ONLINE LEARNING
LANGUAGE LEARNING
Rosetta Stone - innovative, personalized language and reading programs
NJ DRIVING TESTS
Bloomfield Public Library is announcing a partnership with a company dedicated to driver safety and education, to offer free DMV practice tests to library patrons.
Go online to http://bplnj.driving-tests.org/ to find free tests, written specifically based on the state DMV materials, and is the only site of its kind to include accessibility tools that allow users to hear selections read aloud, make them into MP3s, translate pages into other languages, magnify text, and mask sections of the screen for greater visibility on driving practice tests.
MOOCS (Massive Open Online Courses) - Major universities including Harvard, Stanford, Yale, MIT and scores more are opening up their course catalogs and contributing free courses to a myriad of MOOC sites. Companies have taken notice and are actively contributing to these courses, going so far as to help create micro degree programs in the hopes of recruiting a better educated workforce. Job seekers should take notice!! The following is a guide to the MOOC landscape as it is today.
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Coursera - About 2,000, some free, many premium. Every course on Coursera is taught by top instructors from the world’s best universities and educational institutions. Courses include recorded video lectures, auto-graded and peer-reviewed assignments, and community discussion forums.
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EdX - Over 1,270 courses, free and premium options. “Founded by Harvard University and MIT in 2012, edX is an online learning destination and MOOC provider, offering high-quality courses from the world’s best universities and institutions to learners everywhere. We were founded by and continue to be governed by colleges and universities. We are the only leading MOOC provider that is both nonprofit and open source.” Institutions include: MIT, Harvard, New York Institute of Finance, Georgetown, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, IEEE, University of Notre Dame, University of Oxford, Amnesty International, UC Berkeley, Microsoft, and more.
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Udacity - About 200 free and premium options “We are building an online university ‘by Silicon Valley’, that teaches the skills that industry employers need today delivers credentials endorsed by employers educates at a fraction of the cost of traditional schools. With industry giants—Google, AT&T, Facebook, Salesforce, Cloudera, etc.—we offer Nanodegree programs and credentials, designed so professionals become Web Developers, Data Analysts, Mobile Developers, etc. Our students acquire real skills through a series of online courses and hands-on projects.” Institutions: Google, Facebook, Georgia Institute of Technology, Mercedes-Benz, AT&T, Lyft, Amazon, and more.
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KahnAcademy - Khan Academy offers practice exercises, instructional videos, and a personalized learning dashboard that empower learners to study at their own pace in and outside of the classroom: math, science, computer programming, history, art history, economics, and more. They've also partnered with institutions like NASA, The Museum of Modern Art, The California Academy of Sciences, and MIT to offer specialized content.
Codecademy - 23 courses in highly technical programming languages, free and premium.
Note: This isn’t really a MOOC in that there are no instructors, group discussions, reading and “assignments.” Its included on this list however because of its phenomenal hands-on active learning approach to learning the basics of programming languages. Highly recommended!