The Ivy League…for Free!
Posted by Erin Lewis at 10:28 am
Back in March, TechCrunch bloggers reported on a new site, dubbing it the Hulu of education. It’s called Academic Earth. On it, you can watch lectures led by professors from Berkeley, Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford, UCLA and Yale. Sounds cool, right? If that’s not enough, the company has expanded its offerings to include lectures geared toward high school students: AP Biology, AP Calculus AB, AP Chemistry, AP Computer Science A, AP Computer Science AB, AP Physics B, AP Physics C and AP Psychology. Courses come with a description of each lecture, syllabi, and class downloads. Want to know what you’ve learned? The site also supplies exams (complete with answer keys).
The interface is clean; in less than a minute, you can grab a cup of coffee, log on and learn single-variable calculus from an MIT professor—in your pajamas, or outside in the park if you like! You can log onto the website to watch lectures from the site or you can subscribe to Academic Earth’s RSS feed.
There are other sites out there that also offer free instructional content. Before I ever heard of Academic Earth, I downloaded most of my intellectual video content from iTunes U in both video and audio formats. One of the major criticisms of these sites, however, is that there is no interactivity. Users cannot ask questions at present. However, the founder of the company plans to work social networking features into its offerings (think comments sections, forums, discussion boards).
Academic Earth calls itself, “an organization founded with the goal of giving everyone on earth access to a world-class education.” Sound too good to be true? Go and see for yourself.
Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: academic earth, ap courses, berkeley, harvard, itunes u, mit, princeton, stanford, techcrunch, ucla, yale