Free online courses offered by FIU

Florida International University is offering five online courses that anyone can take, for free.The courses, which make up FIU’s initial offering of “Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC),” include entrepreneurship, real estate and a class on project management in English and Spanish.Each course is a self-directed, condensed version of a college-level course and takes about eight hours to complete. Participants can watch a short video of the content of each course as described by the instructor before enrolling.

To sign up, visit www.open.fiu.edu. Students can enroll and complete the course at their own pace. At the end of the course, participants have the option of receiving a certificate of completion. No college credit will be awarded, FIU said.Applied Real Estate: What you need to know about buying and selling residential real estate.Entrepreneurship and New Ventures: Geared to give students practical tools to help them rapidly assess the potential of a new business idea.Legal and Ethical Governance - A Roadmap for Florida's Public Officials and Employees: The course includes both theoretical and practical approaches to common ethical issues, with an emphasis on Florida law.Project Management Basics: Aimed at providing key concepts and techniques for successfully managing projects from planning to completion. It is offered in English and Spanish.

Courses aimed at those caring for people with mental illness

The first, starting Tuesday Jan. 8, will be “With Hope in Mind,” which is an eight-class weekly course for family members or caregivers of adults with mental illness. National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) Sumner County will be offering two free mental health courses in January in Hendersonville.With Hope in Mind” provides the basic education and skill training needed to cope with the difficulties associated with caring for adult relatives who exhibit behaviors like anger, depression, mania, psychosis, paranoia and other symptoms of mental illness.

The second, starting, Thursday Jan. 10, will be Beginnings, which is a six-class weekly course for parents or caregivers of children with behavioral issues. “Beginnings” provides a wealth of information for primary care providers of a child or adolescent who struggles with depression, mania, delusions, inattentiveness and other difficult behaviors. The course covers a spectrum of brain disorders, such as bipolar disorder, depression, schizophrenia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder ADHD. The course is helpful for primary caregivers along with grandparents, aunts, uncles, respite care providers and foster parents.

Free courses, materials

The “With Hope In Mind” and “Beginnings” classes address these common illnesses along with many others. The courses will be taught by NAMI volunteers who have taken instructor training and have personal experience in caring for someone with a mental illness. These free workshops are sponsored by NAMI Sumner County and are supported in part by a grant from NAMI Tennessee and the Tennessee Dept. of Mental Health & Developmental Disabilities.Both classes take place 6 p.m. at the Hendersonville's Babb Center at 105 Music Village Blvd. on their respective days.

Common skills

Both acclaimed workshops will help participants understand the feelings of anger, frustration, guilt, and hopelessness that arise when trying to help someone struggling with a mental illness. They also outline coping skills for dealing with the cycles of mental illness. Participants will learn helpful skills such as problem management, communication and crisis planning while being offered practical and emotional support as they learn that they are not alone.One in five Tennesseans is affected by a mental illness such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, anxiety disorder or eating disorder.

Special computer education class for seniors

Senior Computer Associates is sponsoring a special class to help you learn how to email your grandchildren, browse the internet and send and receive digital photos. Join the computer age as over 1,000 Senior Citizens of our area have done through this program. A computer is provided free to graduates of this program, if needed.

Senior Computer Associates will sponsor this class to all residents 50 and older of Latrobe, Derry & Ligonier. This class will be held for 4 weeks. Classes will be held Mondays from 9:30 to 11:15 a.m. The cost is $20, 100% of which goes to the Latrobe Senior Center. Maximum class size – 6 students with an instructor and 2 coaches to assist you.The Latrobe Senior Center provides a hot breakfast and lunch for a minimal additional cost. Transportation is available through Veteran’s Cab at a minimal expense.The Latrobe Senior Center is located at Avenue C in Latrobe.

Harvard Law offering first free online course

The new phenomenon seen nowadays in higher education around the world is the online open courses, also known as MOOCs. So, what is MOOC?A MOOC is an open online course that can be pursued by the masses through Internet. In a MOOC, the course materials are uploaded by a University, college or institute through portals like edX, etc.These portals allow students from across the world to enrol into a course of their choice free of cost and access the course material of institutes like Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, University of British Columbia, and University of Melbourne, University of Toronto.

