Al Gore has three questions about climate change and our future. First: Do we have to change?Each day, global-warming pollution traps as much heat energy as would be released by 400,000 Hiroshima-class atomic bombs. This trapped heat is leading to stronger storms and more extreme floods, he says: “Every night on the TV news now is like a nature hike through the Book of Revelation.” Second: Can we change? We’ve already started. Third and big question: Will we change? In this challenging, inspiring talk, Gore says yes. “When any great moral challenge is ultimately resolved into a binary choice between what is right and what is wrong, the outcome is foreordained because of who we are as human beings,” he says. “That is why we’re going to win this.”
10. Free Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)
Massive open online courses (MOOCs) have greatly expanded the educational opportunities for everyone with a computer and an internet connection. These typically free online courses, usually provided by universities and colleges, cover everything from Astronomy to Web Development. MOOCs are a category unto themselves, but there are plenty of individual MOOC providers and platforms to look to, including the universities themselves, such as Stanford Online and MIT Open Courseware. Popular commercial and non-profit organizations that serve up courses from multiple sources include Academic Earth, edX, Class Central, Udacity, Coursera, Udemy, and FutureLearn. If you feel like there are too many free online courses to choose from, don’t worry. Several of the tools and sites below curate courses from MOOCs and other sources into fields of study.
Skillshare is a learning community that connects over a million students and teachers. In fact, anyone can teach a class (typically 30 minutes to 1 hour long) on subjects like crafts, cooking, film, photography, technology, or writing—as long as the class adheres to the site’s publishing guidelines. It’s a good resource for viewing project-based lessons (e.g., designing 3D type and texture) and there are tracks of courses grouped by subject. Over 300 lessons are available for free, but you’ll need a pro subscription to access the 3,000+ full library.
8. University of Reddit
Love Reddit? You can partake in this community’s crowd-sourced online education initiative. Covering standard subjects like art and computer science as well as “fun and games” (e.g., StarCraft II Strategy), University of Reddit is taught by Reddit users. You can also apply to teach a class yourself.
CourseBuffet lets you search and compare hundreds of free MOOCs from over 250 universities. You can search by subject, browse by field, or even see learning paths that organize courses into a bachelor’s degree-level curriculum for you—for example a complete computer science or management path. And it’s all free.
ALISON not only provides free online courses from publishers like Google, Microsoft, MIT, Macmillan, and Cambridge University, the site also offers diploma-level courses. So you can earn a certificate in project management, HR, social work, and other subjects that might be helpful during a job search. Over 750 free diploma and certificate courses are available now, and you can use the site to track your progress and test your skills.
Join over 38 million online learners at Khan Academy, a non-profit MOOC of its own. Their tagline is “you can learn anything,” and you’ll find a wide range of interesting video classes here as well as interactive courses. Track your progress and earn badges to keep learning fun.
3. iTunes U
The iTunes U app for iOS, Mac, or Windows not only lets you access courses from leading schools and other sources on your device, it lets you see and complete course assignments and add notes for each course. The catalog contains hundreds of thousands of resources on various topics, all at your fingertips.
2. Open Culture
Open Culture is a treasure trove for any learner. Currently, the site lists 1,150 free online courses, 725 free movies, 700 free audio books, 800 free ebooks, 200 free textbooks, 300 free language lessons, and 150 free business courses. They’ve grown a lot—and continue to keep growing—since we mentioned them a few years ago. Resources are well classified. This is a great one-stop source for free, enriching media.
1. Lifehacker U
Lifehacker U is a well-curated collection of the best free online classes you can take each semester. One of the best things about it is our own Alan Henry highlights specific courses in each subject field you might be interested in, along with detailed notes and descriptions. So rather than pointing you to, say, Stanford University in general, you’ll see courses from multiple schools in your discipline that are new or returning at this time.
The resources above just scratch the surface of all the places you can learn something new online, of course. But they’re a good place to start and should keep you busy learning all year round.
“Even if you are using computers exactly as they’re supposed to be used, might that still be hurting learning?” is the question Mueller sought out to answer.
The two researchers set up three studies to test various conditions. In the first study, one group of undergraduate college students were told to watch a 20-minute TED Talk on a subject they weren’t likely to know much about and take notes by hand. The other group took notes on the computer.
“Students who took notes on laptops tended to transcribe the content verbatim,” Mueller said. Those students took many more notes, but seemed to process what they heard much less. In a test taken a few minutes after completing the lecture, students who had taken notes using longhand performed much better. The difference was particularly striking on conceptual questions, where students had to take two pieces of information they’d heard in the lecture and synthesize them into a conclusion.
The typing versus handwriting debate recalls a related, heated discussion over whether students should continue to learn handwriting. While the research is not conclusive, several researchers contend that writing by hand stimulates special neural circuits, leading to stronger reading ability, new idea generation and retention of information.
Mueller thinks there’s still hope for digital note-taking, but says students must be taught how to slow down and process information as they take it in. She thinks there could be promise in stylus technology, which would slow the pace at which a person can take notes, but would still allow for digital storage.
Some educators are taking long form notes to new levels, embracing the idea of sketchnotes, in which the ideas presented in a lecture are captured as a combination of words and images.
“I sat through two 45-minute lectures in high school social studies and not only was I super focused because I was doodling, I could also basically give the lecture afterwards,” said Shelley Paul, who at the time was director of learning design at Woodward Academy. “And if I look at the doodle again today for three to four minutes, I can basically remember it all again.”
Paul admits it can be hard to keep up with a fast paced lecture, but even the things she decides not to depict end up getting connected to the images she does draw. She’s been implementing the practice with students who love the freedom to doodle in class and who are making great connections between information in the process.
While unconventional, drawing as note-taking makes sense based on memory research, which shows that if multiple ideas can be condensed into an image, the brain stores all those related ideas as one. The image acts as a zip file for multiple ideas, helping to fit more into the limited short term memory.
Conhecimento é a matéria-prima da inovação. Quando identifica-se uma oportunidade ou um desafio, tudo o que aprendemos, incluindo nossa experiência cultural, ajuda a criar uma solução. Desde o que aprendemos na escola, até os costumes da comunidade em que vivemos, tudo serve para moldar essas reações, mas raramente essa base é gerenciada de maneira adequada pelas companhias nas quais atuamos.
Prova disso está no fato de que grande parte das empresas armazena suas informações mais estratégicas e críticas nas mãos (ou na mente) de seus executivos, sem documentá-las oficialmente. Assim, não é de espantar que muitas companhias, hoje, estejam extremamente preocupadas com os processos de sucessão de seus altos executivos, principais detentores de informações corporativas.
Com a intenção de resolver tal problema, as organizações têm investido na capacitação de seus funcionários. A iniciativa é louvável, certamente, mas ignora o principal ponto fraco das empresas: os modelos de documentação, armazenamento e…