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.

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.

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.

One-time free 'College Now' course offered

Call it a taste of college, a test of whether you want to study for exams, a chance to determine if you really want to be an adult student.For the sixth year, the Mayor’s Literacy Commission is making available a one-time free college course through its program College Now. Registration has been held, but a second registration opportunity will be at 5 p.m. Thursday at branch of Stark State College on the Timken High School campus.We offer this in the spring and the fall, said Thelma Slater of the Literacy Commission. “We can take up to 20 students each semester.

Perhaps because of the bustle of the holidays, the full number of students didn’t sign up during the first registration.We wanted to have another registration after Christmas, in time for students to start the spring term.Students can choose a course either at Stark State or Kent State University Stark Campus.The idea is they will be able to experience one class to discover if they have the time or even like it,Slater said.It’s a way of having an experience in college, rather than just saying, ‘I’m too old’ or ‘I have a job’ or ‘I have family responsibilities.Students usually have some idea of what they want to study, Slater noted, and courses may be chosen from each school’s catalog.It’s free at both schools. This results in a pretty hefty gift of several hundred dollars,” Slater said.

The literacy Commission obtained the money for the program through a grant from Dominion Foundation.One of the students who took a course through the program for the fall semester at Stark Tech was Christi Klimes. Her one-day-a-week class was a beginning level computer class.
A lot of the jobs I was looking at require knowledge about (Microsoft) Word and Excel,she said.She intended to take the single course proficiency in those programs, but she has since decided she will take additional advance-level computer courses.I really did enjoy it. I had a great teacher. I had a wonderful experience.Cindy Lotz, who also took a computer class at Stark Tech, said she has been away from school for more than three decades.

It’s been quite awhile,she said, adding that returning to school is something she “always wanted to do.But, you have other things in life that keep you too busy to do it. I saw it in the paper and thought it was a fantastic opportunity.Fears about how she would do returning to the classroom faded when she earned a 98.16 grade point average.I really enjoyed it, and I learned a lot,” she said, adding that she, too, will return to the classroom in the future, when time and funds permit. “I love learning. There are so many other courses I’d love to take.

Ninety three individuals benefit from NIIT-Baguio’s free computer training

93 individuals including nine police officers, five barangay officials, two retirees, 10 Department of Education (DepEd) personnel, as well as students and other jobseekers benefitted from the free computer Christmas Gift Training Program conducted by the National Institute for Information Technology (NIIT-Baguio), in partnership with the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority Baguio-Benguet office.The four- day hands-on training from December 19 to 22, 2011 at the NIIT-Baguio Campus, Baguio City, covered the following competencies: Fundamentals of Flash Animation, MS WORD, MS EXCEL, MS PowerPoint 2007, Desktop Publishing using MS Publisher 2007, Internet Essentials, Computer Troubleshooting with Formatting, Lap Top Maintenance, Basic Computer Networking, Electronics & Electrical Home Appliance Repair and Mobile Phone Maintenance.

Recognition and awarding of certificates was held last Dec. 22, with Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) CAR Assistant Regional Director Ted Delson and Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG)- Baguio Officer Evelyn Trinidad as guests of honor.In their statements, both Delson and Trinidad underscored the importance of continuous learning, the significance of technology and gaining affirmative skills enhancement to cope up with the current trends in today’s challenging and highly competitive world.

NIIT-Baguio School Administrator and Board of Directors member Vladimir Cayabas said that such special free training service program is part of their institution’s commitment to service excellence, strengthened by its partnership with TESDA Baguio-Benguet headed by Provincial Director Angela Gabriel.NIIT, in wanting to be a ‘School that Matters!’, shall continue to fulfill its service advocacies strengthened by its essential partnership with various service groups and organizations including LGUs and NGOs, regional line agencies and individuals, whose thrust are on the advancement of our people’s life through potent training and functional education, Cayabas added.

Meanwhile, NIIT Baguio opens its registration for its New Year Skills Enhancement Training Program set every Saturday starting this January 07, 2012, which includes the competencies; AutoCAD, Flash Animation, Computer Technician and Anti-Virus Administration, Computer Networking, Computer Science,Photo and Video Editing, Office Applications, SQL, Java Programming, .Net Programming,Adobe Photoshop, Corel Draw, Adobe Premier, Printer Maintenance and Troubleshooting, Lap Top Maintenance and Troubleshooting, Web Server Administration, Industrial Engineering and Consumer Electronics Servicing, Mobile Phone Maintenance and Troubleshooting and even Online Reputation Management plus workshops on Personal Development, Career Enrichment Strategies, Job Prospecting and Application Strategies, among others.

Free computer courses

The Katy Library has scheduled free computer courses classes covering topics ranging from the basics to office productivity and special topics at its location at 5414 Franz Road.A seven-week course on basic computer skills will begin on Jan. 4. Sessions will be offered beginning at 10:15 a.m. and 5:15 p.m. on Mondays, and 1:15 p.m. and 4:30 p.m. on Wednesdays.