The good part is that while doing a particular course, students may be given assignments and exams to complete and at the end of the course certificates of course completion are also granted.So all those students who want to upgrade their skills into specific fields, this is probably what you can check out. Also, the courses available on MOOCs are plenty. Be it medicine, law, computer science, business and management, Business Administrationn and social sciences, everything is available and that too for free.It is estimated that close to 400 courses are available through MOOCs, and the lists are growing. Each course takes around 600 hours to convert to be online ready, and cost the university approx $45,000.

As per The Horizon Report of 2012, Higher Education Edition predicts how emerging technologies in education will have an impact in the next five years globally. People will increasingly expect to work, learn and study, at anytime and anywhere. MOOCs will allow this.In Kenya, there is rising access to the Internet owing to broadband technologies. The Internet is also becoming more affordable. The University of Melbourne in Australia signed up to Coursera in Septemb,er and in just over two months, it had more than 52,000 enrolment.Now the question arises, why are universities interested in sharing their courses with the world for free?Having their course material available to all, universities get to interact with students of caliber, who otherwise do not participate in such classes. Such an experience also opens up new theories, arguments and reasoning.Also, students are unable to make it into top institutions get to feel how things are taught in such institutes.

First free online course offerd by MSU

Learning how to turn complex technical terms into plain English is the subject of a new online course at Michigan State University.
The Foundations of Science class makes the tongue-in-cheek promise that students will learn "to speak mumbo jumbo" and amaze their friends.
The East Lansing school says the class is its first free Massive Open Online Course and debuts in May 2013.
Stephen Thomas (Zoologist) says he and course co-creator Julie Libarkin seek to help students improve their critical thinking skills and make better decisions.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is providing $50,000 to fund the course, which will be offered worldwide. Michigan State says Thomas and Libarkin hope the class attracts at least 10,000 students.

Open Free online courses

In the fall of 2011, a free online course was offered by Stanford University on the subject of artificial intelligence. The instructors were world-renowned experts in their field and this massive open online course, or MOOC, wound up with an unprecedented enrollment of 160,000 students and ushered in a new era of virtual education.But what if artificial intelligence isn’t your thing? The good news is free resources are rapidly coming online for business owners and entrepreneurs, covering topics ranging from leadership to innovation to startups. Here’s a look at some of them:

Take the challenge: One recently launched offering is the 21 Day Leadership Challenge.The challenge features management consultant and New York Times bestselling business author of Tribal Leadership Dave Logan in a series of 3-minute videos delivered via email. Each video contains both information and a homework assignment, most of which take about 20 minutes to complete, with a few one hour assignments mixed in. The three-week program promises greater confidence, along with a better ability to light a fire of enthusiasm under tribe.

Leading innovation: Coursera is another major player in this space, with 33 university partners, including Cal Tech, Columbia, Duke, Princeton, Stanford and UC San Francisco. Coursera offers the class Grow to Greatness: Smart Growth for Private Businesses,” which starts in January 2013, or Leading Strategic Innovation in Organizations,” which starts in February 2013. The classes are offered by the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia and Vanderbilt University respectively, and require a four to eight-hour workload per week.The long and the short of startups: If you’re looking for a quicker hit of learning and inspiration, consider the free videos available at StartupSchool.org from Y Combinator’s annual program. This year’s lineup included Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Pinterest founder Ben Silbermann, and famed angel investor Ron Conway. Each video is about 30 minutes.

And if those talks put you in the mood to join the startup scene., consider visiting www.Udacity.com to register for “How to Build a Startup. The course is presented on demand by Steve Blank, the co-author, along with Bob Dorf, of “The Startup Owner’s Manual.” Blank’s book and “Business Model Generation by Osterwalder and Pigneur are the suggested, but not required, texts. Enrollment is fast and allows you to participate in discussion forums, view the 8 lectures, and track your completion percentage via a progress meter.Whether you are looking at a slow end-of-year season or contemplating your new year’s resolutions, it might behoove you as a leader and entrepreneur to jump onboard the MOOC bandwagon.

