Open Source Learning

Friends! Plateauites! ( To coin a word. ) Lend me your ears! I'm probably the last person with Internet access to be aware of this, but it is, to me, wonderful! Through open sourcing ( whatever that means ) it is now possible to take on line and FREE courses from the best Universities in the world! ( I'm currently taking one from Harvard.) You just sign up and you're off and running. Go to www.edx.org and there's a wealth of information. How about a yes, FREE, biology course from one of the pioneers in the human genome project, Eric Landers? Or a math course from M.I.T.? And on and on and on! And yes, unbelievably they're totally free! At my old age of 77, after a hiatus of 55 plus years I'm excitedly going back to school! It's a real blast!

I've also discovered today's students have no idea of the amount of labor we old guys went through to get through a given class. I can watch a lecture over and over to pick out the salient points, ( instead of missing point two while writing down point one,) the texts to be read are supplied on - line by the school, I can interact with other students, and the faculty, what could be better? Oh, yeah, it's all done when I want it!

I must admit I was a bit nervous about going back to school - did this old, mostly unused, brain have enough flexibility left? ( As a check I committed to memory one of Robert Service's poems ( The Spell of the Yukon ) and after that I was off and flying. I can highly recommend this method of learning. While it's true you don't get the paper in hand saying you've attended and passed a given series of courses for a particular degree, so thus are not a "graduate" of a particular school, you can take the classes, and assuming you did ok you'll be given a "certificate of accomplishment." You can bet I'm going for that certificate! ( I haven't looked at future courses, but I'm gonna take more. )