Writ­ten by Marc and Angel Hack Life

All edu­ca­tion is self-education. Period. It doesn’t mat­ter if you’re sit­ting in a col­lege class­room or a cof­fee shop. We don’t learn any­thing we don’t want to learn.

Those peo­ple who take the time and ini­tia­tive to pur­sue knowl­edge on their own are the only ones who earn a real edu­ca­tion in this world. Take a look at any widely acclaimed scholar, entre­pre­neur or his­tor­i­cal fig­ure you can think of. For­mal edu­ca­tion or not, you’ll find that he or she is a prod­uct of con­tin­u­ous self-education.

If you’re inter­ested in learn­ing some­thing new, this arti­cle is for you. Bro­ken down by sub­ject and/or cat­e­gory, here are sev­eral top-notch self-education resources I have book­marked online over the past few years.

Note that some of the sources over­lap between var­i­ous sub­jects of edu­ca­tion. There­fore, each has been placed under a spe­cific sub­ject based on the major­ity focus of the source’s content.

Sci­ence and Health

• MIT Open­Course­Ware – MIT Open­Course­Ware is a free web-based pub­li­ca­tion of MIT course mate­ri­als that reflects almost all the under­grad­u­ate and grad­u­ate sub­jects taught at MIT.
• Tufts Open­Course­Ware – Tufts Open­Course­Ware is part of a new edu­ca­tional move­ment ini­ti­ated by MIT that pro­vides free access to course con­tent for every­one online. Tufts’ course offer­ings demon­strate the University’s strength in the life sci­ences in addi­tion to its mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary approach, inter­na­tional per­spec­tive and under­ly­ing ethic of ser­vice to its local, national and inter­na­tional communities.
• How­Stuff­Works Sci­ence – More sci­en­tific lessons and expla­na­tions than you could sort through in an entire year.
• Har­vard Med­ical School Open Course­ware – The mis­sion of the Har­vard Med­ical School Open Course­ware Ini­tia­tive is to exchange knowl­edge from the Har­vard com­mu­nity of schol­ars to other aca­d­e­mic insti­tu­tions, prospec­tive stu­dents, and the gen­eral public.
• Khan Acad­emy – Over 1200 videos lessons cov­er­ing every­thing from basic arith­metic and alge­bra to dif­fer­en­tial equa­tions, physics, chem­istry, and biology.
• Open Yale Courses – Open Yale Courses pro­vides lec­tures and other mate­ri­als from selected Yale Col­lege courses to the pub­lic free of charge via the inter­net. The courses span the full range of lib­eral arts dis­ci­plines, includ­ing human­i­ties, social sci­ences, and phys­i­cal and bio­log­i­cal sciences.
• webcast.berkeley – Every semes­ter, UC Berke­ley web­casts select courses and events for on-demand view­ing via the Inter­net. webcast.berkeley course lec­tures are pro­vided as a study resource for both stu­dents and the public.
• UC San Deigo Pod­cast Lec­tures – UCSD’s pod­cast­ing ser­vice was estab­lished for instruc­tional use to ben­e­fit our stu­dents. Pod­casts are taken down at the end of every quar­ter (10 weeks Fall-Spring and 5 weeks in the sum­mer). If you’re enjoy­ing a pod­cast, be sure to sub­scribe and down­load the lec­tures. Once the pod­cast has been taken offline, fac­ulty rarely approve their reposting.
• Johns Hop­kins Open­Course­Ware – The Johns Hop­kins Bloomberg School of Pub­lic Health’s Open­Course­Ware project pro­vides access to con­tent of the School’s most pop­u­lar courses. As chal­lenges to the world’s health esca­late daily, the School feels a moral imper­a­tive to pro­vide equal and open access to infor­ma­tion and knowl­edge about the obsta­cles to the public’s health and their poten­tial solutions.
• Carnegie Mel­lon Open Learn­ing Ini­tia­tive – No instruc­tors, no cred­its, no charge. Use these self-guiding Carnegie Mel­lon mate­ri­als and activ­i­ties to learn at your own pace.
• Utah State Open­Course­Ware – Utah State Open­Course­Ware is a col­lec­tion of edu­ca­tional mate­r­ial used in our for­mal cam­pus courses, and seeks to pro­vide peo­ple around the world with an oppor­tu­nity to access high qual­ity learn­ing opportunities.
• AMSER – AMSER (the Applied Math and Sci­ence Edu­ca­tion Repos­i­tory) is a por­tal of edu­ca­tional resources and ser­vices built specif­i­cally for use by those in Com­mu­nity and Tech­ni­cal Col­leges but free for any­one to use.
• Wol­fram Demon­stra­tions Project – Wol­fram brings com­pu­ta­tional explo­ration to the widest pos­si­ble audi­ence, open-code resource that uses dynamic com­pu­ta­tion to illu­mi­nate con­cepts. Free player runs all demos and videos.
• The Sci­ence Forum – A very active sci­en­tific dis­cus­sion and debate forum.
• Free Sci­ence and Video Lec­tures Online! – A nice col­lec­tion of video lec­tures and lessons on sci­ence and philosophy.
• Science.gov – Science.gov searches over 42 data­bases and over 2000 selected web­sites from 14 fed­eral agen­cies, offer­ing 200 mil­lion pages of author­i­ta­tive U.S. gov­ern­ment sci­ence infor­ma­tion includ­ing research and devel­op­ment results.
• The National Sci­ence Dig­i­tal Library – NSDL is the Nation’s online library for edu­ca­tion and research in Sci­ence, Tech­nol­ogy, Engi­neer­ing, Mathematics.
• Envi­roLink Net­work– A non-profit orga­ni­za­tion, grass­roots online com­mu­nity unit­ing orga­ni­za­tions and vol­un­teers around the world. Up-to-date envi­ron­men­tal infor­ma­tion and news.
• Geology.com – Infor­ma­tion about geol­ogy and earth sci­ence to vis­i­tors with­out charge: Arti­cles, News, Maps, Satel­lite Images, Dic­tio­nary, etc.
• Scitable – A free sci­ence library and per­sonal learn­ing tool that cur­rently con­cen­trates on genet­ics, the study of evo­lu­tion, vari­a­tion, and the rich com­plex­ity of liv­ing organ­isms. The site also expects to expand into other top­ics of learn­ing and education.
• LearningScience.org – A free open learn­ing com­mu­nity for shar­ing newer and emerg­ing tools to teach science.