Free information technology courses

Two Bay area schools are teaming up with the Tampa Bay Workforce Alliance to offer free information technology courses.Drawing from a U.S . Department of Labor grant, the classes are offered at Hilsborough Community College and St. Petersburg College. Administrators say the training is a response to an increased demand for information technology hires.

We're looking at skills gaps. What does industry need? And how can we feed them the workforce that they require in order to get their business done in Tampa Bay? said Rachel Gelbmann, a program director with the Tampa Bay Workforce Alliance.Entrance into the classes is competitive. To be accepted, applicants must meet certain eligibility requirements, in addition to passing either a computer literacy test or college placement test.

Online courses speeding catching city's fancy

Studying abroad and getting an international tag of reputed institutes on their resumes is a dream of many. But a few are able to realize it. However, with advancement of technology and the world turning into a global village, students studying in city colleges and even working professionals are getting hooked to online courses offered by foreign universities like Harvard, Stanford and MIT to get certificates and enhance their knowledge.From colour theories to mythology, sociology and healthcare, several websites such as coursera.org and udacity.com are offering online courses from foreign universities such as Harvard and Stanford as well as Indian institutes like IIT Delhi and Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. The courses are catching fancy of many. Several universities like Massachusetts Institute of Technology also have opened courseware that allows students from across the world to attend online classes (www.ocw.mit.edu). One can study everything  from cryptography to epidemiology  absolutely free.

Jalaj Jain, an engineering student of SGSITS, has found fancy of doing courses that can enhance his knowledge and expertise. He said, Technology has made it easy to enhance your expertise and I am enjoying doing it. I have enrolled for various computer Science related online courses. You can sign up and get enrolled and choose topics of your choice.Preeti Mukati, a maths teacher at a city-based school said, "There are several sites that offer online courses from these universities. I have signed up for some other certificate courses in education, mathematics and accounting. Once you sign up, you are informed in advance when the course will begin so that you can free up your time.Working professionals who have got school-going kids, loans to pay and finding no way to take a break to pursue a course in the university are finding the online courses a right option. Kshitij Sharma, who runs his own company, completed an MS in Computer Science from Minnesota several years ago and has now signed for a course from Wharton on operations management, which he believes has helped him run his business better. "Honestly, I don't find too much of a difference between actually being there on campus and doing the course online. In fact, I think I am more focused now," says Sharma.

Though there are various international universities that are offering online courses, the ministry of human resources and development too has come up with a concept of online courses.Dr Narendra Chaudhary, a senior professor of IIT-I said, The ministry has developed the concept long ago where engineering students can enrol and choose courses of their choice to update their knowledge. Even working engineers too upgrade themselves through such courses.

universities search at free online courses to complement conventional

 Michael Hwan didn’t have to pay for the Stanford University computer science and Economics and Management Science course he took online. The class on gamification  applying game techniques beyond games from the University of Pennsylvania was also free.Hwan earned a psychology degree in 2011 from Arizona State University but was thinking about going back to school. Instead, he signed up for two free online classes offered by Coursera, a company founded by Stanford professors that partners with dozens of universities to provide what are called massive open online courses, or MOOCs.

“I definitely feel like it puts the student in control of what they really want to learn,” Hwan said.These free online courses feature lessons by instructors from recognized universities. The courses are available to anyone with Internet access. Most MOOCs have no size limits, so tens of thousands of students are able to enroll in the same course.Arizona’s three public universities are moving to expand online degree options and the availability of online courses, but officials said they are exploring the potential of MOOCs to complement those efforts.None currently offers classes through Coursera or edX, another major MOOC initiative founded by Harvard and MIT, but Arizona State University and Northern Arizona University are working toward implementing MOOCs of their own. The University of Arizona is evaluating options to build on a series of early MOOCs it offered through iTunes U several years ago.

