Education

COURSES/SELF-STUDY (K-12 to University)

  • ACADEMIC EARTH: http://academicearth.org/ (Free)
    Online free courses from the world’s top scholars.
  • CONNEXIONS: http://cnx.org/ (Free)
    Connexions is a place to view and share educational materials made of small knowledge chunks called modules that can be organized as courses, books, reports, etc. Anyone may view or contribute.
  • COURSERA: https://www.coursera.org/ (Paid/Free)
    “We are a social entrepreneurship company that partners with the top universities in the world to offer courses online for anyone to take, for free. We envision a future where the top universities are educating not only thousands of students, but millions. Our technology enables the best professors to teach tens or hundreds of thousands of students.”
  • CURRIKI: http://www.curriki.org/ (Free)
    A community of educators and committed education experts who are working together to create quality materials that will benefit teachers and students around the world. Curriki freely distributes world-class educational materials to anyone who needs them, from textbooks to full course materials.
  • KHAN ACADEMY: http://www.khanacademy.org/ (Free)
    All of the the site’s resources are available to anyone, free. The educational library of videos covers K-12 math, science topics such as biology, chemistry, and physics, and even reaches into the humanities with playlists on finance and history. Each video is approximately 10 minutes long, and especially purposed for viewing on the computer. Videos are also available for a download. (self-study, software)
  • MIT OPEN COURSEWARE: http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm (Free)
    MIT OpenCourseWare is a free publication of MIT course materials that reflects almost all the undergraduate and graduate subjects taught at MIT. (courses)
  • OPEN COURSEWARE: http://ocwconsortium.org/ (Free)
    OpenCourseWare (OCW) is a free and open digital publication of high quality university-level educational materials. These materials are organized as courses, and often include course planning materials and evaluation tools as well as thematic content. All content is licensed under Creative Commons.
  • OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES: http://www.oercommons.org/ (Free)
    Open Educational Resources includes everything from labs, homework, lectures, games, texbooks, readings, etc. All resources are publicly available for use, and principally licensed under the Creative Commons, thousands are legally available for repurposing, modifying and improving.
  • PEER 2 PEER UNIVERSITY: http://p2pu.org/ (Free)
    The Peer 2 Peer University is a grassroots open education project that organizes learning outside of institutional walls and gives learners recognition for their achievements. P2PU creates a model for lifelong learning alongside traditional formal higher education. Leveraging the internet and educational materials openly available online, P2PU enables high-quality low-cost education opportunities. P2PU – learning for everyone, by everyone about almost anything. (courses)
  • UDEMY: http://www.udemy.com/ (Paid/Free)
    Courses on any subject . (courses)
  • VIMEO VIDEO SCHOOL: http://www.vimeo.com/videoschool (Free)
    Vimeo Video School is a fun place for anyone to learn how to make better videos. You can start by browsing their Vimeo Lessons section, or find specific video tutorials created by other members.

COURSES/SELF-STUDY (coding)

  • CODE ACADEMY: http://www.codecademy.com/ (Free)
    Codecademy is a team of hackers working hard to build a better way for anyone to teach, and learn, how to code. It includes free online resources, exercises/classes for languages such as JavaScript, HTML/CSS, Python, and Ruby.
  • LEARN PYTHON: http://www.learnpython.org/ (Free)
    Exercises and an interactive Python tutorial from everyone from a beginner to a professional.
  • W3SCHOOLS: http://www.w3schools.com (Free)
    All of the exercises and resources needed to become proficient in languages such as HTML/HTML5/CSS, JavaScript, Php, and many many more.

