Tag Archives: online

Free Full Online Courses by Stanford University – Spring 2012

November 24, 2011 – 2:54 pm

Several universities world-wide have made their courseware available in different formats over the years. A very popular format is that of podcasts on iTunesU or video lectures on Youtube. See, for instance, this broad list of “free courseware” offerings by major universities. Yale, for example, has made several past lectures available on their Open Yale website. The Open University lets students try course materials for free on their OpenLearn resources page, which. Often, these courses are nothing but pre-recorded videos and audio elements (not full interactive courses) made public by the universities as a form of community outreach (which is already great, don’t get me wrong).

However, Stanford University is blazing trails for open online courseware. Anyone (as long as they understand the recommended prerequisites)can sign up to take some of their courses online, free of charge in the Spring semester of 2012. The courses will consist of live lectures (which can also be see later in an archive), quizzes, and forums in which online students can ask questions.

The current Spring 2012 semester offerings include courses on an eclectic variety subjects ranging from Computer Science to Game Theory, from Anatomy to Linguistics:

Computer Science 101
by Nick Parlante

http://cs101-class.org

Software Engineering for Software as a Service (SAAS)
by Armando Fox and David Patterson

http://saas-class.org/

Game Theory
by Matthew O. Jackson and Yoav Shoham

http://game-theory-class.org

Natural Language processing
by Dan Jurafsky and Christopher Manning

http://nlp-class.org

Probabilistic Graphical Models
by Daphne Koller

http://pgm-class.org/

Human-Computer interfaces
by Scott Klemmer

http://hci-class.org/

Machine Learning
by Andrew Ng

http://jan2012.ml-class.org/

Technology Entrepreneurship
by Chuck Eesley

http://entrepreneur-class.org/

The Lean Launchpad
by Steve Blank

http://launchpad-class.org/

Cryptography
by Professor Dan Boneh

http://crypto-class.org/

Information Theory
by Tsachy (Itschak) Weissman

http://infotheory-class.org/

Anatomy
by Dr. Sakti Sirivastava

http://anatomy-class.org/

Design and Analysis of Algorithms I
by Tim Roughgarden

http://algo-class.org/

Making Green Buildings
by Professor Martin Fischer

http://greenbuilding-class.org/

 

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List adapted from The Rohan Aurora blog.

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5 Free Online Visual Dictionary and Thesaurus Applications

October 12, 2011 – 7:04 pm

Sometimes, when I need some inspiration and ideas for words to use in a project, I take the visual route and consult a “visual thesaurus”.

These handy Web applications can help you quickly find new words for a concept you’re working with, visualize its relationship with other words, and, of course, amplify your vocabulary and aid you in avoiding repetition, replication, redundancy, and echolalia, et &…

Here are a few online visual thesaurus applications that are free to use:

SnappyWords -Soon to have its open source code available for the public, SnappyWords can came in handy when you want to share a word’s connections with others: each entry has a unique search entry URL that takes users straight to its visual “network map”. This service also provides a built-in hover-over dictionary (when you hover over each word’s node, of course).

VisuWords -Very similar to SnappyWords, this application doesn’t seem to allow direct linking to specific words. Built-in dictionary.

WordVis - This simple visual thesaurus lets you filter words by different parts of speech and categories. Once again, no direct hyperlinking to specific words is provided. Built-in dictionary.

 

GraphWords – This visual thesaurus has handy (am I using the word “handy” too often in this post?), I meant “commodious” social media sharing buttons for quickly sharing your word maps with friends on Facebook and Twitter. Unlike the previous services on this list, GraphWords has a drawback: no built-in dictionary is provided.

Merriam-Webster’s Visual Dictionary – This is a typical illustrated dictionary. Illustrations are available in different categories. The search mechanism (custom Google search) isn’t very effective, but the illustration work is quite comprehensive.

 

 

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Record Screencasts and Demos with no Downloads

September 12, 2009 – 2:31 pm

It is nice not to have to download any programs if you want to record simple screencasts and demos (and in SIMPLE steps) of your computer screen.

Here is an good review of ScreenToaster by Jane Hart.

What is even better is not to have to create yet a new username and password for yet another website. That is where ScreenJelly differs from ScreenToarter: although ScreenJelly works pretty much in the same way, you can simply login with your Twitter account… Well, if you don’t have a Twitter account yet, go get one and play with it at least to know what the hype is about…

ScreenCastle is another simple, one-button, Java-based screen recorder that works with not need for complicated software installation. It is based on Skoffer, which offer a useful option for the bloggers out there: if you are an advanced (well, somewhat advanced) user, you can use their API to build plug it into your existing website for even quicker recordings.

Best of all, these tools are free of charge (as of this writing).

ScreenToaster

Screen Jelly

ScreenCastle

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(Free) Online Storage and Drives

April 8, 2009 – 4:48 pm

For those who need to save their files and share them on the cloud. Here is a list of free websites that offer online storage (some can sync our files across multiple computer without the need for individual downloads and uploads):

Box - Free 1GB storage, 5 collaborators and a limit of 25MB per file upload.

DropBox - Free 2GB storage, offers sync’ing.

ADrive – Free 50GB storage, simple storage and sharing capabilities, ability to edit documents online.

ZumoDrive – 1GB free storage, sync’ing, iPhone application.