A five-week class on Microsoft Office Excel and PowerPoint 2007 will begin on Jan. 3. One-hour sessions will be given at 10:15 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. on Tuesdays, and 10:15 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. on Thursdays.Registration is not required. Class space is limited to 13 students per class session, with seating given on a first-come, first-served basis.

Free computer courses

The Canara Bank Institute of Information Technology (CBIIT) has announced the launch of a host of free full-time programmes in computer education for the poor and unemployed youth.
The first programme, a 90-day course in Network Administration will commence on December 26, 2011.It will include fundamentals of computer, MS-DOS, Troubleshooting and Assembling, Laptop and Printer Servicing, Network Basics, Windows XP, Windows 2003 server and Red-Hat Linux.

The 45-day programme in Office Administration comprising fundamentals of computer, Windows, MS Office, and Tally Ver. ERP9 will begin on January 9, 2012.So will the 90-day programme in Desktop Publishing that comprises fundamentals of computer, Windows, MS Office, Corel-Draw, and Photoshop.Aspirants will have to write a selection test at 10 am on December 23 at the CBIIT premises, 8th Main, 15th Cross, Chitrapur Bhavan Complex, Malleswaram, Bangalore-55.

Universities to open free online courses

Liao Kaili, a girl from a poor rural family with three children in Henan province, dreams of never leaving the campus.What a wonderful dream it would be for me to listen to a professor's lectures while living in Beijing,the 18-year-old told China Daily.Liao had to give up an offer of a place in high school, as her parents needed her to get a job to support her little brother who is still in primary school.

However, the dream of attending a university will no longer be so remote for Liao as about 20 of China's top universities, such as Peking and Tsinghua universities, plan to open 100 online courses to society in the autumn term.To improve the quality of education and balance teaching resources among different regions, the number of online open courses will increase to 1,000 during the 12th Five-Year Plan 2011-2015 period, said the Ministry of Education.The first batch of online open courses from Chinese universities were launched in April, after similar courses from Yale, Harvard, Princeton and Oxford had become popular across China.Inspired by this, domestic universities, like Fudan University in Shanghai, have started to make their lectures and courses available to the public on platforms such as v.163.com/open.

A series of lectures about ancient Chinese philosophy by Wang Fansen, a famous history scholar, are now available.Fudan holds more than 2,000 lectures annually. In the past five years, the university has recorded more than 500 lectures, some of which will be gradually opened to the public, according to the university.However, people doubt whether the domestic open courses will be competitive with foreign open classes.I prefer to listen to a foreign professor's open course unless it is about China's history or culture,said Huang Wenwen, a graduate from the communication and new media department of the City University of Hong Kong.The professor's good presentation skills and the courses' special features give foreign open courses an advantage.

China has provided high school lessons to the public for several years, but the influence has been limited as the courses are hard to understand.Although those online lectures have been very popular in China, domestic open courses have a long way to go to have an impact on society, said Xiong Bingqi, deputy director of the 21st Century Education Research Institute, a Beijing-based non-profit private educational policy research body.However, some university professors argue that online open courses are resources shared by the university and its teachers.The free open courses are an infringement of the intellectual property rights of teachers,said Chen Lidan, a journalism professor with Renmin University of China.

Free Online study

Web based learning are the educational crazing that is sweeping the world now. Distance learning and correspondence courses have been around since the invention of mail. And private, for-profit schools flourish with thousands of student enrollment, most of them online. An average pack DVD or an online educational tutorial download costs more than $200.Have you already taken advantage of Khan Academy's free online education tutorial, which recently received millions of dollars in grant from Bill Gates and Google? It doesn't matter if you are a student, teacher, home-schooler, principal, and adult returning to the classroom after 20 years.

The Khan Academy's materials and resources are available to you completely free of charge. Advise yourself or a friend not to be scared of any course. Just watch and practice over 2400 educational self-tuition videos in any subject of your choice. The program offers tutorials on wide range of topics from Mathematics, Economics, Physics, Chemistry, History, Biology, Finance, Banking and even prep material for GMAT, SAT, introducing wide variety of concepts under each topic in an extremely easy to understand manner. Salman Khan the founder produces short videos, 10 to 20 minutes long and uses a black screen on the computer and a pad pen to explain complex concepts step by step through use of doodles and graphics. Students can make use of the extensive video library, practice exercises, and assessments from any computer with access to the web. This free online education program has received 18 million page views worldwide, including from the Gates progeny. Most page views come from the U.S., followed by Canada, England, Australia, and India. Safe your money and wipe away your tears for the fear of some subjects which has become a monster before you. Do you remember the book called Economics without tears? This is a free online education without tears, fears and lack of money to pay a tutor.

This information is brought to you by World Partners for Development; an international nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering human lives through high impact educational and training programs that provide positive solutions for sustainable future.