A Free Online Course from Yale University Explains How the World Lapsed into the Politics of Fear & Resentment

in Online Courses, Politics, Yale | December 17th, 2020

“How did we get from the huge eupho­ria that fol­lowed the fall of com­mu­nism in the ear­ly 1990s to our present pol­i­tics of fear and resent­ment, and what are the prospects going for­ward?” These ques­tions and more get answered in Yale’s free course, “Pow­er and Pol­i­tics in Today’s World.”  Taught by Pro­fes­sor of Polit­i­cal Sci­ence Ian Shapiro, the course “pro­vides an exam­i­na­tion of polit­i­cal dynam­ics and insti­tu­tions over this past tumul­tuous quar­ter cen­tu­ry, and the impli­ca­tions of these changes for what comes next. Among the top­ics cov­ered are the decline of trade unions and the enlarged role of busi­ness as polit­i­cal forces, chang­ing atti­tudes towards par­ties and oth­er polit­i­cal insti­tu­tions amidst the growth of inequal­i­ty and mid­dle-class inse­cu­ri­ty, the emer­gence of new forms of author­i­tar­i­an­ism, and the char­ac­ter and dura­bil­i­ty of the unipo­lar inter­na­tion­al order that replaced the Cold War.”

You can watch the lec­tures on Youtube, or stream them all above. The syl­labus and read­ing list can be found here.

“Pow­er and Pol­i­tics in Today’s World” will be added to our meta col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Death: A Free Phi­los­o­phy Course from Yale

Mod­ern Poet­ry: A Free Course from Yale

Take Free Cours­es on African-Amer­i­can His­to­ry from Yale and Stan­ford: From Eman­ci­pa­tion, to the Civ­il Rights Move­ment, and Beyond

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MIT’s Introduction to Deep Learning: A Free Online Course

in Computer Science, Online Courses | December 14th, 2020

MIT has post­ed online its intro­duc­to­ry course on deep learn­ing, which cov­ers appli­ca­tions to com­put­er vision, nat­ur­al lan­guage pro­cess­ing, biol­o­gy, and more. Stu­dents “will gain foun­da­tion­al knowl­edge of deep learn­ing algo­rithms and get prac­ti­cal expe­ri­ence in build­ing neur­al net­works in Ten­sor­Flow.” Pre­req­ui­sites assume cal­cu­lus (i.e. tak­ing deriv­a­tives) and lin­ear alge­bra (i.e. matrix mul­ti­pli­ca­tion). Expe­ri­ence in Python is help­ful but not nec­es­sary. The first lec­ture appears above. The rest of the course mate­ri­als (videos & slides) can be found here.

Intro­duc­tion to Deep Learn­ing will be added to our list of Free Com­put­er Sci­ence Cours­es, a sub­set of our larg­er meta col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.  You can also find Deep Learn­ing cours­es on Cours­era.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

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Nikon Offers Free Online Photography Courses During the Holidays

in Online Courses, Photography | November 25th, 2020

A quick heads up. From Novem­ber 23rd through Decem­ber 31st, you can stream for free all class­es offered by Nikon School Online. Nor­mal­ly priced at $15-$50 per course, this 10-course offer­ing cov­ers Fun­da­men­tals of Pho­tog­ra­phy, Dynam­ic Land­scape Pho­tog­ra­phy, Macro Pho­tog­ra­phy, Pho­tograph­ing Chil­dren and Pets, and more.

Find­ing the cours­es on the Nikon site is not very intu­itive. To access the cours­es, click here and then scroll down the page until you see a yel­low but­ton that says “Watch Full Ver­sion.” From there you will get a prompt that allows you to sign up for the cours­es…

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

via PetaPix­el

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Annie Lei­bovitz Teach­es Pho­tog­ra­phy in Her First Online Course

Take a Free Course on Dig­i­tal Pho­tog­ra­phy from Stan­ford Prof Marc Lev­oy

Learn Dig­i­tal Pho­tog­ra­phy with Har­vard University’s Free Course

1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

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A Free Stanford Course on How to Teach Online: Designed for Middle & High School Teachers

in K-12, Online Courses | November 17th, 2020

Update: You can find the video record­ing of the work­shop here.

This past spring, teach­ers and stu­dents every­where got an abrupt intro­duc­tion to online learn­ing. When class­rooms moved online in March, many teach­ers exper­i­ment­ed with online ped­a­gogy for the first time, often with­out much train­ing or sup­port. To help ease this tran­si­tion, the Stan­ford Online High School–an inde­pen­dent high school that oper­ates entire­ly online–launched a free course designed to help teach­ers get com­fort­able teach­ing in this new medi­um. 7,000 teach­ers signed up. To con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing sup­port, an updat­ed ver­sion of this free course will be offered again this week­end.

