September 30, 2005

• This FPP sucks. Because it now gives me absolutley no excuss! Nice post, thanks!
• I'm teaching a free online course for people displaced by Katrina and Rita. So far, only one person has signed up but I'm looking forward to it!
• Fantastic! MIT has courses in Hip Hop?! It brings a new meaning to Urban Studies.
• herbal studies? I loves it!
• Haven't reviewed them all, but a fast pass seemed to indicate that courses were a lot more plentiful a couple of years ago, with no repeats.
• When I was younger I did a joke video of a telecourse: Insect Electrification and Carbonification. The idea is someone has to build those damn bug lights, and there's certainly no books on how to do it. I guess I could do one for the Web but, given the state of the industry, it would have to be in Mandarin.
• Am I the only one who had it work in IE, but not Firefox?
• I've the same problem with it, peruvianllama<.b>.
• Nope. no go in Firefox or Opera. Someone should tell them about the implications of "open" things on the Internet...
• This is a great post, though it's also not working in Safari. Time to fire up the dormant copy of IE on here. Worth it, though. I just got out of school after eight years and swore I was through with it, but I basically adore learning and working from home on my own time sounds fabulous. An anthropology course from MIT, perhaps? Sounds delightful!
• Worked in Firefox for me, but I just upgraded to the latest version.
• I couldn't get the OpenCoursewareFinder to work in Firefox (and running IE is out of the question), but the actual course pages were fine. Still, something "open" that only works in IE? Someone should send them a clue-gram. Internet Explorer is the troll on the bridge.
• Newsflash! The OpenCoursewareFinder does work in Firefox, but not with the link in the post (which contains an anchor). Try this one instead. Safari still doesn't work, however.
• Firefox works with that -- thanks ye, ThreeDayMonk.
• Maybe I'm missing something? I browsed some of the courses that looked interesting to me directly on the MIT OCW site, and it seemed strange that a number of them referred to lectures that had taken place in the past (which, no problem, I went looking for online videos of the lectures, or online notes, and no luck) or to the fact that the course's reading materials would all be handouts, without any attached handouts, etc to view. Perhaps you have to sign up for the course for these materials to be available, but an explanation to that effect would have been helpful. Otherwise, a lot of these courses appear 'broken', in the sense that the information available appears very incomplete. Anyone else have more luck in working out how to take full advantage of the courses, particularly any of those that dealt with IT topics on the MIT OCW site?
• Thanx for the correction threeD. The search engine's got some serendipitous goodness. I typed in "lit" to find some literature courses and got "The American Novel" but also got: Studies in Poetry: Does poetry Matter? Technologies of Humanism. US Military Planning and Force Planning. Seminar on Politics and conflict in the Middle East. Satellite Engineering. Prediction and Predictability in Atmosphere and Oceans.
• Planetthoughtful, here is an answer (from the website faq) to your question about content....sadly after poking around, i have to agree with you, many of these courses are little more than a reading list. 18. Why is there such variation in the breadth and depth of content presented on individual MIT OCW course Web sites? Each MIT OCW course Web site is developed individually with the participating faculty and instructors. It includes as much of the MIT faculty member's course materials as are available in a digital format, or can be cost-effectively prepared; and is free of Intellectual Property and copyright restrictions. MIT faculty and instructors publish only as much content as they are comfortable having on a Web site that is freely accessible worldwide. There are different reasons why a course on the MIT OCW Web site may be missing certain materials. One of the primary reasons is intellectual property: because MIT OCW is a free and open publication on the Web, we have very strict criteria for what we can and cannot publish on our site. For all published materials, we must receive publication permission from the original author of the materials, whether they be MIT faculty, MIT students, or a third-party content provider. Materials we cannot obtain permission for are not published. Therefore, the materials for some courses are limited by copyright and intellectual property. The hope is that one day, by fostering the open sharing of knowledge and the free publication of educational materials on the Web, more and more content providers will see the value of open sharing and will grant us permission to publish their proprietary materials on a more regular basis.
• Information on Connections, international open course offerings sponsored via Rice.