best 7 sites for learning programming/code online

Online learning has been around a long time but we have new tools that enable learning both on and offline. Here are a few:

To learn code/computer science/programming/design:

  • Khan Academy: needless to say it covers many topics and has a great and easy interactive interface using processing.js
  • Udacity: Advance your education and career through project-based online classes. You even get certificates from an accredited school if you pay approximately $40 at the end. This is a no-nonsense course – intensive and could last for 5-8 weeks depending on the topic with quizzes and assignments that you will need to submit.
  • Code Avengers:  requires payment but uses processing.js which enables online javascript testing.
  • Code : high-profile site – has some projects free and others paid.
  • Code school: Code School teaches web technologies in the comfort of your browser with video lessons, coding challenges, and screencasts. You may choose from their catalogue.
  • Coursera: online courses on almost everything and anything. And it’s free! Very similar to Udacity in terms of its intensive courses and assignments and lengths.
  • edX : great courses where, like udacity, you could get a certificate after completing a course.

This I haven’t tried yet but is a brilliant idea:

  • KALite: KA Lite is an offline version of Khan Academy that runs on almost anything  to help those without internet access.

There is also a training environment at Scratch which is an MIT project and is free to use and practice.

 

 

Find Free Books Online

There are many resources to access free e-books of all genres. Besides wikibooks and archive.org, I had listed a few before.  OpenLibrary is a new one that I found and it also gives free e-books and has a plugin compatible with wordpress. In addition,  the Education Portal created a listed of great resource of free books online in addition to the ones we have posted before. The following is their list:

Free Fiction and Nonfiction Books

  • Authorama – You can find more than 100 free books from a variety of different authors on Authorama. New books are added to the site each month, and they’ve all been translated into plain ASCII or HTML so that no e-reader is required.
  • Book Stacks – Book Stacks hosts tons of ebooks that you can download and read as PDFs.
  • Bored.com – More than 10,000 free books are available at Bored.com. Book categories include but are not limited to: American literature, British literature, world literature, children’s literature, cookbooks, travel books and history books.

Read More …

e-Learning (3) – WSIS 2011

Speaker: Bart Dewaele, Director General VVOB HQs in Brussels

Teacher training perspective

They training on strategies, planning, curriculum goals etc and then instruments you need to reach those goals and one of those instruments is ICT.

Working in Kenya, Cambodia, Zambia and Vietnam

The TPACK model: an educator who wants to integrate technology he will have to have basic practice: lesson plan based on ict, learning from each other, learning by doing and knowledge input: pedagogy, technology, training

Observations from the field: Read More …

e-Learning (2) – WSIS 2011

Speaker: Hans Laugesen, International Secretary and Senior Educational Policy Officer, The Danish National Union of Upper Secondary School Teachers, GL, Denmark

Goals for use of ICT: do we need it as teachers? Yes to train them in new competencies . We want to teach history and maths not just ict. We can teach them to use the technique but it should not be done at cost of time.

Use of ict must not take time away from teaching. Access to ict is limited. Changing curriculum and finding new materials. The way you plan and teach in school . Read More …

Forum 2: archives and cultural heritage/memory

Speakers:Frank Marchese, Pace Digital Gallery, Julia Noordegraaf University of Amsterdam, Jason Rhody, Office of Digital Humanities, NEH. Moderator: Nick Monfort, MIT

Summary and Podcast here

Session was basically about how to present literature, art and whatever is or is not archived already – in such a way that it becomes archivable. There is always a need to archive and preserve. Read More …