This is a cause you can all relate to: Cre­ative Com­mons is kick­ing off a cam­paign this week to raise mon­ey for its recent­ly-launched Cat­a­lyst Grants pro­gram. Put sim­ply, these grants will help “empow­er indi­vid­u­als and orga­ni­za­tions every­where … to make knowl­edge eas­i­ly, freely, and legal­ly avail­able to every­one.” Grant sizes will range from $1,000 to $10,000, and they will be dis­trib­uted to seri­ous researchers, edu­ca­tors and inno­va­tors across the globe. The goal is to raise $100,000 this month. You can help make free edu­ca­tion (includ­ing open edu­ca­tion­al resources) avail­able world­wide by mak­ing a dona­tion here, or using the wid­get below.

This week­end, The New York Times is ded­i­cat­ing its Educa­tion Life sec­tion to Open Edu­ca­tion. It all starts with a lengthy arti­cle on the state of the “open course” move­ment. Then, a relat­ed arti­cle tells you where you can learn some­thing for noth­ing (always a good thing!), list­ing sev­er­al sites – includ­ing Open Cul­ture – where you’ll find an end­less sup­ply of free edu­ca­tion­al con­tent. Final­ly, you will learn about the 10 most watched aca­d­e­m­ic videos on YouTube, one of which (#9) comes out of my pro­gram at Stan­ford.

If you’re look­ing for open cours­es, def­i­nite­ly vis­it our col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties. At last count, our col­lec­tion includes 243 free cours­es (about half in video) from 25 uni­ver­si­ties, which amounts to more than 6,000 hours of free lec­tures. You can down­load these cours­es straight to your com­put­er or mp3 play­er, and watch them any­time, any­where. Mean­while, if you have an iPhone, you can access these cours­es via our free iPhone app. For more free edu­ca­tion­al media (free audio books, for­eign lan­guage lessons, movies, etc.), sim­ply explore the free resources list­ed in the nav­i­ga­tion bar above. Enjoy!