations first.
I’ll definitely be checking this stuff out in the future though. Good find!
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