Studying again — at my age: Udacity

Today I want to talk about Udacity, a online Univercity if you like and I quote:

We believe university-level education can be both high quality and low cost. Using the economics of the Internet, we’ve connected some of the greatest teachers to hundreds of thousands of students all over the world.

Currently they are running 2 cources

  • CS 101: BUILDING A SEARCH ENGINE
  • CS 373: PROGRAMMING A ROBOTIC CAR

I have enrolled for both but not sure whether I will have the time for the Robotic one.  

I have just completed the first week of the Search Engine one and must say that I enjoyed the way it was teached and the pace at which it was run.  I even did the homework assignment so am eagerly awaiting on how I did with my homework. The course is presented as a series of videos with questions and exercise throughout.  The interactivity is well done and it even has a browser based Python interpretor, so one does not need to install anything on one’s computes.

The course is using Python to build a search engine, I come from a Sofware Development background with years of C, C++ and PHP behind me but has never realy learned Python.  Also just like to mention that I am over 50 years old so studying is a new experience again but as they say, one is never to old to learn.  

Looking forward to receiving my homework assignment result and week 2 of the course.

    Academic Earth — now what is that?

    Ever wanted to learn something new but have not got the time or money or whatever to attend University.  Well, how about doing it all within the confines of your four walls?  This is what Academic Earth is.  It gives you video recording or lectures from a couple of universities like Harward, MIT, Yale and others.  You can either stream the video or download them for later viewing.

    I always wanted to do some course in Astronomy and found one on Academic Earth.  It is called Introduction to Astrophysics and I have watched the first couple of lectures and have learned more about Astronomy in those lectures than anywhere else.  Cannot wait for the rest of the lectures.

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