“Teach­ing Your Class Online” will take place this Sat­ur­day (Novem­ber 21) and Sun­day (Novem­ber 22),  and run from 9:00 am — 11:00 am Pacif­ic time each day. (Update: The lec­tures are now avail­able online.) Designed main­ly for instruc­tors teach­ing grades 7–12, the course can be help­ful for ele­men­tary and col­lege instruc­tors as well. Top­ics cov­ered will include “chal­lenges [such] as stu­dent engage­ment and dis­cus­sion (includ­ing for large groups, break­out rooms, and hybrid groups), effec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion with stu­dents and par­ents, assess­ment and cur­ricu­lum adap­ta­tion for online ped­a­gogy, and strate­gies for sup­port­ing both stu­dents and your­selves.”

“Teach­ing Your Class Online” is sup­port­ed by Stan­ford Online High School and Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies. You can enroll in the course on the Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies web­site here.

If you know any teach­ers who could ben­e­fit from this free course, please feel free to share this post with them.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

200 Free Kids Edu­ca­tion­al Resources: Video Lessons, Apps, Books, Web­sites & More

“I Will Sur­vive,” the Coro­n­avirus Ver­sion for Teach­ers Going Online

How to Teach and Learn Phi­los­o­phy Dur­ing the Pan­dem­ic: A Col­lec­tion of 450+ Phi­los­o­phy Videos Free Online

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Dr. Fauci’s Lecture from MIT’s Free Course on COVID-19: It’s Now Online

in Biology, Online Courses | November 16th, 2020

Back in Sep­tem­ber, we gave you a heads up on MIT’s free course on COVID-19. As we men­tioned, “COVID-19, SARS-CoV­‑2 and the Pan­dem­ic” runs from Sep­tem­ber 1, 2020 through Decem­ber 8, 2020. And it fea­tures a com­bi­na­tion of MIT fac­ul­ty and guest speak­ers, includ­ing Dr. Antho­ny Fau­ci, cov­er­ing the sci­ence of the pan­dem­ic. Since our orig­i­nal post, Dr. Fau­ci’s pre­sen­ta­tion, “Insights from the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic,” has gone online. You can watch it above. Then find all of the oth­er lec­tures here.

MIT’s course has been added to the Biol­o­gy sec­tion of our meta col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

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A Master List of 1,500 Free Courses From Top Universities: 50,000 Hours of Audio/Video Lectures to Enrich Your Mind

in Online Courses | October 18th, 2020


For the past 14 years, we’ve been busy rum­mag­ing around the inter­net and adding cours­es to an ever-grow­ing list of Free Online Cours­es, which now fea­tures 1,500 cours­es from top uni­ver­si­ties. Let’s give you the quick overview: The list lets you down­load audio & video lec­tures from schools like Stan­ford, Yale, MIT, Oxford, Har­vard and many oth­er insti­tu­tions. Gen­er­al­ly, the cours­es can be accessed via YouTube, iTunes or uni­ver­si­ty web sites, and you can lis­ten to the lec­tures any­time, any­where, on your com­put­er or smart phone. We haven’t done a pre­cise cal­cu­la­tion, but there’s about 50,000 hours of free audio & video lec­tures here. Enough to keep you busy for a very long time–something that’s use­ful dur­ing these social­ly dis­tant times.

Right now you’ll find 200 free phi­los­o­phy cours­es, 105 free his­to­ry cours­es, 170 free com­put­er sci­ence cours­es, 85 free physics cours­es and 55 Free Lit­er­a­ture Cours­es in the col­lec­tion, and that’s just begin­ning to scratch the sur­face. You can peruse sec­tions cov­er­ing Astron­o­my, Biol­o­gy, Busi­ness, Chem­istry, Eco­nom­ics, Engi­neer­ing, Math, Polit­i­cal Sci­ence, Psy­chol­o­gy and Reli­gion.

Here are some high­lights from the com­plete list of Free Online Cours­es. We’ve added a few unconventional/vintage cours­es in the mix just to keep things inter­est­ing.

The com­plete list of cours­es can be accessed here: 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties. For more enrich­ing mate­r­i­al, see our oth­er col­lec­tions below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Learn 45+ Lan­guages Online for Free: Span­ish, Chi­nese, Eng­lish & More.

200 Online Cer­tifi­cate & Micro­cre­den­tial Pro­grams from Lead­ing Uni­ver­si­ties & Com­pa­nies.

Online Degrees & Mini Degrees: Explore Mas­ters, Mini Mas­ters, Bach­e­lors & Mini Bach­e­lors from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

 

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Blockbuster Courses on the U.S. Presidential Election Getting Started at Stanford Continuing Studies This Week

in Online Courses, Stanford | September 21st, 2020


This fall, Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies presents 150+ cours­es in the Lib­er­al Arts & Sci­ences, Cre­ative Writ­ing, and Pro­fes­sion­al Devel­op­ment, includ­ing two major cours­es on the U.S. pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. Taught by Pamela Kar­lan (Stan­ford law pro­fes­sor) and James Stey­er (CEO, Com­mon Sense Media), Elec­tion 2020: A Panoram­ic View of Amer­i­ca’s Deci­sive Elec­tion will fea­ture a line­up of dis­tin­guished guest speakers–from Bill Clin­ton and Kara Swish­er, to Steve Schmidt, David Plouffe and Andrew Yang. The oth­er course focus­es on Tech­nol­o­gy and the 2020 Elec­tion: How Sil­i­con Val­ley Tech­nolo­gies Impact Our Elec­tions and Shape Our Democ­ra­cy. Taught by pro­fes­sor Rob Reich and Dutch politi­cian Mari­et­je Schaake, the course will fea­ture vis­its from Roger McNamee, (author of Zucked: Wak­ing Up to the Face­book Cat­a­stro­phe), Alex Sta­mos (For­mer Chief Secu­ri­ty Offi­cer, Face­book), Shoshana Zuboff, (Har­vard author of The Age of Sur­veil­lance Cap­i­tal­ism), Michael McFaul (for­mer ambas­sador to Rus­sia), and more.

