Online Education: Udacity

In addition to Coursera, Khan Academy and MIT online that I've blogged about, I'm near the end of two free online classes from a company called Udacity. The format for both was the same so I don't know if it's a company standard or just chance?

What I liked about the Udacity classes is that lesson topics are 3-6 minutes long with a quiz or exercise associated with most topics to ensure you get the point. There are many topics with about 2 hours of video per week, plus weekly homework assignments. It has been VERY hands-on, you learn by doing and end the class with a working program like a web browser or a blogging website.

Online Education: Coursera

I've written before about online education sites like Khan Academy and MIT online. While very good, most sites present recorded lectures for you to watch (or not watch) at any time. Presently I'm using a site that offers instruction in a more "real-time" fashion.

It's called Coursera and is offering free classes from professors at University of Michgan, Stanford, and U. of California, Berkeley. You enroll (along with about 100,000 other students) and get a certificate if you pass the class (no college credit - sorry). Classes last 6 to 10 weeks with new videos each week. Typically there's about two-weeks time to watch the 3 hours of new lectures and take an online test or programming assignment. There are online forums where you can post comments, ask questions, get into debates, catch every error made by the professor, and argue if a quiz question was graded right or wrong. There are also online "study groups" which I've not used.

Several classes are into their 2nd week now so it's not too late to join. Most are computer based but not your common programming class but rather

• Natural Language Process (how does google do searches?)
• Game Theory (multi-player scenarios)
• Probabilistic Graphic Models (too strange to explain)
• Cryptography (what makes a good encryption or breaks one?)
• Design and Analysis of Algorithms  (what's the fastest search method?)

Bottom Line

Check them out. And if you don't care about the cert, just watch for fun and check out the discussions. But time is limited. I'm not sure what will happen to the course material when the classes end.

Free Online Education

“You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose. You're on your own.
And you know what you know. You are the guy who'll decide where to go.”
- Dr. Seuss

The blog, Marc and Angel Hack Life, Practical Tips for Production Living, list over 100 Internet sites that offer free classes, lectures, books, or research materials online.
http://www.marcandangel.com/2010/11/15/12-dozen-places-to-self-educate-yourself-online/

 I've used a few of them

MIT OpenCourseWare – MIT OpenCourseWare is a free web-based publication of MIT course materials that reflects almost all the undergraduate and graduate subjects taught at MIT.

<amazing amount of subjects and I still learned something after 20 years in the computer science.>

Khan Academy – Over 1200 videos lessons covering everything from basic arithmetic and algebra to differential equations, physics, chemistry, and biology.

<aimed at High School and Undergraduate level>

The USGenWeb Project – Free genealogy and family history resources online.

One Minute Languages – Learn a new language via podcasts that are updated regularly.

TED – Motivational and educational lectures from noteworthy professionals around the world.

Project Gutenberg – More than 20,000 free books from the first producer of free e-books.

Weather Channel – You can learn about weather all over the world, but the Weather Channel also offers dynamic content based upon seasons and special conditions and a special multimedia and education section.

Bottom Line

Many of our greatest men were self taught, Lincoln, Thoreau, DaVinci, Einstein, Newton. Many are considered genius but they became that way because they read and studied on their own time and of their own passion.

Online Privacy

“Privacy is not something that I'm merely entitled to, it's an absolute prerequisite.” - actor Marlon Brando

While I really like Facebook, you do have to be careful with the information you share and who you share it with. Some people I think go too far and lock down all information so all I have is a name and no clue if this person is my long lost friend from college or not. Other people publish everything about themselves to the world, their birthday, where they live, etc. That is too much sharing. I restrict that level of detail to just my “confirmed” friends. My public profile shows my workplace, my “town”, the colleges I attended, and a single photo carefully chosen.

Many websites (like games I play) ask for a birthday, so I’ve created a new one of January 1 with the year rounded down to the nearest decade. That won’t do on Facebook since friends want to celebrate my real birthday. So I entered a date that is near but slightly off. The town I list is the township I live in, not the smaller village jurisdiction.

Am I being paranoid? Perhaps not. There is a new company at http://www.spokeo.com/ that uses Facebook and other online data to build individual profiles. The amount of information they had on me was disturbing – my actual village, my house value, my age and birthday month, married, number of kids, etc. And this was the “free” display. If I paid I could have seen even more details (or so they claim).

Type in your name and see what comes up about yourself. If you have a common name, try [name], [city], [state].

Bottom Line

The good news is that Spokeo supports privacy requests. Go to www.spokeo.com/privacy and put in the URL of “your” page on their site. Then give them an email address (you could create a temporary email for this). Within seconds I had an email, clicked the response and immediately my name disappeared from their search results.

Recommended Books

"The worth of a book is to be measured by what you can carry away from it." ~James Bryce

The SurvivalBlog has posted a list of reader recommended survival & preparedness books at ...

www.survivalblog.com/2009/07/survey_results_your_favorite_b.html

The readers' favorite book is The Encyclopedia of Country Living by Carla Emery. It sells for $18-20 on Amazon and is described as, "invaluable practical advice on all aspects of growing and preparing food. ... how to cultivate a garden, buy land, bake bread, raise farm animals, make sausage, milk a goat, grow herbs, churn butter, catch a pig, make soap, work with bees and more."

Many of the books in the list cover gardening and farming. The rest are a mix of general principals, health (dentistry, first aid), guns, religion (bible), food storage, and cooking.

Bottom Line

While I love the internet and all the information that is available, I would not count on it to be working after a major emergency. First - many disasters knock out the electricity. Second, that might be a break in your phone line or cable. Third, if you do have power and a working line, the servers may be overwhelmed or just incredibly slow.

Do yourself a favor and buy a few good books:

• first aid
• old fashioned cooking skills (e.g. Joy of Cooking, 1965 edition)
• general survival guide
• farming/gardening (if you have the land)

Resources for Flood Preparation

“There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. We must take the current when it serves, or lose our
ventures.” - William Shakespeare

I try not to copy and paste entire blog postings. I don't believe that is fair. Usually I'll summarize and highlight key points and give links to the source.

But in the case of ***Island News***Public Works: Flood-related Resources Are Available there is no way to summarize. The posting is filled with links to online resources from FEMA and Red Cross regarding flooding. How to prepare before hand and how to clean up afterward. Check it out!

Bottom Line

Be it rain, hurricanes or high rivers, very few homes are safe from flooding. We live near the top of a hill and the house at the very top flooded during the heavy rains of Hurricane Floyd. We prepared and did OK (just some leakage under our basement door.) We have layered the ground to encourage water flow around our house and down the hill.