Northern Arizona University President John Haeger said that the school is trying to decide which courses it should offer as MOOCs. Haeger said he hopes NAU can begin implementing these types of courses by the summer or fall and that the university will discuss options with Coursera and others.Haeger said while MOOCs are disruptive to traditional models of education, they could potentially be beneficial to both universities and students.It offers the university a way to change its delivery system, and, in effect, it could lessen the cost of an undergraduate degree, which is in the students’ best interest, Haeger said.ASU is planning to debut a MOOC of its own in August, according to Phillip Regier, executive vice provost and dean of ASU Online.

Regier said ASU’s MOOC will be distinct from what other schools have offered. The course won’t replicate content of an existing ASU class but instead will span multiple disciplines, he said.It will showcase all of the areas around ASU and what the university does in terms of knowledge-creation,” Regier said.Regier said that the course will likely be offered on ASU’s own platform, rather than through an organization like Coursera. He added that that ASU has no plans to offer credit for the free course initially, or to offer existing ASU classes for free online.The University of Arizona offered a series of entrepreneurship courses for free on iTunes U in the past few years. Mike Proctor, dean of the Outreach College at University of Arizona, said the university is evaluating how it might be able to build upon that experience.

We’re not close to inking a deal with anybody,” Proctor said.Proctor said he thinks MOOCs have the potential to be both beneficial and disruptive.They might be both,” he said. “Time will tell how that plays out.Students who successfully complete a MOOC through Coursera or edX can earn a certificate of completion, but the American Council on Education is evaluating a way to determine credit equivalency for some Coursera classes, a step toward enabling students to earn college credit for these courses.ACE President Molly Corbett Broad said if the organization can determine credit equivalency, MOOCs have potential to break through barriers to college access.The MOOCs make it possible for the issues of time and location to be removed as barriers to a completion of a degree,” she said. “And because they are free they also address the escalating costs of higher education.Coursera co-founder and co-CEO Daphne Koller said that MOOCs, including those offered by Coursera, can provide education for people who are held back from going to school by financial, geographic or family reasons.We actually believe that this has the potential of increasing the number of people who get degrees in the United States,” Koller said.

DO the maths on study resource

The rapid rollout over the past year of massive open online university courses, or MOOCs, illustrates how university education is becoming a global commodity. While ­Australian universities face pressure to launch online courses, the Gillard government is aiming to increase the quality of university teaching and research. One of the goals listed in the Asian Century white paper released in late October was that 10 of our universities would be in the world’s top 100 and our school system would be in the world’s top five by 2025.

But universities are struggling to accommodate the surge in student numbers since the government relaxed restrictions on place numbers in 2010 as a result of the Bradley review in 2008. The Gillard government argues that funding for ­universities has increased. An Ernst & Young report released in July showed funding per student was $2000 higher in 2013 than in 2008. But the government will not loosen the ­antiquated regulations on fees that universities can charge ­students. Instead the talk is about extra government spending on education, such as the $6.5 billion in extra funding that the Gonski report recommended for schools.

Former head of the Commonwealth public service Mike Keating has raised the provocative idea that rather than increasing schools funding, we should cut it. Mr Keating’s belief that we are wasting money on schools and should divert the funds to vocational training has some support. Labor MP and former ANU economics professor Andrew Leigh and ANU researcher Chris Ryan showed in a 2009 study that despite a 10 per cent increase in real per-child school ­expenditure between 1975 and 1998, which paid for smaller class sizes, literacy and numeracy performance declined.As the gap between tax revenue and spending widens, it’s time to re-examine such ideas, because finding extra funds to deliver on the education goals in the Asian Century white paper will be difficult indeed. In July, Fred Hilmer, the University of NSW’s vice-chancellor and chairman of the group of eight universities, said if his university could charge students in better paid professional courses such as law and medicine 25 per cent more, the university would raise $30 million a year.If the government is serious about creating elite universities and high quality schools, it should change the present system of capping university fees and give them more market flexibility.