Busi­ness and Money

• MIT Sloan School of Man­age­ment – MIT Sloan is a world-class busi­ness school long renowned for thought lead­er­ship and the abil­ity to suc­cess­fully part­ner the­ory and prac­tice. This is a sub­sec­tion of the larger MIT Open­Course­Ware site.
• Investo­pe­dia Finan­cial Invest­ing Tuto­ri­als – A plethora of detailed lessons on money man­age­ment and investing.
• U.S. Small Busi­ness Admin­is­tra­tion Train­ing Net­work – The Small Busi­ness Admin­is­tra­tion has one of the best selec­tions of busi­ness courses on the web. Top­ics include every­thing from start­ing a busi­ness and busi­ness man­age­ment to gov­ern­ment con­tract­ing and inter­na­tional trade. Most courses take only 30 min­utes to complete.
• VideoLectures.NET (Busi­ness) – A free and open access edu­ca­tional video lec­tures repos­i­tory. The lec­tures are given by dis­tin­guished schol­ars and sci­en­tists at the most impor­tant and promi­nent events like con­fer­ences, sum­mer schools, work­shops and sci­ence pro­mo­tional events from many fields of Science.
• My Own Busi­ness, Inc. – Offers a free online busi­ness admin­is­tra­tion course that would be ben­e­fi­cial to new man­agers and to any­one who is inter­ested in start­ing a busi­ness. This com­pre­hen­sive course is split up into 16 ses­sions cov­er­ing top­ics like busi­ness plans, account­ing, mar­ket­ing, insur­ance, e-commerce and inter­na­tional trade.
• UC Irvine Open­Course­Ware (Busi­ness) – Rapidly with the addi­tion of nearly 10 new courses every month. Many of our OCW offer­ings are directed at work­ing adults seek­ing con­tin­u­ing edu­ca­tion, with the option to enroll in instructor-led, for-credit courses, related to the OCW content.
• Kutz­town Uni­ver­sity of Penn­syl­va­nia – The Kutz­town Uni­ver­sity of Pennsylvania’s Small Busi­ness Devel­op­ment Cen­ter offers more than 80 free busi­ness courses online. Kutztown’s courses are indi­vid­u­al­ized and self-paced. Many of the courses fea­ture high-end graph­ics, inter­ac­tive case stud­ies and audio streams.
• Boston Col­lege Front Row (Busi­ness) – Boston Col­lege Front Row is a Web site that offers free access through stream­ing media to tapes of cul­tural and schol­arly events at Boston College.
• Finan­cial Man­age­ment Train­ing Cen­ter – The Finan­cial Man­age­ment Train­ing Cen­ter pro­vides sev­eral free down­load­able busi­ness courses for peo­ple who need to learn the finer points of finan­cial man­age­ment. All courses offered can be taken online; courses include full exams as well as eval­u­a­tion forms for peo­ple seek­ing Con­tin­u­ing Pro­fes­sional Edu­ca­tion (CPE) credits.
• The Free Non­profit Micro-eMBA – Free Man­age­ment Library’s Free Non­profit Micro-eMBA Pro­gram is an espe­cially great resource for stu­dents wish­ing to learn more about non­profit man­age­ment, but most of the lessons also apply to gen­eral busi­ness man­age­ment. Com­ple­tion of this pro­gram will not result in an MBA degree, but enroll­ment is free and the mate­r­ial is well structured.
• Book­boon Free Busi­ness e-books – Hun­dreds of free busi­ness books online in PDF format.
• TheStreet Uni­ver­sity – If you’re just start­ing out as a stock and bond investor or need a refresher’s course, this is the place to learn what you need to know.

