#MIT open courseware

[baeddel]

i find that i read textbooks a lot slower, struggle with them more, and end up failing to complete my goals with them more often than i do anything else, like a paper or a book. why should that be the case when they're supposed to be teaching material?

here is one parsimonious reason: why do you read a textbook? it's because you don't know anything about the topic. you're a total beginner, so the topic is inherently harder to understand, you have less of a knowledge base for the things you learn to find their place in.

that's probably true. but i think there is another reason. here is my other reason: when you read a paper, you have a bunch of techniques that help you read a paper. first of all you can skim the paper and get the idea. that might be all you need to do. but if you decide it's worth doing you can scratch at it a little more. you might read the introduction and conclusion, for example. and then you get the idea of the argument, and you decide if you ever need to see the working out you can come back to it. but even if you read the whole thing from start to finish there are a lot of parts you're going to skip and say 'alright, i get the idea.'

with a book (or a thesis) all of this is true, but there are even more advantages: first of all, it has a table of contents at the start. if the chapters are titled correctly then you can get a very good idea what the whole book is about just looking at the chapters. here's a marvelous one, from Jennifer Liu's thesis the Problem of Philosophy in Classical Chinese Thought:

just the first handful of chapters. look at that! you get the problem right away: the term 'philosophy' has a specific origin, it's not clear how we can apply it across cultures, so we're going to look at how people from that culture translated that term and find an argument there. now you can just hop into 0.2.2 to see the ending if you don't have time to read the rest.

a table of contents that is less detailed but still useful, from Kenneth Clatterbaugh's the Causation Debate in Modern Philosophy 1637-1739:

if you took out the page numbers you could make this figure 1, 'timeline of the modern causation debate', and it acts as a useful point of reference if you want to dip in and out.

plus some books will have an index at the back so you can find particular terms easily and things like that. now look at my phonology textbook, Bruce Hayes' Introductory Phonology:

"More on Phonemes" and "Phonological Alternation II" are almost as helpful as "Features." but what are you going to call them? you can find better ones than this, but sometimes this is the best you can do. you're not making an argument, you're teaching information, so the Phonetics chapter is just the Phonetics chapter. it has all the Phonetics stuff thats in the book. go read it.

so basically it's impossible to know what shortcuts to take with a textbook when you're self-studying. classes that use textbooks (which i can snoop on via things like MIT Open Courseware, or when students i talk to show me their class syllabus—thanks girl reading this!) will generally call out a handful of specific chapters or even just a couple of pages and tell you to read those. the teacher will frame the textbook content with the discussion in class and only give you the important parts to read. they can do that becuase they already know the textbook. when you're reading on your own you can't possibly know which parts are going to be useful yet, so you just have to read it front to back. which is hard, boring, and not usually worth doing, so i never end up sticking with them.

[iephos]

The weather has turned! It’s been rainy and cold all day, really feels like autumn. Had yum cha with family and then came home in a food coma. Have been reading Nora ephron, watching MIT open courseware, eating persimmons and drinking tea. The cat is getting very cosy.

[faggotryandtransjesterism]

i love you open yale course. i love you harvard open course. i love you mit open courseware. i love you free education resources. i love you school at my own pace.

[cthulhubert]

(ask game) orchid, cactus, and taro 😊

what’s a song you consider to be perfect?

I've always had trouble with rankings and favorites and such, and don't know enough about music to answer on a technical basis. But by relaxing my mind a handful of good potential answers float to the surface of the dark waters there, plucking one out I receive:

(A lot of my answers to this and adjacent questions are from OSTs, funny enough)

something you’re currently learning (about)?

I recently downloaded some of MIT's Open Courseware classes for the EE side of their CSEE program, I've started up 6.002 Circuits and Electronics.

I'm also trying to crack the nut of my executive function around doing Anki (the biggest spaced repetition flashcard app); my deck is mostly Japanese, but there's also morse code, and some Comp Sci, chemistry and physics. I also hope to add ASL.

if someone called you right now to catch up, what’re the things you’d tell them about?

The main thing would probably be the saga of my dishwasher repair (runs better than ever). Been subject to a lot of aches and pains lately. And also feel clumsier, but I'm not sure if that's real or if I'm just paying more attention to it. Tears of the Kingdom is slowly but steadily starting to lose its grip on my soul, and I've done nearly everything there is to do, but I want to finish the Addison signs before I take on the final boss. I am not however, crazy enough to try for every Korok seed. Seeing Barbie in theaters with my IRL friends this weekend. It'd been years even before COVID since I'd been to one.

[justbegneiss]

And we are back!

I've been chatting with my supervisor and I get to go into the lab to look at the samples I'll be analysing this week! Stay tuned for some microscopy work.

The prep work has been a little rough, but I'm hoping this will clear up the last bits and I can get going properly. I think the hardest part is reading those scientific papers! Anyone else find that they're so intimidating to look at??