Uiversities offer free online courses

Top US universities have started offering free online courses and certificates, challenging the expensive on-campus way of studying and allowing international students to get US education straight from their computers.Universities including Stanford, Princeton and Columbia, are signing on with new online venture Coursera with classes varying from Finance through to Sociology and Statistics – all of the online classes are taught by the universities’ teachers.

The project is still to overcome some scepticism about the quality of online education as: doors are wide open for cheating,” said Michael Winckler mathematician at Heidelberg University.At the same time MIT, Harvard and University of California, and Berkeley are uniting and offering online courses under a non-profit venture called edX.Enrolling more students through MOOCs may cut costs by enabling universities to outsource coursework on the internet, while fewer students would need campus housing.However, instead of college credits, the students enrolled on the online classes receive certificates of completion, which do not lead to a degree.University of Washington is the first US school to provide credits using a MOOC learning platform – for a fee.Could this initiative change the face of the contemporary education? Anant Agarwal, president of edX called it “the single biggest change in education since the printing press.The enthusiasm about the free prestigious online courses is not in question. Over 1.7 million people have already signed up for Coursera.

Free, high-quality online courses available

High quality global journalism requires investment. Please share this article with others using the link below, do not cut & paste the article. Edward Hess, professor at the University of Virginia’s Dard­en School of Business, is teaching a “massive open online course starting in January on Coursera – the free online education platform founded this year by two Stanford University computer scientists. So far, more than 26,000 students have signed up.I usually teach 120 or 130 students a year, says Prof Hess. “Do you know how many years I would have to live before I could teach that many students?”High quality global journalism requires investment. His class, on how to help a private business grow, is among the first MBA-level moocs offered on Coursera. It is, he says, “an opportunity to help lots of people learn from each other and become more successful.Meanwhile, the Wharton school at the University of Pennsylvania began its first free online course on Coursera in August. The course, on gamification – the application of digital game design techniques to non-game problems, such as business  attracted 81,631 people, with 9,244 completing the course earlier this month. It will be run again soon.

The promise of Coursera and platforms like it – including edX, a joint online education partnership run by Harvard and MIT, and Udacity another Stanford start-up that offers moocs in computer Science ,software design and Software Engineering– has been lauded by the higher education community. By bringing high-quality college and graduate-level moocs to a wider audience, these platforms could help provide life-long learning opportunities. High quality global journalism requires investment. Please share this article with others using the link below, do not cut & paste the article. These platforms also have a potentially dramatic impact on business education: not only in the way schools deliver a traditional management degree, but also because moocs may in time become direct competitors to schools’ specialised programmes. As these platforms try to make money, they could offer executive education, custom programmes for employers and other programmes for MBAs – courses that have typically been very lucrative for schools.

If business schools want to continue to make good money with standard off-the-shelf open programmes they [had] better learn to deliver them online, says David Bach, senior associate dean for executive MBA and global programmes at Yale School of Management. Managers’ time away from the office has become the main training cost firms try to minimise, and with Coursera and others that cost can now be zero, he adds.Several schools have attempted on­line education in the past without much success. In 2003, Fathom, Columbia University’s for-profit on­line learning platform, closed just a few years after launch, while AllLearn, a venture backed by Princeton, Yale and Stanford, lasted three years.But this new breed of web-based systems is different, says Daphne Koller, co-founder of Coursera. “We are at an inflection point,” she adds.

Prof Koller says that technological advances, including the improved quality of cloud computing, the reduced cost of streaming video and the capacity to create user-friendly custom content, have made it easier and less expensive to deliver courses online. “And on the sociological side, there is a generation of students that has grown up utilising technology for education and social interaction. This is natural for them,” she adds.Business schools have long emphasised classroom debate as a learning tool, but many classes are still taught by lectures. The arrival of Coursera, edX and Udacity may change that.Both Udacity and edX recently an­nounced aagreements with Pearson Vue, a provider of testing services, giving students the option of taking a final, proctored (certified) exam. Pearson Vue is owned by Pearson, which owns the Financial Times.These new platforms could essentially “flip” the classroom: rather than going to class and sitting through long lectures, students will watch them in their own time as homework. This will allow them to rewind parts of the lecture and go over material they find more challenging. It also frees up class time for group discussion or experiential learning. Salman Khan, founder of Khan Academy, the free online education platform, is the pioneer of this model.