TEXTBOOKS/RESEARCH

  • BIODIVERSITY HERITAGE LIBRARY: http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/Default.aspx (Free)
    The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) is a consortium of 12 natural history and botanical libraries that cooperate to digitize and make accessible the legacy literature of biodiversity held in their collections and to make that literature available for open access and responsible use as a part of a global biodiversity commons. BHL content may be freely viewed through the online reader or downloaded in part or as a complete work in PDF, OCR text, or JPG2000 file formats.
  • CK-12: http://www.ck12.org/student/ (Free)
    Great, customizable, standards-aligned, free digital textbooks for K-12.
  • DANCE INSTRUCTIONS MANUALS: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/dihtml/dihome.html (Free)
    Library of Congress staff selected this set of materials relating to ballroom (also called social) dance from various divisions and collections in the Library and now includes dancing manuals from as far back as 1500s.
  • FLAT WORLD KNOWLEDGE: http://www.flatworldknowledge.com/ (Free)
    Re-mixable textbooks by expert authors for free. The website’s main goal is to preserve the best of the old books by leading experts. All materials are peer-reviewed and developed to high editorial standards, fully supported by review copies and teaching supplements.
  • WIKIBOOKS: https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page (Free)
    A Wikimedia project for collaboratively writing open-content textbooks that anyone can edit. Wikibooks has two sub-projects; Wikijunior which is aimed at children and the Cookbook which is our collection of recipes and culinary topics. Contributors maintain the property rights to their contributions, while the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License and the GNU Free Documentation License makes sure that the submitted version and its derivative works will always remain freely distributable and reproducible.

SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH/DATA

  • BIOMED CENTRAL: http://www.biomedcentral.com
    All original research articles published by BioMed Central are made freely and permanently accessible online immediately upon publication. BioMed Central views open access to research as essential in order to ensure the rapid and efficient communication of research findings.
  • CHEMSPIDER: http://www.chemspider.com/
    ChemSpider is a chemistry search engine, which was built with the intention of aggregating and indexing chemical structures and their associated information into a single searchable repository available to everybody, at no charge. Nature is now depositing chemical data in ChemSpider. (Includes downloadable compound sets from search results).
  • DOAJ: http://www.doaj.org/
    The aim of the Directory of Open Access Journals is to increase the visibility and ease of use of open access scientific and scholarly journals thereby promoting their increased usage and impact. The Directory aims to be comprehensive and cover all open access scientific and scholarly journals that use a quality control system to guarantee the content. In short a one stop shop for users to Open Access Journals.
  • HINDAWI: http://www.hindawi.com/
    Hindawi is a rapidly growing academic publisher with more than 200 Open Access journals covering a wide range of academic disciplines. Founded in 1997, Hindawi currently employs more than 300 employees and publishes 200+ open access, peer-reviewed journals.
  • MARINE BIOLOGICAL LABORATORY: http://www.mblwhoilibrary.org/
    The Library continues to build one of the most unique print and electronic literature collections in the biological, biomedical, ecological, and oceanographic sciences. Provides access to hundreds of open access resources such as journals, published works, and databases.
  • NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP (NPG): http://www.nature.com/
    Although not all journals published under NPG are yet licensed under Creative Commons, some as Molecular Systems Biology, Clinical and Translational Gastroenterology, and Cell Death and Disease, are now an open-access journals and indeed published under either a Creative Commons attribution-non commercial-share alike unported licence or a non commercial-no derivativess licence.
  • OPEN ENERGY INFO: http://en.openei.org/wiki/Main_Page#
    Open Energy Information (OpenEI) is a knowledge-sharing online community dedicated to connecting people with the latest information and data on energy resources from around the world. Created in partnership with the United States Department of Energy and federal laboratories across the nation, OpenEI offers access to real-time data and unique visualizations that will help you find the answers you need to make better, more informed decisions. And because the site is designed on a linked, open-data platform, your contributions are both welcomed and encouraged.
  • PERSONAL GENOME PROJECT: http://www.personalgenomes.org/
    In an unprecedented achievement, the Human Genome Project provided the first drafts of nearly complete human genome sequences in 2001 after more than a decade of effort by scientists worldwide. This information is now being used to advance medicine, human biology, and knowledge of human origins. The project is committed to make all its research data from the PGP freely available to the public.
  • PLOS (PUBLIC LIBRARY OF SCIENCE): http://www.plos.org/journals/
    Features journals on subjects as diverse as biology, original research, medicine, genetics, pathology, tropical diseases. The articles are free to download under Creative Commons website.
  • PUBCHEM: http://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/
    PubChem is a freely accessible database that provides information about small molecules. It brings together chemical information with biomedical research and clinical information from numerous public sources. It is a key component of NIH’s Roadmap, which is intended to accelerate medical discovery to improve health.