His­tory and World Culture

• Uni­ver­sity of Washington’s OpenUW – Explore a vari­ety of learn­ing in sev­eral free history-centric online courses from the Uni­ver­sity of Washington.
• Notre Dame Open­Course­Ware – Notre Dame OCW is a free and open edu­ca­tional resource for fac­ulty, stu­dents, and self-learners through­out the world.
• Bio’s Best – Biography.com’s most pop­u­lar biogra­phies on notable his­tor­i­cal figures.
• UC Irvine Open­Course­Ware (Social Sci­ence) – Rapidly with the addi­tion of nearly 10 new courses every month. Many of our OCW offer­ings are directed at work­ing adults seek­ing con­tin­u­ing edu­ca­tion, with the option to enroll in instructor-led, for-credit courses, related to the OCW content.
• Boston Col­lege Front Row (His­tory) – Boston Col­lege Front Row is a Web site that offers free access through stream­ing media to tapes of cul­tural and schol­arly events at Boston College.
• MIT Open­Course­Ware (His­tory) – The MIT His­tory Fac­ulty offers about 70 sub­jects in the areas of Ancient, North Amer­i­can, Euro­pean, East Asian, and Mid­dle East­ern history.
• Wikiver­sity School of Social Sci­ences – Wikiver­sity is a Wiki­me­dia Foun­da­tion project devoted to learn­ing resources, learn­ing projects, and research for use in all lev­els, types, and styles of edu­ca­tion from pre-school to uni­ver­sity, includ­ing pro­fes­sional train­ing and infor­mal learning.
• Open­Learn (Arts and Human­i­ties) – The Open­Learn web­site gives free access to Open Uni­ver­sity course materials.
• A Biog­ra­phy of Amer­ica – A Biog­ra­phy of Amer­ica presents his­tory not sim­ply as a series of irrefutable facts to be mem­o­rized, but as a liv­ing nar­ra­tive of America’s story.
• Have Fun with His­tory – A resource for stu­dents, edu­ca­tors and all lovers of Amer­i­can History.
• The USGen­Web Project – Free geneal­ogy and fam­ily his­tory resources online.
• Macro­His­tory and World Report – Tell with­out illu­sions or ide­o­log­i­cal restraints the story of our ances­tors, our par­ents and us.
• World His­tory Hyper­His­tory – Nav­i­gates through 3000 years of World His­tory with links to impor­tant per­sons and events of world his­tor­i­cal importance.
• Amer­i­can Dig­i­tal His­tory – Online Amer­i­can his­tory text­book. An inter­ac­tive, mul­ti­me­dia his­tory of the United States from the Rev­o­lu­tion to the present.