I've taken some steps back towards basic geochemistry. Right now, I'm going through some lectures I found on MIT open courseware and some videos to get me back in the groove of doing research. Small steps to begin with.

Till next time!

[poly-glut]

hey, i'm kvell!

they/she, currently english monolingual. planning to learn as much of as many languages as i can!

languages i study, at least a little:

latin

norwegian

hindi

yiddish

welsh

italian

arabic

serbian

chinese

gascon

spanish

greek

esperanto

toki pona

(please note that i do a lot of this for fun, so i flip flop around a ton. the only one i study academically is latin! otherwise, i have been the most consistent with hindi and norwegian.

i additionally self-study linguistics from mit's open courseware, and make my own conlanguages for my writing projects. currently, i'm working on a language inspired by ancient greek, p.i.e, and latin!)

my tags:

#k.reblog — things i reblog! <3

#k.resource — resources

#k.mine — my stuff

#k.image — my images

#k.sub — submissions!

#k.ans — asks!

and of course different tags relating to different languages!

thanks for reading, and good luck with whatever language studies you pursue!

[apollogyas]

analysis for writing rather than reading: taking free online writing classes

Reflecting on my relationship with writing and the analyses I’ve done of works of fiction and poetry, I am a bit dissatisfied with the extent to which I understand why or how a work, well, works. I’ve done some thinking, especially while editing my own work and have, at least in my academic field, done analysis with my own writing in mind. However, most of the time, when I’ve analyzed works of fiction, I mostly think from the perspective of the author as an other rather than trying to think about how I would apply various writing and storytelling techniques—or put another way, I have tended to work from the how to the why when, as an author, I need to be able to think from the why to the how.  

To that end, one of my goals this year is to be more deliberate about understanding plot structure, in both long and short works, and how to craft story.

Luckily there are some great online resources for doing this, in addition to simply being more thoughtful while reading (which is why I’d like to do more reading for pleasure, an activity that fell to the wayside while completing my graduate degree). Two resources that I hope to take advantage of is the MIT Open Courseware class Writing and Reading Short Stories and Open University’s Start Writing Fiction.

I haven’t decided when I plan on beginning these courses, but I figure that I could throw them out there to see if there are other people who might be interested in doing them with me. That way, we could recreate the feedback component of the course that would otherwise be missing.

[humanfist]

I'm looking to brush up on some reasonably advanced math concepts that may or may not end up being practically relevant to AI. At the moment I'm using MIT open courseware and some other hodgepodges, but does anyone have suggestions on forums or ways to hire (at least graduate level) tutors so I can get feedback on my practice proofs, guidance on unknown unknowns ect.

I did CS in school, and work in data science now so I'm fairly knowledgeable overall but in a way that is very patchwork relative to what I'm trying to do.

[peterestevez]

Educate yourself Online for Free in 2023 1. Youtube 2. W3School 3. Coursera 4. Udemy 5. MDN 6. SkillShare 7. Edx 8. Udacity 9. Linkedin Learning 10. MIT Open Courseware 11. Stanford Online 12. CodeWars 13. EICT Academy 14. SoloLearn #PeterOEstévez #PeterOEstévezShow #FromLiesToRiches #LatinLeadership #TheFivePillarsToAnAbundantLife #LatinTalks #entrepreneur #Latino #seEXCELENTEbeEXCELENTE #communityservice #online #onlineeducation #onlinelearning #learning #education #freeeducation #Youtube #W3School #Coursera #Udemy #MDN #SkillShare #Edx #Udacity #LinkedinLearning #MITOpenCourseware #StanfordOnline #CodeWars #EICTAcademy #SoloLearn (at Austin, Texas) https://www.instagram.com/p/Cn4HM7fsG6u/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[edsonjnovaes]

Cursos acadêmicos online

ALISON – plataforma com uma grande quantidade de cursos de diferentes especialidades: de administrar negócios até aprender idiomas. A página dá a oportunidade de se submeter a provas online e receber um certificado virtual gratuito. Khan Academy – milhares de aulas gratuitas (com duração de 5 a 15 minutos) sobre assuntos variados. MIT Open CourseWare – um grande número de cursos do Instituto…

[gaytaztrash]

Forgot about this fic i started and then abandoned 2 years ago which contains the wonderful line, "The a-number-one Miller family trait was the ability to justify almost any morally dubious enterprise in the name of science"

[egyptianbuild]

قائمة افضل 40 موقع إنترنت عالمي للتعليم عن بعد مجاناً

قائمة افضل 40 موقع إنترنت عالمي للتعليم عن بعد مجاناً

 أهم و أكبر المواقع عالمية مفتوحة و مجانية للتعليم عن بعد عبر الإنترنت , و تنقسم لمواقع أكاديمية و مواقع تعليمية يقدمها محترفين حسب رغبتك في المادة التعليمية التي ترغب في ال��صول عليها إليك أكبر تجميعة لمواقع التعليم المجاني عن بعد نضعها بين يديك و نرجو منك المساهمة في نشرها لتعم الفائدة موقع EDX 1- موقع EDX موقع يوديمي Udemy 2- موقع يوديمي Udemy موقع يوداسيتي Udacity 3- موقع يوداسيتي…