MediaFire - Free and unlimited file storage, limit of 100MB per upload, upload different files to different folders and share them.

eSnips – Share files with people of the same interests, Youtube and Delicious meet files storage.

 

There are many more services to explore, but these are just a few that stand out to me. You can find more by simply going to a website like Go2Web20 and looking for the tag “storage”.

 

Have your own suggestions, please share them here. 

 

I am also interested in the use of file storage services like these in learning contexts (at school, at work, when designing instruction, etc.), besides the obvious: there is no excuse for forgetting a document anymore and the ease to share any type of file with colleagues, classmates and instructors…

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Online File Storage is Evolving – Store, Use, Share Your Media Everywhere

April 6, 2009 – 11:42 pm

I am a huge fan of having access to my files anywhere, anytime. On a friend’s computer, at home, on my mobile device (the iPhone), etc. Securely, of course…

I have written about file storage and sync’ing before, a lot of them are freemium (you need to pay for extra storage, more features, etc.). A few I’ve found have unlimited storage, like MediaFire.

Sometimes file storage is not enough, we need file editing capabilities on the go. Well, there is Google Docs. Zoho suite, Adobe Buzzword and many other collaborative editing tools out there.

Also, having a neat little Webtop (desktop on the cloud) can be an interesting concept as well and it is evolving little by little.

EyeOS and Cloudo seem to be the most evolved of those competing in this space.

Watch out for Tonido as well, especially for those scared of putting their files out there on a server controlled by other people, well, Tonido lets you easily share files from your computer with not need for uploads… basically unlimited storage (for as long as there is space on your hard drive)… not WebOS, but pretty close and might actually work better than “desktops on the cloud” for now.

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Mygazine a Great Compilation of Magazines

July 29, 2008 – 3:05 pm

Mygazines is an online, simple yet comprehensive magazine archive. User upload, share, bookmark, send via email, comment on and, of course, read articles from magazines from all over the world. All this is a very sleek interface. First the user logs in and searches for a magazine they want to read, then they click on “read” and the magazine pops up on the screen in form of an elegant and feature-rich “flipbook”. The quality of the material is fantastic! Users can also use their keyboard arrows to browse through the pages of the flipbook.

Here are some of the features of the flipbooks (more info on their “flipbook help” page):

Just like anywhere on mygazines.com, from any page in the flipbook you can:

 rate an article (you must be logged in)
 comment on an article (you must be logged in)
 save an article to a mygazine collection (you must be logged in)
 share with friends (you must be logged in)
 social bookmark to your favorite site
 email an article to your friend
 tag article with unique keywords (you must be logged in and have permission)

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Gliffy – an Online Alternative to Microsoft Visio for Flowcharting

May 28, 2008 – 1:34 pm

Well, everyone is talking about Gliffy and I don;t want to be redundant, but I have to give my opinion about it as well. The program lets users collaborate on flowcharts and diagrams online. This is a very good and free (for public documents) alternative to desktop diagramming tools such as Microsoft Visio, OmniGraffle, FreeMind and many others, but with an advantage: besides being online with no extra plugin required, it also allows users to collaborate and co-author flowcharts and diagrams, which comes in handy when participating in some sort of creative process while geographically distant.

Even though the web application is an innovative technology that can not only compare but also outdo desktop applications and is definitely is ahead of everyone else in the online diagramming arena as far as professional look and feel is concerned, Gliffy is still a little glitchy (no pun intended) if not missing features. (I’m sure they will work on this soon.

One of the major flaws in it is the lack of immediate update without attaching a “version number to the file”. There are to bad outcomes of this:

1- If you and a colleague are collaborating AT THE SAME TIME on the same document you won’t immediately see the changes they’ve made to a document. I haven’t tested this on complex flowcharts but I wonder if there will be any conflicts between versions if both save their version simultaneously.

2- If you make any minor change to the document and decide to hit the “save” button, a new version number is attached to the document… So, a freak about saving stuff like me will have a v178 of a document after 20 minutes of editing and saving. ;)

Another catchy thing about Gliffy (and it is part of their business plan) is how they only allow free accounts to create public documents and require users to purchase their premium account for unlimitted documents and the option of making them private.

Competitors can be:

  • Bubbl.us
  • MindMeister – more focused on “mind mapping”.
  • Mindomo – same as above.
  • Mind42 – Another collaborative mind mapping tool that stands out for the array of features ranging from keywords to speed up the process of creation to assigning icons to process and creating image nodes that import images from URLs.
  • Comapping – not free but cost-effective and feature-rich collaborative diagramming solution.

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A.Viary Invites

May 10, 2008 – 7:14 pm

So, I have been testing a.viary features. Aviary is a collection of online imaging software. Their suite is supposed to be feature-rich. The developers keep a very creative and thought-provoking blog. You can tell they are really trying to approach online production tools from a different perspective.

So far they have Phoenix (image editor, like an online “Photoshop”) and Peacock (a pattern creator) running. But they plan on implementing many other tools soon.

I have 4 invites for Aviary and would like to give them to people in the learning field so they can have a chance to try these tools while they are still in private beta.

Please leave a comment here telling me what connection you have with learning or eLearning (instructor, student) and come back to let us know what you think about the tools once you’ve used them. I think it would be really interesting to know what people in the education field think of this type of tools.

A hint, leave you email address in the comment in this format (to avoid spam): username [at] domain.com.

 

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