Law

• Duke Law Cen­ter for the Pub­lic Domain – Duke Uni­ver­sity is counted amongst the best schools in the South. If you’re inter­ested in law, Duke’s open course­ware in that sub­ject area can go a long way towards help­ing you learn more about the jus­tice system.
• Intute Law – Pro­vides free access to high qual­ity resources on the Inter­net. Each resource has been eval­u­ated and cat­e­gorised by sub­ject spe­cial­ists based at UK universities.
• Boston Col­lege Front Row (Law) – Boston Col­lege Front Row is a Web site that offers free access through stream­ing media to tapes of cul­tural and schol­arly events at Boston College.
• Amer­i­can Uni­ver­sity – Offers a selec­tion of pod­casts on a num­ber of dif­fer­ent law-related sub­jects. There is even a very inter­est­ing pod­cast on debt relief and the law.
• Lewis & Clark Law School – Pro­vides a num­ber of pod­cast from the law school. Sub­jects include tax law, busi­ness law, envi­ron­men­tal law and other areas of law. Inter­est­ing and insight­ful lec­tures on the law.
• Case West­ern Reserve Uni­ver­sity School of Law – Offers a num­ber of inter­est­ing lec­tures on dif­fer­ent law sub­jects. These lec­tures are both pod­casts and Web casts. You can look ahead to the com­ing school year, which already has a num­ber of inter­est­ing sub­jects lined up.
• Har­vard Law School – Pro­vides a num­ber of Web casts of law lec­tures, sym­posia, pan­els and con­fer­ences. A great col­lec­tion of rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion and insights on how the law inter­acts with cur­rent events.
• Stan­ford Law – Pro­vides open course­ware via iTunes on a vari­ety of law sub­jects, includ­ing the the­ory of jus­tice, mobile con­tent dis­tri­b­u­tion, gay mar­riage, judi­cial review and pri­vacy pro­tec­tion. The tracks are avail­able for free, but you’ll need iTunes. Put the lec­tures on your iPod or iPhone and lis­ten them anywhere.
• Mon­eyIn­struc­tor Busi­ness Law – From MoneyInstructor.com pro­vides a look at a num­ber of basics in busi­ness law. Learn how to define crimes under busi­ness law. Work­sheets and cur­ricu­lums are avail­able for teach­ers. Ordi­nary folks will find them use­ful as well.
• Wes­leyan Col­lege Con­sti­tu­tional Law – From North Car­olina Wes­leyan Col­lege offers an overview of the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion and the laws spring­ing from it. Online lec­tures and class notes are included, which can help you develop a strong under­stand­ing of the Con­sti­tu­tion and how it forms the basis of our laws.

Com­puter Sci­ence and Engineering

• VideoLectures.NET (Com­puter Sci­ence) – A free and open access edu­ca­tional video lec­tures repos­i­tory. The lec­tures are given by dis­tin­guished schol­ars and sci­en­tists at the most impor­tant and promi­nent events like con­fer­ences, sum­mer schools, work­shops and sci­ence pro­mo­tional events from many fields of Science.
• Wikiver­sity School of Com­puter Sci­ence and Tech­nol­ogy – Wikiver­sity is a Wiki­me­dia Foun­da­tion project devoted to learn­ing resources, learn­ing projects, and research for use in all lev­els, types, and styles of edu­ca­tion from pre-school to uni­ver­sity, includ­ing pro­fes­sional train­ing and infor­mal learning.
• New York State Uni­ver­sity (US), Com­puter Sci­ence – Hun­dreds of lec­tures, tuto­ri­als and links to edu­ca­tional material.
• Dream.In.Code Tuto­ri­als – Lots of com­puter pro­gram­ming tutorials.
• MIT Open­Course­Ware (Engi­neer­ing and Com­puter Sci­ence) – MIT Open­Course­Ware is a free web-based pub­li­ca­tion of MIT course mate­ri­als that reflects almost all the under­grad­u­ate and grad­u­ate sub­jects taught at MIT.
• Maine Uni­ver­sity (US), Fogler Guide to Com­puter Sci­ence – An insanely detailed list of com­puter sci­ence resources.
• FreeComputerBooks.com – Free com­puter, math­e­mat­ics, tech­ni­cal books and lec­ture notes.
• Col­lec­tion of Com­puter Sci­ence Bib­li­ogra­phies – A mas­sive col­lec­tion of bib­li­ogra­phies of sci­en­tific lit­er­a­ture in com­puter sci­ence, updated weekly from orig­i­nal loca­tions, more than 3 mil­lions of ref­er­ences (mostly to jour­nal arti­cles, con­fer­ence papers and tech­ni­cal reports), clus­tered in about 2000 bibliographies.
• W3Schools – Web-building tuto­ri­als, from basic HTML and XHTML to advanced XML, SQL, Data­base, Mul­ti­me­dia and WAP.
• FreeTechBooks.com – This site lists free online com­puter sci­ence, engi­neer­ing and pro­gram­ming books, text­books and lec­ture notes, all of which are legally and freely avail­able over the Internet.
• Free com­puter Tuto­ri­als – Free com­puter courses and tuto­ri­als site. All the courses are aimed at com­plete begin­ners, so you don’t need expe­ri­ence to get started.
• Pro­gram­mer 101: Teach Your­self How to Code – Sev­eral help­ful resources for com­puter pro­gram­ming beginners.
• Google Code Uni­ver­sity – Pro­vides sam­ple course con­tent and tuto­ri­als for Com­puter Sci­ence (CS) stu­dents and edu­ca­tors on cur­rent com­put­ing tech­nolo­gies and paradigms.

