Open Education (Education Aggregator)

I wrote a very brief blog article some time back about an education aggregator. That aggregator is still up and running, but I figured I would also write down an actual education website you can visit to expand your knowledge.

The site I visit the most often is MIT's OpenCourseWare. Here you can find, as the site says, "Free lecture notes, exams, and videos from MIT." You can search through the content in many different ways, such as by class and topic. It has an impressive array of videos, assignments, tests and solutions. For instance, if you are taking first year calculus in University and are having trouble or are trying to go over certain materials, checking out their single variable calculus might be a good idea. For many of the lectures, a textbook is not required; generally a textbook is only needed for the assigned problems. The exams provide another conduit for practice questions when you are studying for an upcoming exam.

There are many more sites dedicated to providing and organizing course material to help you learn. I just thought I should post MIT's, as I have found this to be one of the most useful. Has anyone else found other sites on par with MIT's?

Oh, OpenCourseWare Consortium has an impressive list of institutions that are participating in the open learning movement, so checking this out can give you a huge list of new schools to explore as well.

Linux is Ready for Mainstream

In recent years there has been a small change in desktop computers. Users that are getting tired of Microsoft and their proprietary technology are slowly converting to Linux. Linux has been improving rapidly, and is coming to the point where it's ready out of the box for consumer use.

Manufacturers like Dell, sense a demand for the Unix based operating system, and have started offering it. There are many distributions of Linux, tailoring to specific needs. And Linux has evolved. You no longer need to know how to compile the kernel, or how to partition your hard drive. For the average home user, the Linux Desktop is starting to be just as easy, if not easier, than Windows.

After I began to use Linux, every time I needed Windows, I was becoming increasingly annoyed. I saw Windows Update for what it was, slow, redundant (think Windows Genuine Advantage), and inefficient. When you install an update, Windows has to be restarted. And damn, if you choose not to, those messages to reboot harass you until you go insane. Not to mention, Windows Update mostly updates Windows itself, there aren't very many other things that use it. Move over to Linux, where they have package managers, and there auto update will check for not only operating system updates, but application and package updates as well. The only time you have to restart Linux is when you patch your kernel.

Open source technology is coming to the main stream. It is easily accessible, and its ease of use is increasing. If you don't believe me, google open source switch. Many governments and business's are looking for ways to benefit from open source technology. There are even other industries taking advantage of the open source way. There are open source car ideas(1) (2), and even a gold company took advantage of mass collaboration to find gold (crowd sourcing).
By the way, as I said before, if you can get a hold of Wikinomics, it's is an interesting read.