This development could help level the playing field between top business schools with large endowments and those with fewer resources, Prof Kol­ler adds. “The flipped classroom creates more time for relationship-building. It allows those smaller colleges [and business schools] to do what they do better than anyone else and that is to get to know their students; to see what their needs are and to help them along.Jeffrey Katzman, chief learning of­ficer at Colorado-based Xyleme, which sells education tools to universities, says the new platforms recruit “superstar” teachers. “They put a very high production value on these courses and they’re investing a lot of money into the curriculum.The rise of these platforms also poses competition to lower-tier programmes, which will have difficulty justifying their prices in the face of free online courses from top schools. A recent report by Moody’s, the credit rating agency, warned that the platforms also posed a threat to for-profit universities.

Outside the traditional MBA, these platforms could alter the way business schools deliver specialised courses for employers and working professionals. Such programmes are considered cash cows. But as Coursera, edX and Udacity add more business courses, moocs present companies with an ap­pealing and cost-effective alternative.Executive education may evolve from a residential model to a desktop one, says Anant Agarwal, president of edX and a professor of computer science and engineering at MIT.Online learning is a useful technology for executives,” he says. “When you have a job, it’s difficult to get away for a week or two weeks. But if you had the opportunity to do a class at night or weekends on your computer, it opens up a whole new world. It becomes much more attractive and much more convenient.Prof Agarwal says that charging companies for these classes is one way to monetise edX, which is a non-profit but needs to be self-sustaining in future.The campus experience is a unique experience and a very valuable one, he says. But online learning is a rising tide that lifts all boats.”

Massachusetts Institute of Technology free online course

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is offering a free, undergraduate-level circuits and electronics course online, to virtual learners around the world.The MITx course, 6.002x (Circuits and Electronics), has been designed to serve as a first course in an undergraduate electrical engineering or electrical engineering and computer science degree.Topics covered by the course include resistive elements and networks, amplifiers, digital abstraction, and analogue and digital circuits and applications.

Offline, the course is one of the core subjects that all MIT undergraduates studying electrical engineering and computer science have to take.The online course which will be delivered on an open source, scalable software infrastructure will feature interactive lessons and online laboratories. Students will be able to communicate with each other and with the course lecturers via the platform.Furthermore, students' work can be assessed individually, and they will also be able to work towards gaining an electronic certificate of accomplishment from MITx.

According to MIT, to succeed in the course, students must have taken an AP-Level (A-Level equivalent) physics course in electricity and magnetism. They must also know basic calculus, linear algebra and have some background in differential equations.Students are expected to spend around 10 hours a week on the course, which starts on 5 March 2012 and runs for three months until 8 June 2012.MIT is expected to offer additional courses online from autumn 2012

Study abroad in Spain

A free online course that teaches personal financial management topics for students who are new to college and or considering college was launched this week by Wichita State University.Part 1 of the course helps students and families make wise decisions about which college to attend and how to pay for it.Part 2 helps students wisely manage money while in college and beyond.The course includes game-ification features and also allows users to post status updates about their progress in the course to Facebook and Twitter.The online platform for the course was created by a local Web design firm VandeCreek Consulting.

Money for the website comes from the federally funded College Access Challenge Grant, the purpose of which is to promote college completion by providing financial literacy education.Given the growing public concern with the cost of attending college and the fact that financial difficulties force many students to discontinue their studies, financial literacy education is critical to national efforts to educate more students,said Keith Pickus, interim provost.Liz Weston, a nationally syndicated personal finance columnist, agrees that financial literacy is necessary for a student's future.

These days a college education is an all-but-essential step in building a sound financial future. But the value of that degree is undermined when students and their families go too far into debt to get it,Weston said.Students and their families need to make smart choices about getting an education they can afford. Students also need to make sure they manage their money wisely while they're in college so they don't graduate with piles of credit card or other debt. Financial literacy courses can help people make good decisions in college and afterward.