Math­e­mat­ics

• Oxford Uni­ver­sity Math­e­mat­ics Open­Course­Ware – Var­i­ous online math­e­mat­ics classes pro­vided free by Oxford University.
• UMass Boston Math­e­mat­ics – Var­i­ous online math­e­mat­ics classes pro­vided free by UMass Boston.
• What­com Online Math Cen­ter – Var­i­ous math lessons pro­vided free by What­com Com­mu­nity College.
• VideoLectures.NET (Math­e­mat­ics) – A free and open access edu­ca­tional video lec­tures repos­i­tory. The lec­tures are given by dis­tin­guished schol­ars and sci­en­tists at the most impor­tant and promi­nent events like con­fer­ences, sum­mer schools, work­shops and sci­ence pro­mo­tional events from many fields of Science.
• Wikiver­sity School of Math­e­mat­ics – Wikiver­sity is a Wiki­me­dia Foun­da­tion project devoted to learn­ing resources, learn­ing projects, and research for use in all lev­els, types, and styles of edu­ca­tion from pre-school to uni­ver­sity, includ­ing pro­fes­sional train­ing and infor­mal learning.
• AMSER Math­e­mat­ics – AMSER (the Applied Math and Sci­ence Edu­ca­tion Repos­i­tory) is a por­tal of edu­ca­tional resources and ser­vices built specif­i­cally for use by those in Com­mu­nity and Tech­ni­cal Col­leges but free for any­one to use.
• Math.com – Math.com is ded­i­cated to pro­vid­ing rev­o­lu­tion­ary ways for stu­dents, par­ents, teach­ers, and every­one to learn math.
• Intute Math­e­mat­ics – Pro­vides free access to high qual­ity resources on the Inter­net. Each resource has been eval­u­ated and cat­e­go­rized by sub­ject spe­cial­ists based at UK universities.
• Free-Ed Col­lege Math­e­mat­ics – Offers a wide range of free online math courses and study programs.

Eng­lish and Communications

• Open Yale Courses (Eng­lish) – Open Yale Courses pro­vides lec­tures and other mate­ri­als from selected Yale Col­lege courses to the pub­lic free of charge via the internet.
• Writ­ing Guide­lines for Engi­neer­ing and Sci­ence Stu­dents – These guide­lines for engi­neer­ing writ­ing and sci­en­tific writ­ing are designed to help stu­dents com­mu­ni­cate their tech­ni­cal work.
• MIT Writ­ing and Human­is­tic Stud­ies – The MIT Pro­gram in Writ­ing and Human­is­tic Stud­ies gives stu­dents the oppor­tu­nity to learn the tech­niques, forms, and tra­di­tions of sev­eral kinds of writ­ing, from basic expos­i­tory prose to more advanced forms of non-fictional prose, fic­tion and poetry, sci­ence writ­ing, sci­en­tific and tech­ni­cal com­mu­ni­ca­tion and dig­i­tal media.
• Merriam-Webster Online – In this dig­i­tal age, your abil­ity to com­mu­ni­cate with writ­ten Eng­lish is para­mount skill. And M-W.com is the per­fect resource to improve your Eng­lish now.
• National Novel Writ­ing Month – Valu­ing enthu­si­asm and per­se­ver­ance over painstak­ing craft, NaNoW­riMo is a novel-writing pro­gram for every­one who has thought fleet­ingly about writ­ing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.
• Lifewrit­ing – A com­plete text of the 9-week writ­ing class a pro­fes­sor taught for years at UCLA.
• Guide to Gram­mar and Writ­ing – Gram­mar and writ­ing tech­niques, lessons and quizzes.
• Pur­due Online Writ­ing Lab – Over 200 free resources includ­ing lessons on: writ­ing, research, gram­mar, and style guides.

