This morning I got up early accidentally and didn’t feel like doing the shred… so I decided to get in a nice walk. I listened to Heather Small (the singer of the Biggest Loser theme song) and then Frou Frou when Heather’s album was over. I got in 4 miles while I thought and pondered and started to decompress from the week.
Speaking of the shred and Biggest Loser and Jillian Michaels, Jillian is hosting a Wellness Cruise this fall. Oh my. I am so tempted. Anyone else? Sixthman is coordinating it – that’s the same company that organized that John Mayer/Guster/OAR cruise I went on last year. And it’s going out of Miami (Bobby’s hometown).
Going back to the work topic, my job revolves around a lot of online education clients. This week I got an email with some great resources for free online learning and I thought I’d share.
Free Online Courses and Lectures:
- iTunes U: Free educational media – lectures, lessons, labs, audiobooks, tours – all available through iTunes. You do have to get an iTunes account to use iTunes U, but the account is free. I’m looking at a bunch of different lectures I want to listen to now – “Health Eating Habits” from Clemson University; “Sex in the Ancient World” from University of Warwick; courses from Harvard Business School… Definitely need to check this out.
- MIT OpenCourseWare: Back in high school one of my dream colleges was MIT. I didn’t go there, but I will definitely try their free courses. They have everything from linguistics to anthropology to math to engineering to bio. This course looks particularly interesting: The Supernatural in Music, Literature, and Culture.
- Open Yale Courses: a bunch of intro classes from Yale professors. Free Ivy education? I’m in. I think I’m going to check out this Italian course on Dante.
- Connexions (Rice University): This is a king of open source courseware. It’s a place to share scholarly content online – anyone can add content and anyone can access it. You can search for just about anything. I searched “brain” and found this class: Music, Biological Evolution, and the Brain. Awesome.
I’m glad I was on that email chain!
Have you tried any of these? Do you like school and learning? I didn’t realize how much I loved taking classes until after I was out of college. It’s never too late to go back though.
I’m so thankful you posted this! Haha, I’m the megalomaniac type who’s not happy unless I’m go-go-going. I love learning, so listening to lectures and whatnot is right up my alley.
-sigh- That wellness cruise sounds lovely. I got a bit…ahem…loose during final exams. I need to get back to balance!
Oh my gosh, thanks so much for posting those links!! I love learning and really miss being in school. I still read textbooks for fun and anyone that sees me assumes I must be studying for a class.
And Rice is in Houston!
I’d love to go on that cruise. The price isn’t bad at all either.
Oh man, how tempting!!! I have been begging Johnny to go on a cruise since we’ve been together (3+ years now)! AND this one is during my birthday week! hehe but we don’t have the money, so I’ll day dream about it! 🙂 I think that sounds great to be on a cruise where you know the activities and food would be healthy!
I love learning! When I graduated the first time I had taken 21 extra credit hours (don’t worry it was a community college, so not overly expensive!) as electives just b/c I loved adding classes that interested me to the load! I’d usually take my 3 or 4 necessary ones, and then tack on an additional one “for fun.” Now that I’m in school again and it’s been a few years I kick myself in the butt some. When there’s things like papers due, it’s a lot harder once you’ve been out of that mindset. It doesn’t come back as easy as riding a bike, that’s for sure. But overall I love the feeling of having assignments and goals for learning.
Even when I’m not in school I love reading up on subjects that interest me for leisure. I also google around for hours if I find something that I want to know more about. Listening to lectures would be something I’d be interested in! Kind of like an education book on tape while walking! Great idea to load it up on the iPod while going for a walk/jog/bike ride! 🙂
I love learning…this is why I chose journalism. You’re always writing new stories, sometimes on things you dont even understand or know much about. You learn so much, all the time!
I listen to podcasts sometimes, educational ones, and also foodie ones of course! 😉
Wow I never knew those kind of things existed! I’m so excited to look into all of them! I miss school so much, I’m taking a year off in between my bachelors and masters. I’ve been taking on wayyy too many new projects and crazy ideas trying to feed my learning appetite so these sound great. Thanks for sharing!
I am dying to go on the Jillian Wellness Cruise! Matt and I looked into the cost but ultimately decided against it–in my dreams it would be a great blogger summit, though! 🙂
The cruise sounds great! I had not heard about it until I read it here. Might have to look more into it. I would be going alone because hubs just won’t do a cruise (can we say sea sick? LOL). I have never been on one but I’m sure I would love it.
Yeahhh i totally just discovered them too but didn’t find a lot of the stuff i downloaded from Harvard ‘n Yale to be too great actually. Maybe i just didn’t find good ones?
P.s. I’m hostin’ a little giveaway for organic preserves and thought you, of all people would make EXCELLENT use of them if you won! Strawberry basil jam and blueberry merlot sound good to you? 🙂
Wow! There are about 5 MIT courses that will help me in my work. Thanks for posting this!