[makabunni]

Study Masterpost

I spent a whole lot of time on this... tumblr post length limits KILL me when I make masterposts  ૮₍ ˃ ⤙ ˂ ₎ა! I will update this with more resources, subjects etc until i run out of room. Make sure you check the tag “makabees masterposts” to find the updates. Feel free to send requests to my inbox for subjects  ( ⸝⸝´꒳`⸝⸝)! Most of these are free resources..

MATHEMATICS

✧*̥˚ algebra*̥˚✧

khan academy’s free algebra course 1 / 2

OGT algebra playlist

Cliffnote’s algebra notes

Mathplanet for free textbook and videos

edx’s entire selection of algebra courses for free

brilliant’s algebra practice

thriftbooks algebra for dummies

✧*̥˚ calculus*̥˚✧

OGT calculus playlist 

Khan academy  precalculus course

Brilliant’s calculus course

Professor leonard calculus lectures

Caclulus MITOCW textbook (workbook?)

Calculus full course vid

✧*̥˚ physics*̥˚✧

pocket physics app (ANDROID ONLY)

intro to physics pdf

college physics openstax textbook

stanford: understanding einstein special theory of relativity course

SCIENCE 

✧*̥˚ psychology*̥˚✧

sparknotes psychology

psychology 150 notes

simplypsychology guides for students

psychology crash course

coursera psychology selection

alison psychology selection

principles of neuropsychology pdf

MIT intro to psychology textbook

YALE intro to psychology lectures

✧*̥˚ biology*̥˚✧

khan academy bio courses HS / AP

STANFORD human behavioral bio lectures

MIT introduction to biology lectures

Biology sparknoets study guide

Thebiologynotes online bio notes for students

bio lectures

introduction to marine life course vid

marine biology at home playlist

marine biology lectures

marine biology lecture notes

✧*̥˚ chemistry*̥˚✧

general chemistry playlist

cliffnotes chemistry

khan academy chemistry

organic chemistry playlist

chemistry textbook pdf

✧*̥˚ neurology*̥˚✧ (brain stuff)

MIT open courseware cellular neurobiology

MIT ENTIRE NEUROSCIENCE OCW COLLECTION

neurology: divisions of the nervous system

neurology videos/playlist

HARVARD opencourseware neuroscience pt 1 / pt 2

✧*̥˚ astronomy*̥˚✧

astrobiology : exploring other worlds course

crash course astronomy playlist

YALE astronomy lectures

CALTECH astronomy lectures

general astronomy lectures

caltech the evolving universe course

journey throught he universe documentary

✧*̥˚ cosmology*̥˚✧

STANFORD cosmology lecture collection

understanding modern physics: cosmology and relativity

the beginning and end of the universe documentary

caltech physical foundations of cosmology pdf

intro to cosmology pdf

✧*̥˚ ecology/environmental*̥˚✧

MIT open courseware Ecology 1: The earth system

MIT open courseware Ecology 2: engineering for sustainability

MIT open courseware oceanography

Elements of ecology thriftbooks

netflix our planet playlist

✧*̥˚ geology*̥˚✧

engineering geology and geotechnics

geology 101 lectures uni of hawaii

MIT OCW intro to geology notes

geological sciences lectures

✧*̥˚ archaeology*̥˚✧

osteoarchaeology: the truth in our bones course

the archaeology of disease documented in skeletons

introduction to archaeology lecture

archaeology lectures playlist

ENGLISH/LITERATURE/ARTS

✧*̥˚ grammar*̥˚✧

grammarly handbook

purdue writing lab

✧*̥˚ literature*̥˚✧

Thriftbooks entire literature section for cheap lit

creative writing specialization

plagues witches and war: the worlds of historical fiction

✧*̥˚arts*̥˚✧

MIT open courseware Intro to art history

lecture at MFA

prehistoric art lecture

my art ref masterpost

list of pdf books that might help artists

✧*̥˚mythology*̥˚✧

greek and roman mythology pdf

greek and roman mythology course

old norse mythology in the sources course

[frithams]

Free Courses

The ones in bold are free but, they also offer some functionalities behind a paywall.

Code.org

FreeCodeCamp

Harvard Courses

W3 Schools

Geeks For Geeks

Replit

The Odin Project

Raspberry Pi Projects

Google's Web Fundamentals

TeachYourselfCS

MIT Open CourseWare

Crash Course

SoloLearn

JetBrains Academy

CodeFirstGirls MOOCS

PBS

Boolean Girl

Dev Launchers