For­eign and Sign Languages

• BBC Lan­guages – Teach your­self a new spo­ken lan­guage online.
• Amer­i­can Sign Lan­guage Browser – Teach your­self sign lan­guage online.
• Live­mocha – Start learn­ing a new lan­guage online for free.
• Learn10 – Gives you a lan­guage learn­ing habit that’s hard to kick. 10 new words; every­where, every day.
• One Minute Lan­guages – Learn a new lan­guage via pod­casts that are updated regularly.
• Mango Lan­guages – Over 100 lessons, shown to you in Pow­er­Point style with inter­sti­tial quizzes, to move you through any lan­guage with­out crack­ing a book.

Mul­ti­ple Sub­jects and Miscellaneous

• Open­Learn – The Open­Learn web­site gives free access to Open Uni­ver­sity course mate­ri­als. Mul­ti­ple sub­jects are covered.
• Capi­lano Uni­ver­sity Open­Course­Ware – The Capi­lano Uni­ver­sity Open­Course­Ware site is a free and open edu­ca­tional resource for fac­ulty, stu­dents, and self-learners through­out the world.
• Uni­ver­sity of South­ern Queensland’s Open­Course­Ware – Pro­vides access to free and open edu­ca­tional resources for fac­ulty mem­bers, stu­dents, and self-learners through­out the world.
• YouTube EDU – Edu­ca­tional videos on YouTube orga­nized by sub­ject matter.
• Learn­Hub Test Prep – Raise your test scores with free prac­tice tests & coun­sel­ing on var­i­ous subjects.
• iTunes U – Hun­dreds of uni­ver­si­ties — includ­ing Stan­ford, Yale and MIT — dis­trib­ute lec­tures, slide shows, PDFs, films, exhibit tours and audio books through iTunes U. The Sci­ence sec­tion alone con­tains con­tent on top­ics includ­ing agri­cul­ture, astron­omy, biol­ogy, chem­istry, physics, ecol­ogy and geography.
• United Nations Uni­ver­sity Open­Course­Ware – Show­cases the train­ing and edu­ca­tional pro­grams imple­mented by the Uni­ver­sity in a wide range of areas rel­e­vant to the work of the United Nations.
• Brigham Young Inde­pen­dent Study – BYU Inde­pen­dent Study now offers free courses in dif­fer­ent areas of study. These areas include Fam­ily His­tory, Fam­ily Life, and Reli­gious Scrip­ture Study, Per­sonal Dev elope­ment, etc. Use these courses as a start­ing point for your per­sonal stud­ies or just to add insight to an area of interest.
• Uni­ver­sity of Utah Open­Course­Ware – Pro­vides access to free and open edu­ca­tional resources for fac­ulty mem­bers, stu­dents, and self-learners through­out the world.
• United States Nation Archives – The National Archives and Records Admin­is­tra­tion (NARA) is the nation’s record keeper. Valu­able records are pre­served and are avail­able to you, whether you want to see if they con­tain clues about your family’s his­tory, need to prove a veteran’s mil­i­tary ser­vice, or are research­ing an his­tor­i­cal topic that inter­ests you.
• Wikiver­sity – Wikiver­sity is a Wiki­me­dia Foun­da­tion project devoted to learn­ing resources, learn­ing projects, and research for use in all lev­els, types, and styles of edu­ca­tion from pre-school to uni­ver­sity, includ­ing pro­fes­sional train­ing and infor­mal learning.
• UMass Boston Open­Course­Ware – Var­i­ous online classes pro­vided free by UMass Boston.
• About U – A col­lec­tion of free online edu­ca­tional courses from About.com.
• Aca­d­e­mic Earth – Online degrees and video courses from lead­ing universities.
• Free-Ed – Clus­ters of courses that sup­port your prepa­ra­tion for today’s fastest-growing careers and crit­i­cal aca­d­e­mic disciplines.
• Con­nex­ions – A place to view and share edu­ca­tional mate­r­ial made of small knowl­edge chunks called mod­ules that can be orga­nized as courses, books, reports, etc. Any­one may view or contribute.
• TED – Moti­va­tional and edu­ca­tional lec­tures from note­wor­thy pro­fes­sion­als around the world.
• Intute – Pro­vides free access to high qual­ity resources on the Inter­net. Each resource has been eval­u­ated and cat­e­gorised by sub­ject spe­cial­ists based at UK universities.
• Boston Col­lege Front Row – Boston Col­lege Front Row is a Web site that offers free access through stream­ing media to tapes of cul­tural and schol­arly events at Boston College.

