
I’m Attending MIT, Stanford & Harvard - Anon84
http://mattiasgeniar.be/2009/01/29/im-attending-mit-stanford-harvard/
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kaiser
Although it is great to have lectures, slides etc. online (check also the Open
Course Ware initiative from MIT), it is still a difference if you are just
listening to the lectures or if you can really interact with the people
attending. Education is more about interaction and struggling for ideas than
it is about listening to lectures. Still great complimentary resources ...
(also for lecturers).

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netcan
>Education is more about interaction and struggling for ideas than it is about
listening to lectures.

I disagree. Education is about acquiring skills & knowledge. Lectures,
interactions, books, tutors, classmates.. these are the way education is
delivered. Maybe university experience is "more about interaction and
struggling for ideas than it is about listening to lectures," but saying that
about education as a whole sounds a lot like saying news is about printing.

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kaens
I semi-agree.

I have been an autodidact all of my life, and poor (and occasionally homeless)
most of my adult life. I'm still young.

I've been learning partially via online video lectures (specifically MIT's
OCW) and course materials since they first started popping up a few years ago,
and I've learned a great deal - however, I feel that I would have learned
_much_ more if I was in a situation where I was always very close to being
able to interact with other people learning the same stuff in person. Not to
mention that there are other benefits.

In fact, I'll probably be pursuing college after completing my next gig, which
is 4-5 months down the road - mainly because the type of stuff that I'm _very_
interested in (like friendly AI and cognitive science) are only really moving
in colleges - I'd be put directly in contact with more people with more
interests doing more relevant stuff once I sludged past the undergrad part.

It's not that I can't keep learning and applying my knowledge on my own, it's
that I think I may have hit a point where it's just not as efficient (for my
purposes) anymore.

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netcan
Doubtless.

Colleges can be very useful. Access to lectures is only one of the ways they
do what they do. That particular aspect, well you can do that without them.

I'm not saying this replaces colleges. Just saying that this also helps people
become educated.

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Frocer
Hulu for Academia, this is awesome!

I don't know if any of you feel the same way, but I didn't appreciate how much
random and interesting subjects I could learn from college until I graduated.
Now I can attend lectures on my own schedule and in the comfort of my home,
nice!

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jimbokun
I used to go through the course catalog as an undergrad the same way I looked
at the Sears Christmas catalog as a kid. Trying to pick the most interesting
classes out of so many choices, like trying to pick the toys I wanted at the
top of my Christmas list.

Agreed that it's amazing to be able to "attend" so many of these lectures for
free now, just need to make the time.

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omarish
The bandwidth will probably cost $100.

I guess that means discipline is worth $159,900.

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jdrock
..but not Carnegie Mellon? Oh well, I guess we can't all be the best. ;)

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jpcx01
Does CMU offer any lectures online?

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ktharavaad
To get the most out of these lectures, you really have to do all the problem
sets and carefully read all the notes and material. Simply just watching the
lectures is not enough unless you just want a very rough overview of the
topic.

It will be really great if someone made a forum/website where people could
interact with each other about a particular course and ask questions and have
discussions regarding certain topics.

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endtime
Not sure about MIT and Harvard, but for Stanford CS courses, if you go to
csXXX.stanford.edu you'll typically get the class page, including slides,
problem sets, programming assignments etc. Ex. <http://cs221.stanford.edu>.

Obviously, I agree with you. In fact, I'd go a step further and say that
watching the lectures without doing the problems/coding gets you significantly
less than halfway.

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kaens
MIT has a whole directory of openly available stuff at
<http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/courses/courses/index.htm>

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herdrick
This is an incomplete collection. MIT has many more video courses here, for
example: <http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/courses/av/index.htm>

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Minerick
I've been a big fan of watching this stuff for edutainment. It's much like
watching TV documentaries but with actual depth and insight about the
subjects.

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azharcs
This is one of the best thing that happened to me this year. Also it would be
great if these videos were also available through torrents. Lots of people
can't streamline videos due to slow internet connection and constant
disconnections and these videos are pretty huge(It is taking me 4 hours to
download a single 400MB video) But again just a thought, Thanks Academic Earth
for such a wonderful website.

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kleevr
If they started to support torrents, they could slap an RSS feed on it and you
could pull them into Miro.

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kleevr
This is great. I've been watching some lectures online recently and found
myself wishing for a good consolidated site. I wish there catalog was a bit
bigger, but with luck this will grow. I wish they had some social tools too.
Like a forum for each lecture for people to discuss and ask questions.

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Jaggu
Thats TRUE hacker news :) Thanks for sharing this link.

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jpcx01
This is a pretty incredible compilation of lectures. I also really like the
fact that they post Sample Exams, so you can test your learning.

My question... whats the licensing of these materials. What would stop me from
setting up my own mini college, with a big screen TV, and use these courses
instead of hiring professors. The value prop would be to combine these
lectures with a classroom setting and a program that would encourage students
to read along with the courses (textbook) and graded exams for feedback.

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jpcx01
Looks like MIT's stuff is licensed under creative commons, which means
noncommercial. Wonder how hard it would be to get commercial authorization.

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pkrumins
I have been blogging about free education for almost 3 years on my Free
Science Online (<http://freescienceonline.blogspot.com>) blog. Check it out! I
have collected hundreds of courses in math, physics, engineering, computer
science, and other topics.

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carterschonwald
It should be pointed out that at least with the mathy lectures, its the same
material as is listed on Itunes U etc

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andr
The UI also takes some elements from iTunes, in particular the "accordion"
selectors for subjects and universities.

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Ras_
Link to Open Yale: <http://oyc.yale.edu/>

I've "sat" halfway through their Econ 159 - Game Theory and Econ 252 -
Financial Markets. They seem interesting enough to be completed. Open Yale has
best UI but their course plate is limited in numbers and to introduction
courses.

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jpcx01
Anyone know what Flash video player these guys are using? Is it available for
use? It's pretty awesome

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jlm382
and they even have berkeley! wait until they add the computer science lectures
to the site :)

It's cool, because I could just watch lectures from previous semesters on
webcasts.berkeley.edu, or even on youtube.

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jimbokun
The particular class he highlights, "Computer Science III: Programming
Paradigms" does look pretty awesome.

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sanj
Every once in a while I have a slight pang of "well, jeez, I spent $120k and
10 years doing this! And now it's free?"

It's like that moment when you buy a computer and its successor comes out the
next week.

With a few exceptions, I barely remember the lectures. At times it feels like
I barely remembered what I learned! But I sure do remember _how_ to learn.

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whacked_new
Academicearth is a non-profit startup?

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mike463
from MIT opencourseware FAQ:

# Commercialization is prohibited. Users may not directly sell or profit from
OCW materials or from works derived from OCW materials.

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whacked_new
I saw that too, but they could make it some kind of integrative portal.

If their goal is simply to stay as they are, just with more content, that is,
quite literally, incredible. If I'm wrong though, hats off a million times to
them.

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bocalogic
this is great! thanks for the link. perfect to listen in the background as we
hack

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stevenrace
I understand this is likely a PR under the guise of a blog post - but it seems
unfair to overlook iTunesU and MIT's already mentioned OpenCourseware.

The benefits of viewing lectures within the iTunes/iPhone/Boxee environment
shouldn't need to be recounted here - but it's important point to reinterate
for less techy folk who may be looking for something similar and already have
an itunes store account.

<http://www.apple.com/education/mobile-learning/>

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unalone
Quick! Edit away your fixed text and stop messing up the page layout!

There's still time! You can do it!