Free computer classes at DPL

The Dover Public Library will be offering a series of free computer classes for the public throughout the winter and early spring of 2012. Part of its Tech Nights the Library Series, this technology training will help participants looking to get back into the job market, change careers, or who are just looking to learn something new. Classes are completely free and begin at 6 p.m.,said Technology Room Manager Mary Prysi.The library tries to offer classes on a variety of topics, from skills needed to enter the job market to fun things like social media and eBooks.

Scheduled classes are as follows:

Introduction to the Ohio eBook Project, today; Online Dating & Social Media, Feb. 6; Using Your Kindle, Feb. 13; Facebook 101, Feb. 16; Online Research, Feb. 27; Typing 101, March 5; Digital Photography 1, March 19; Digital Photography 2, March 26; Microsoft Word Basic, April 9; Microsoft Word Intermediate, April 16; Creating an Online Presence for Your Organization, April 30.The library is also excited about offering a program called ‘Ask the Computer Guy!,’ Prysi added.Our ‘Computer Guy’ will be available on the first Saturday of each month from 10 a.m. to noon to meet with the public to address any technology, computer, or electronic gadget need they may have. This is a fun way to have one-on-one time with a ‘techie’ and to get the help you need.

Free Math and English Course

Sign up now to start our Free English and Math course starting in September 2012. The course is free and run by South Downs College. Work towards gaining your level 2 in English and Maths which is the equivalent to GCSE grade A-C.For more information please contact South downs College.

Stanford Online Courses Delay, Not Cancelled

The Computer Science courses that should have started this month but were suddenly postponed. Stanford now says that the courses will be going ahead - but the delay may be months not weeks.Stanford was initially silent on the causes of the delay reported in our news item earlier this week and this fueled speculation that there might be something wrong, something deeper than a simple administrative problem.Now they have responded to our request for more information and the good news for anyone anxious about the courses being offered online and for free by Stanford University professors this semester is that they are not subject to cancellation. Which was a worry expressed by a number of people who had signed up or were thinking of it.Professor Andrew Ng, whose class in Machine Learning pioneered the methods to incorporate interactive elements such as quizzes, was quick to respond with:

Most of the instructors have already created a lot of course content, and we will launch the classes once we clear up a few final administrative issues.An official statement on behalf of Stanford University School of Engineering was also issued by Jamie Beckett, Director of Communications and Alumni Relations and it refers to months rather than weeks as previously suggested:Stanford does intend to offer the online classes as planned.We want to ensure that these are high-quality offerings that provide value for students. Unfortunately, the logistics around doing that for so many classes are complex, and it’s taking longer than we expected.

We do expect to roll out all of the advertised classes within the next couple of months. The uptake of these courses may well be causing problems.The email that went out to prospective stdents for NLP read:The good news is that the Engineering course is looking great, with some exciting lectures and fun assignments that we're quite proud of, and we're thrilled that over 45,000 of you have signed up!"The three courses that ran last year, Introduction to Databases, Introduction to Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, each had upwards of twenty thousand advanced track students who were completing assigments and exam questions. This pressure overloaded the system on frequent occasions, meaning that extra time had to be allowed for homework and exams.

On the other hand the students themselves helped out. Almost as soon as the initial announcement was made of the AI class a reddit group formed and the aiqus forum became an indispensable channel of clarification. Students on all the also helped with translation, enabling them to reach far-flung parts of the world.One of the most remarkable aspects of the online free course is their inclusiveness, penetrating parts of Africa and Asia, giving disabled students an opportunity to participate on a more equal basis and doing something to redress the male-female balance.A point is often made that there are very few women developers and that it's important to do something to persuade more of them to take an interest. Well the uptake of these courses show that there is a strong interest. One of the support groups that formed for Stanford course participants last autumn was a women-only Facebook Group initially called AI-Class Systers. Its name is now CompScisters and it is a group specifically for women in the STEM field taking online courses through Stanford and now also the newly launched venture Udacity.Now it looks as if Udacity's first two free courses could begin before Stanford's. They are an introduction to Computer Science with the goal of being able to build e search engine and an advanced-level class specifically on the topic of Programming a Robotic Car and being Sebastian Thrun, pioneer of the Google Driverless car.