Free Books and Read­ing Recommendations

• Library­Thing – Library­Thing con­nects you to other peo­ple who are read­ing what you’re read­ing and allows you to see which books are pop­u­lar in var­i­ous cat­e­gories of reading.
• Text­book Rev­o­lu­tion – Links to free online text­books and other edu­ca­tional materials.
• Book TV – This is the com­pan­ion site to Book TV on C-Span2. The site holds some cur­rent inter­views with authors, many past inter­views, opin­ions, reviews, and fea­tured pro­grams through online video.
• Book­boon – Book­boon pro­vides online text­books for stu­dents in PDF for­mat. The free ebooks can be down­loaded with­out reg­is­tra­tion. Our books are legal and writ­ten exclu­sively for Book­boon. They are financed by a few in-book ads.
• Scribd – Scribd, the online doc­u­ment shar­ing site which sup­ports Word, Excel, Pow­er­Point, PDF and other pop­u­lar for­mats. You can down­load a doc­u­ment or embed it in your blog or web page.
• Book­Yards – Book­Yards is a web por­tal in which books, edu­ca­tion mate­ri­als, infor­ma­tion, and con­tent will be freely to any­one who has an inter­net connection.
• Planet eBook – Free clas­sic lit­er­a­ture to down­load and share.
• E-Books Direc­tory – Thou­sands of ebooks on var­i­ous sub­jects to down­load and share.
• Read Print Library – Free online books library for stu­dents, teach­ers, and the clas­sic enthusiast.
• GoodReads – Get great book rec­om­men­da­tions and keep track of what you want to read.
• The Online Books Page – Uni­ver­sity of Penn­syl­va­nia data­base with over 30,000 books.
• Pub­lic Lit­er­a­ture – Thou­sands of famil­iar clas­sics, children’s books, plays and poems, as well as books by new authors.
• Full Books – Thou­sands of full-text non­fic­tion and fic­tion books.
• Many Books – Free fic­tion and non­fic­tion ebooks for your PDA, iPod or ebook reader.
• Get Free Books – Thou­sands of free ebooks to download.
• Project Guten­berg – More than 20,000 free books from the first pro­ducer of free e-books.
• Bib­lio­ma­nia – Thou­sands of clas­sic books, poems, short sto­ries and plays.
• Clas­sic Reader – Large col­lec­tion of free clas­sic books, plays, and short sto­ries from more than 300 authors.
• Bartleby Fic­tion – Clas­sic antholo­gies and volumes.
• The Per­sonal MBA Rec­om­mended Read­ing List – MBA pro­grams don’t have a monop­oly on advanced busi­ness knowl­edge: you can teach your­self every­thing you need to know to suc­ceed in life and at work. The Per­sonal MBA fea­tures the very best busi­ness books avail­able, based on thou­sands of hours of research.
• Books Should Be Free – Free audio books from the pub­lic domain.

