I’m Attending MIT, Stanford & Harvard

http://mattiasgeniar.be/2009/01/29/im-attending-mit-stanford-harvard/

by Anon84 • 17 years ago

118 45 17 years ago

mattiasgeniar.be

carterschonwald• 17 years ago

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

andr• 17 years ago

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

kaiser• 17 years ago

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).

dreish• 17 years ago

If only there were some way for people around the world to communicate with each other as they watched these lectures ...

Not trying to be snarky. I just wonder whether there's an opportunity there.

aneesh• 17 years ago

Omnisio-style comments overlayed on the video itself would be a start, especially if you could control whose comments were displayed.

netcan4• 17 years ago

>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.

yters3• 17 years ago

Education is about learning how to learn. You can either learn by yourself or with others. Learning with others is more effective and enjoyable, which is why sites like HN exist. Learning to learn with others is something you get from going to university, i.e. interaction and struggling for ideas.

kaens2• 17 years ago

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.

whacked_new2• 17 years ago

Academicearth is a non-profit startup?

mike4632• 17 years ago

Yeah, I thought the universities providing their courseware explicitly prohibited commercial use of their material.

mike4632• 17 years ago

from MIT opencourseware FAQ:

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

whacked_new2• 17 years ago

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.

Frocer• 17 years ago

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!

jimbokun2• 17 years ago

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.

jonursenbach• 17 years ago

Even using the Hulu design.

bocalogic• 17 years ago

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

kleevr2• 17 years ago

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.

Minerick• 17 years ago

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.

omarish• 17 years ago

The bandwidth will probably cost $100.

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

jlm382• 17 years ago

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.

ktharavaad• 17 years ago

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.

endtime• 17 years ago

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.

kaens2• 17 years ago

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

azharcs• 17 years ago

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.

kleevr2• 17 years ago

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

herdrick• 17 years ago

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

jdrock• 17 years ago

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

jpcx015• 17 years ago

Does CMU offer any lectures online?

Jaggu• 17 years ago

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

jimbokun2• 17 years ago

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

stevenrace• 17 years ago

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/

unalone• 17 years ago

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

There's still time! You can do it!

jpcx015• 17 years ago

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.

jpcx015• 17 years ago

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

jpcx015• 17 years ago

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

sanj• 17 years ago

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.

pkrumins• 17 years ago

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.

Ras_2• 17 years ago

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.

I’m Attending MIT, Stanford & Harvard

Related Stories