Let’s go do edX!
It’s back-to-school time for most kids in North America today. School equals education. Education is something that should not stop once you graduate from high school or college/university. I’m not saying that everyone should do their Masters and PhD, because that doesn’t work for everyone financially-wise and/or career-wise. Constant education or learning can be obtained through various media such as workshops, trainings, conferences, or simply the web. For the web, this can include videos, podcasts, articles, and more.
While looking at some courses online recently, I found this online initiative called edX, which offers free online courses and classes from the world’s best universities that include MIT, Harvard, and Berkeley among others. Topics range from biology to business to computer science to finance to engineering to law to philosophy and more.
There are two ways to take the courses for free — 1. Simply audit the course, that is you will have access to all course content but do not need to submit any assignments or take any tests, or 2. Try to earn an honour code certificate, that is once you complete all the requirements satisfactorily while abiding by the edX honour code, you will receive a certificate showcasing your achievement. You will also have the option to get a verified certificate that includes signatures of the course instructor, etc. which you will have to pay for a nominal fee. Some courses may also give you the option to earn a credit, but of course you will have to shed a few thousand dollars for this. Some courses may not have all the options stated above, but generally those are your options.
There were a few courses I found that may be of interest as well to those who are into technology:
CS50x – Introduction to Computer Science (HarvardX)
LFS101x – Introduction to Linux (LinuxFoundationX)
CS184.1x – Foundations of Computer Graphics (UC BerkeleyX)
6.00.1x – Introduction to Computer Science and Programming Using Python (MITx)
CS169.1x – Engineering Software as a Service (UC BerkeleyX)
CS169.2x – Engineering Software as a Service, Part 2 (UC BerkeleyX)
CS188.1x – Artificial Intelligence (UC BerkeleyX)
These are just a few of the courses that are currently available. I’m actually looking into doing the 6.00.1x course which just started last week on August 27th. Let’s see how it goes.
If you’re planning on taking any of these courses as well, good for you – keep on! Happy learning!
Tech-Life in Pink 