Tech tools for Free Quality Education in Top Institutes

I’m the sort of person who thinks that Education is the most essential tool a person can have. Good Education at the right time will do oneself good that you’ll relative later. Quality education goes a long way. Whatever you do in your life is the result and application of your education. I define success by various parameters, Education is one of them.

There people who yearn to study in top institutes but can’t get in due to various factors like money, lack of time, distance, etc.. Take my case, I wanted to do my UG in the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) but at that time, it was not possible. Now I want my brother to get into IITs. Even though I could not achieve that, I’ll be happy if someone whom I know does what I wanted to do.

Education, knowledge and Wisdom are three different terms and have different meanings. You can gain knowledge at any point of time. And Wisdom cannot be taught, only Knowledge can. Whereas Education is something that has to be done at some particular point of time.

That was my humble views on education and also some food for thought for the guy who wanted to be a full time blogger than to go to college and get ‘educated’.

Free Online Resources:

I recently happen to stumble upon some great web resource which aims to provide education in the Internet for free.

MIT and the IITs & IISc are the world’s best Institutes to study. The good news is that they’re offering online courses for everyone and anywhere for free!

MIT’s OpenCourseWare - MIT OCW

IITs & IISc’s National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning - NPTEL

Available Cources :

MIT is in a pursuit to move all their existing coursework on to the Internet. So we get to access all the courses offered by MIT. Click here to see the available courses at MIT OCW : Complete course list.

However the courses offered by the IITs through NPTEL is limited to UG Engineering courses only. 230 engineering courses in the five major disciplines is what we have. Here is what NPTEL is offering us: Core Sciences and Engineering, Civil, Computer Science, Electrical, Electronics and Communication and Mechanical Engineering. You can see more details here with Syllabus here: NPTEL Courses (You need to login before you can access that page)

Looks like you can get into MIT and IITs easily and for free!

How can you take advantage?

I know many people who study just for the sake of a damn degree at the end of the 4 years or just to earn money. But for me, I want to do my PG in Management only because I’m honestly interested in it and I like doing it. (I’m not like others doing things which they don’t like.) So if you look for ‘free online degree’, ‘online degree program’, or ‘earn a degree online’ you’re in for disappointment.

These courses have some common threads. They’re meant for supplementary reading and enrichment only. So we should not expect to start from the scratch and be a graduate. These are not a degree-granting or certificate-granting activity. Also you don’t get access to the Faculty.

You can make these resources as your study materials. I’m sure we would want to have good notes to study during the exams or just for our understanding. I would have loved to have these when I studied my UG in Electronics and Communication Engg. Most of the courses have videos as well, so it’s almost as good as listening in the class or your own virtual class!

Moreover if you are a working professional, then this will be a boon. NPTEL has gone further to conduct workshops and seminars in various places. In the second phase, we have Query management - where there would be a dedicated set of subject experts to answer learner questions online at all times, Chat rooms and bulletin boards, 500 more courses including management sciences is going to be introduced. They’re also planning to record these lectures in a DVD and sell for a nominal amount.

More such OpenWare Course from other Universities:

After checking through the MIT’s OCW site, I saw many other Institutes which offer these online resources. Institutes from China, France, Japan, United States and even Vietnam are featured there. Check this page for more details: Other Opencourseware Projects

This is another page which has many links for Free Online Education. Check it out here: Massive Resource List for All Autodidacts

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