These live online cours­es are open to adults. Although the cours­es aren’t free, they’re time­ly and bound to engage. Elec­tion 2020 starts today. Tech­nol­o­gy and the 2020 Elec­tion starts on Wednes­day. Explore the entire Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies cat­a­logue here.

Note: High school stu­dents can also enroll in both of these elec­tion cours­es. To explore that oppor­tu­ni­ty, fol­low these links:

Elec­tion 2020: A Panoram­ic View of Amer­i­ca’s Deci­sive Elec­tion

Tech­nol­o­gy and the 2020 Elec­tion: How Sil­i­con Val­ley Tech­nolo­gies Impact Our Elec­tions and Shape Our Democ­ra­cy

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MIT Presents a Free Course on the COVID-19 Pandemic, Featuring Anthony Fauci & Other Experts

in Biology, Current Affairs, Health, MIT, Online Courses | September 8th, 2020

Most of us use the terms “coro­n­avirus” and “COVID-19” to refer to the pan­dem­ic that has gone around the world this year. We do know, or can fig­ure out, that the for­mer term refers to a virus and the lat­ter to the dis­ease caused by that virus. But do we know the full name “severe acute res­pi­ra­to­ry syn­drome coro­n­avirus 2,” or “SARS-CoV­‑2” for short? We will if we take the online course “COVID-19, SARS-CoV­‑2 and the Pan­dem­ic,” which MIT is mak­ing avail­able to the gen­er­al pub­lic free online. We’ll also learn what makes both the virus and the dis­ease dif­fer­ent from oth­er virus­es and dis­eases, what we can do to avoid infec­tion, and how close we are to an effec­tive treat­ment.

All this is laid out in the course’s first lec­ture by Bruce Walk­er, direc­tor of the Ragon Insti­tute of Mass­a­chu­setts Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, MIT and Har­vard. Walk­er intro­duces him­self by telling us how he grad­u­at­ed from med­ical school when HIV was at its height in Amer­i­ca, tim­ing that placed him well for a career focused on dead­ly viral dis­eases.

The course’s com­plete line­up of guest lec­tur­ers, all of them list­ed on its syl­labus, includes many oth­er high-pro­file fig­ures in the field of epi­demi­ol­o­gy, immunol­o­gy, vac­cine devel­op­ment, and relat­ed fields: Har­vard’s Michael Mina, Yale’s Akiko Iwasa­ki, the Broad Insti­tute’s Eric Lan­der, and — per­haps you’ve heard of him — the Nation­al Insti­tute of Aller­gy and Infec­tious Dis­eases’ Antho­ny Fau­ci (find his ses­sion below).

“COVID-19, SARS-CoV­‑2 and the Pan­dem­ic” began last Tues­day, and its lec­tures, which you’ll find uploaded to this Youtube playlist, will con­tin­ue week­ly until Decem­ber 8th. Even if you have no back­ground in med­i­cine, biol­o­gy, or sci­ence of any kind, don’t be intim­i­dat­ed: as lead­ing pro­fes­sors Richard Young and Facun­do Batista empha­size, this course is meant as an intro­duc­to­ry overview.

And as Bruce Walk­er’s first lec­ture demon­strates, it’s not just open to the gen­er­al pub­lic but geared toward the under­stand­ing and con­cerns of the gen­er­al pub­lic as well. Tak­ing it may not reas­sure you that an end to the pan­dem­ic lies just around the cor­ner, but it will give you clear­er and more coher­ent ways to think about what’s going on. The virus and dis­ease involved are still incom­plete­ly under­stood, after all — but thanks to these and oth­er researchers around the world, get­ting bet­ter under­stood every day.

“COVID-19, SARS-CoV­‑2 and the Pan­dem­ic” will be added to our list, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Cours­es on the Coro­n­avirus: What You Need to Know About the Emerg­ing Pan­dem­ic

Watch “Coro­n­avirus Out­break: What You Need to Know,” and the 24-Lec­ture Course “An Intro­duc­tion to Infec­tious Dis­eases,” Both Free from The Great Cours­es

Inter­ac­tive Web Site Tracks the Glob­al Spread of the Coro­n­avirus: Cre­at­ed and Sup­port­ed by Johns Hop­kins

Why Fight­ing the Coro­n­avirus Depends on You

Use Your Time in Iso­la­tion to Learn Every­thing You’ve Always Want­ed To: Free Online Cours­es, Audio Books, eBooks, Movies, Col­or­ing Books & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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