You can gain University degree-equivalent knowledge in any of thirteen different areas of study. You won’t pay any money. You can study at your own pace and when and wherever you choose.  Best of all, the textbooks that go with the courses are free and authored by university professors from around the world. The only thing you won’t get is a degree or certificate. But for an increasing number of learners around the world, that is OK.

Saylor is a 501(c) 3 non-profit institution whose mission is to give an alternative for those who are geographically or financially excluded from traditional higher education. Saylor now offers complete programs in thirteen areas of study, including Mathematics, Computer Science, Business Administration, Economics, History, and Psychology. Some of the courses within the areas of study are in various stages of completion, but most areas of study are well-developed. Completing any of these areas of study equates to earning a Bachelor degree in a university in the U.S.

According to Saylor,

We have developed a structured and intuitive format for content delivery and are working to find, develop, and organize the material a student needs to know to earn the equivalent of a degree in any of the top ten majors in the United States.

Although Saylor currently focuses on undergraduate college level areas of study, it intends on tackling primary, secondary, and post-graduate levels in the future. With this, home learners and unschoolers will likely have even more choices for quality learning. Perhaps Saylor and other open initiatives will encourage more parents globally to consider home learning or unschooling for their children instead of sending them to institutions. Like it or not, education is becoming increasingly democratized. Institutions and educators who cling to brick-and-mortar classrooms, printed curriculum material, and the associated bloated budgets (and fees) are going to find it increasingly difficult to attract the next generation of learners who enjoy free, high-quality learning on their own terms.

By Gina Clifford

Gina Clifford is the founder and publisher for SpottyBanana. She is a child-led, project-based learning advocate, an internet technologist, and a TEDx Organizer. Gina enjoys sharing learning resources, ideas, news, and voices that disrupt the status quo.

Via: Online College Courses Blog

One of the greatest challenges for anyone in the business of inspiring, mentoring, or otherwise working with young people is to impart the love of learning. Education is often seen as a tool or a requirement, not as a freedom; a chore, as opposed to a luxury–rarely as a source of enjoyment.

Homeschoolers and independent learners are often viewed as self-starters, people who often reach beyond traditional sources and embrace the love of learning. For example, Anywho.com over the phone book, social media crowdsourcing instead of business reviews, software instead of textbooks. But no matter who you are, an educator, a student, an independent learner, or a mentor, learning to love learning is a never-ending journey.

Here are some ways to inspire learning and prepare for the challenges ahead:

Read the classics.

Before computers, YouTube, software, online tutorials, e-books, podcasts, blogs, or digital conferences there were the classics works in literature – great volumes written by great minds. The works of Mark Twain, Toni Morrison, Johann Wolfgang, Socrates, Charles Dickens, Virginia Woolf, William Shakespeare, Homer, Ralph Ellison, Jane Austen—are just some of the authors an avid learner can read to experience the world through great writing.

Embrace technology.

Technology democratizes access to information and is becoming increasingly important for current and future generations as a standard information delivery mechanism. Renouncing technology or approaching it with reactionary distrust will prevent learners from reaping the benefits of remarkable learning possibilities. Online tools ranging from social media to e-books and online learning portals are powerful, mostly free, learning tools that brings the world’s knowledge to the learner with the click of a mouse or touch of a screen.

Learn from successful entrepreneurs.

Businessman and women are often derided as simply knowing how to generate wealth and little more. Speeches, autobiographies, and memoires of successful business entrepreneurs such as Steve Jobs, Henry Ford, and J. Paul Getty offer extraordinary lessons. These and other iconic leaders found incredible success through applied knowledge. Find out how these leaders thought differently about learning and applying knowledge for a bit of inspiration.

Learning to love learning is about more than reading, technology, or business. It’s about embracing the full spectrum of educational tools and resources that the modern world has presented to us. Information overload is a real thing, but that doesn’t mean information and knowledge should be feared. Rather, they should be cultivated, celebrated, and, embraced.

By Samantha Peters

Samantha Peters is an avid blogger and manager of theeducationupdate.com, where she passionately writes her love for education and tech innovation news in the world of education.

Udacity Founders

Dr. Thrun recognized the power of technology to deliver his course content to over 160,000 students who signed up for his online artificial intelligence course at Stanford University. Dissatisfied with traditional lecture techniques at most higher education institutions, Dr. Thrun started Udacity. Learn more about Udacity or enroll in an upcoming course. Homeschoolers, the Introduction to Computer Science course might be fun–it lasts just seven weeks and assumes no previous computer programming experience.

Udacity

CodeAcademy is a new, free, online learning platform specifically for learning computer programming. It is so easy to get started with CodeAcademy, you might not realize that you’re learning as you begin using the site. The best asset CodeAcademy possesses is its ease of use. I challenge you to sit your 9 year-old down in front of CodeAcademy and let her rock it. She will. It is that easy to get started.

Check out Cloudhackz.com to learn more.

Photo courtesy of Henri Sivonen Creative Commons licensed

MIT is following Stanford University’s lead by offering certificates for collections of free, online courses like those already available through MIT Open Courseware. Learn more about how MIT is changing the face of higher education

Cyberchase, an Emmy Award-winning animated series for 8-11 year-olds is now completely available online.  This fun, STEM-rich series is full of hands-on math, engineering, and physics lessons weaved creatively into the stories.

Learn more about Cyberchase over at GeekMom

Sal Khan, founder of the now famous online math and science video tutorial website Khan Academy, is thinking about expanding his online tools into the physical world and beyond. Although Sal already runs a small summer camp in Silicon Valley for science and technology middle and high schoolers, he is thinking about possibly creating a project-based bricks and mortar school. What a physical Khan Academy might look like and how it would differ from current public, private, and charter schools is not yet clear, but Khan Academy is definitely looking to expand its offerings.

The Khan Academy website is more than just videos.  It is a learning platform, complete with student progress monitoring tools. Khan Academy has plans to open up its platform to teachers and schools so that the platform itself becomes the product instead of just the Khan Academy video content.  The idea is to allow teachers and schools to upload their own video content and use the platform’s tools. In exchange, the uploaded content enters into the noncommercial public domain.

Whether a bricks and mortar school and crowd sourced content are the keys to successful Khan Academy expansion is not clear. However, Sal Khan has captured the imaginations of many teachers and deep-pocketed investors. Hopefully, Sal Khan can resist the temptation to model the future Khan Academy after the existing public education model. With so much funding and attention, he has a real opportunity to show us something new, refreshing, and different.

The Tiziano Project is an incredible initiative focused on training journalists in conflict, post-conflict, and underreported areas around the globe. The project trains citizen journalists to contribute quality news stories to local and international news outlets.  As part of the initiative, the Tiziano Project website hosts a number of simple but useful tutorials on basic journalistic skills. We highly recommend the interviewing techniques and how to write an article for interested youth just getting started with learning journalism. However, these are great, free resources for any learner who wants to become a citizen journalist.

Tiziano Project Tutorials

Scoop.it is a fun way to share online articles, videos, photos, etc. around a topic.  It is free, easy to use, and fun to curate.  We’ve curated an eclectic collection of disruptive learning articles on our Scoop.it specially for SpottyBanana viewers.  In our case, disruptive learning means nonmainstream, non- traditional learning ideas outside of the “canned” curriculum.  If you like to think outside the box, check out our disruptive learning Scoop.it page.  If not, you should check it out anyway to see what you are missing.

Disruptive Learning