Comments on: Places to Find Excellent Learning Resources Online

By: Mirabello Vespucci

Mirabello Vespucci — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 11:51:09 +0000

I am surprised you did not include Khan Academy. Bill Gates, John Doerr, CNN, etc have all recognized Sal’s content, and Fortune Magazine featured him in their last issue.

By: ssl

ssl — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 17:56:00 +0000

Hi
Just saw your article in eLearning which was linked from an ACM newsletter. I completely agree with your premise – and blogged on this – in March I wrote a short post about khan academy: http://technomomster.blogspot.com/2010/03/i-will-gladly-play-you-tuesday.html
“a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) with the mission of providing a world-class education to anyone, anywhere. Despite being the work of one man, Salman Khan, this 1600+ video library is the most-used educational video resource as measured by YouTube video views per day and unique users per month. We are complementing this ever-growing library with user-paced exercises–developed as an open source project–allowing the Khan Academy to become the free classroom for the World. ”

Check it out. Though videos and online instruction can’t completely replace classrooms (I’m thinking especially the interactive part of classrooms, E.G. discussion, questions, labs) They should make mediocre profs who make their living lecturing to 200 students while TAs do the interactive parts afraid. Good profs should be happy because their time is now freed to do the real value added interactive parts: office hours, discussion, etc.

By: Brian Kung

Brian Kung — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 16:29:18 +0000

You should also look into University of Reddit. There’s a lot of what you’re looking for there.

For more examples on how reddit can be an excellent place to learn, check out:
http://www.reddit.com/r/IWantToLearn/
http://www.reddit.com/r/carlhprogramming/

By: Bill Farren

Bill Farren — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 16:25:22 +0000

Thanks for the update, Anya. Read your book recently and enjoyed it very much. Agree with you that it would be great to have a centralized repository with ratings, comments, etc. So much out there but still quite a chore to find what’s best/suitable. (Digg style tool, maybe?)
Also looking for good portfolio systems, credit-granting options. (http://www.cael.org/pla.htm is a start but still seems very rudimentary. Would like something that’s not based on the formal system (e.g. ETS, Unis…)
Unfortunately, lots of great learning opportunities go unused because people don’t see ways to get “credit” for them.
Keep dreaming the good dream.