Free courses first-aid training for 400

UPTO 400 people could become trained first aiders on one day by taking advantage of a free course.St John's Ambulance is hoping to train potential life-savers on every street in Derbyshire and their first free two-hour first aid course in the Ashbourne area is at Ashbourne Elim Church, The Waterside Centre on Friday, January 27.

Four time slots have been allocated throughout the day for the courses, which have so far seen 4,000 people across Derbyshire become trained first aiders.The course is run by St Johns Ambulance in partnership with the East Midlands Ambulance Trust and will be at the church from 10am, 2pm, 5pm and 7pm.A Waterside Centre spokesman said:Their vision is to be able to train at least one person on every street across Derbyshire in the basics of first aid.So far they have trained over 4000 people since September 2011.The course lasts for two hours and is completely free. It covers the basic knowledge of how to deal with heart attacks, stroke victims, wound management and CPR.

Free course for businesses

RURAL businesses in the Melton area can take advantage of a free training programme helping them develop or improve their websites and use social media to make important business contacts.INSPIRE Leicestershire Investment Support in the Rural Economy has developed the Rural Business Web Training Programme which comprises three courses.

The first course - about building, designing and maintaining a website – is being delivered at Scalford Hall Management Training Centre and Hotel on Tuesday, January 24, 6pm-8.30pm.The second course on using a website to promote and sell your products and services will be held at Scalford Hall on Tuesday, January 31, 6pm-8.30pm.The third course about using social media to build business will be held at Scalford Hall on Tuesday, February 7, 6pm-8.30pm.All courses are free and will include tea, coffee, biscuits and course materials.

Voxeo University 2012 Course Lineup

Voxeo, the leading provider of Unlocked Communications, announces the Voxeo University 2012 course lineup, with a new program, free courses and additional instructors for its training centers in Orlando and Cologne, Germany.Voxeo offers classes that give application developers industry leading, carrier grade tools to build and deploy 100 percent compliant, multi-channel, self-service applications. This allows them to deploy applications faster, while maintaining them with fewer resources, said Drew Allen, senior trainer for Voxeo.

The 2012 course lineup includes:

Developing Voice Applications Using Designer (2 days)
Prophecy Installation and Administration (2 days)
VoiceObjects Installation and Administration (2 days)
VoiceObjects for User Interface Designers (2 days)
VoiceObjects Development Best Practices (3 days)
Infostore and VoiceObjects Analyzer (2 days)
Developing Text and Mobile Web Applications Using VoiceObjects Desktop (2 days)Grammar Development (1 day)
NEW - Introduction to CCXML (3 days)

The FREE courses for 2012 include:

VoiceObjects Overview (2 days)
Voxeo Prophecy Overview (2 day)
Developing Voice Applications Using VoiceObjects Desktop (3 days)

Voxeo also added two new senior trainers. Drew Allen joined the U.S. Voxeo University training team, and Robert O'Sullivan joined the European team as a senior technical trainer EMEA.Voxeo University is your first step on the path to certification, said Allen. Individuals can become Voxeo Certified as a Prophecy Administrator, VoiceObjects Developer, VoiceObjects Administrator, VoiceObjects Sales Engineer and VoiceObjects Analyst.

Jason Domsky, Senior Architect with MicroAutomation, said, The VoiceObjects training provided a great combination of presentation and hands-on, with trainers who kept the class interesting. By the end of the class, I was fully prepared to use the toolset, having already built a full end-to-end application as part of the training.As an ongoing investment in industry education, Voxeo offers several overview classes for FREE at both the Orlando and Cologne training centers. In addition to courses offered at Voxeo University training centers, the company can provide on-site education by request in customer and partner facilities.