Edu­ca­tional Main­stream Broad­cast Media

• BBC Learn­ing – Online learn­ing, sup­port, and advice. This site offers inter­nal and off­site links to a vast amount of materials.
• Biog­ra­phy – The site holds videos to past inter­views and biogra­phies on peo­ple in top­ics that range from Black his­tory to women’s history.
• Book TV – This is the com­pan­ion site to Book TV on C-Span2. The site holds some cur­rent inter­views with authors, many past inter­views, opin­ions, reviews, and fea­tured pro­grams through online video.
• CBC Archives — Relive Cana­dian his­tory through thou­sands of avail­able radio and tele­vi­sion clips.
• Dis­cov­ery — This chan­nel is home to sev­eral dif­fer­ent net­works that focus on the mil­i­tary, ani­mals, travel, etc. The Dis­cov­ery site offers a “Video of the Day” from its home page, a sep­a­rate online video sec­tion, and a Dis­cover Edu­ca­tion cen­ter where teach­ers can accu­mu­late mate­ri­als for K-12 teach­ing. It’s impos­si­ble to list all their offer­ings here, so go discover!
• His­tory Chan­nel – Visit the Video Gallery for a selec­tion on his­tor­i­cal top­ics. Like the Dis­cov­ery Chan­nel, this net­work pro­vides many oppor­tu­ni­ties for you to gain access to infor­ma­tion and ref­er­ence materials.
• NOVA — Watch cur­rent sci­ence shows or browse by cat­e­gory. PBS spon­sors this channel.
• Research Chan­nel — Speak­ers, researchers and pro­fes­sors present rev­o­lu­tion­ary thoughts and dis­cov­er­ies. Use their Web­streams and an exten­sive video-on-demand library for research.
• Weather Chan­nel – You can learn about weather all over the world, but the Weather Chan­nel also offers dynamic con­tent based upon sea­sons and spe­cial con­di­tions and a spe­cial mul­ti­me­dia and edu­ca­tion section.

Online Archives

• Amer­i­can Mem­ory – The Library of Con­gress pro­vides exten­sive mul­ti­me­dia offer­ings on var­i­ous top­ics through their Amer­i­can Mem­ory Col­lec­tion, includ­ing their out­stand­ing Built in Amer­ica project that show­cases his­tor­i­cal build­ings through photographs.
• Fathom – This archive, pro­vided by Colum­bia Uni­ver­sity, offers access to the com­plete range of free con­tent devel­oped for Fathom by its mem­ber insti­tu­tions. The archives include online learn­ing resources includ­ing lec­tures, arti­cles, inter­views, exhibits and seminars.
• Inter­net Archive Open Edu­ca­tional Resources – A dig­i­tal library of Inter­net sites and other cul­tural arti­facts in dig­i­tal form.
• National Archives – Pro­vides pri­mary source mate­ri­als from NARA along with les­son plans for teach­ing with those sources.
• National Cli­matic Data Cen­ter – The NCDC, a divi­sion of NOAA, main­tains cli­matic archives, includ­ing lists of storms in given coun­ties, and records about global extremes, etc.
• The Rosetta Project – A global col­lab­o­ra­tion of lan­guage spe­cial­ists and native speak­ers build­ing a pub­licly acces­si­ble online archive of all doc­u­mented human languages.
• Sep­tem­ber 11 Dig­i­tal Archive – This site uses elec­tronic media to col­lect, pre­serve, and present the his­tory of the 9/11 attacks.
• U.S. Cen­sus Bureau – If you think the Cen­sus Bureau is all about num­bers, you might be sur­prised to learn about their archived pho­tographs, daily radio fea­tures, and more avail­able through theirNews­room.

Direc­to­ries of Open Education

• Google Scholar – Pro­vides a sim­ple way to broadly search for schol­arly lit­er­a­ture. From one place, you can search across many dis­ci­plines and sources: arti­cles, the­ses, books, abstracts and court opin­ions, from aca­d­e­mic pub­lish­ers, pro­fes­sional soci­eties, online repos­i­to­ries, uni­ver­si­ties and other web sites.
• Open­Course­Ware Con­sor­tium – This site pro­vides a por­tal to search through hun­dreds of free courses or to add new courses you know about to the database.
• iBerry – Check out this site for a huge direc­tory of open course­ware orga­nized by school and sub­ject mat­ter that can point you in the right direc­tion for any type of learning.
• Self Made Scholar Direc­tory – Free online direc­tory of web-based classes and courses.

Please add to the resource list via the com­ments sec­tion if you know of a valu­able site we left off the list.