Now that you’re in college, it’s time to leave the iPhone bubble wrap app and other gimmicky noisemakers behind. If you own an iPhone or an iPod Touch, you can get ahead of the game with some of the most productive apps around. This list of twenty-five essential free — yes, free — iPhone apps for college students provides you with an edge. Continue reading →

Technology as well as the ability to travel has helped many students and educators reach out to learn and to teach others how to institute a global learning environment. The following list of top fifty education blogs show the broad reach in this effort, with blogs listed in categories that range from studying abroad to e-learning technology and from international diplomacy to cultural resources. Each blog chosen has been updated recently to provide current resources and information.

Continue reading →

Making a commitment to a two- to four-year college degree is much like getting married. If you do not know what you’re walking into, that commitment may fail. Getting to know a college is imperative for success in many instances. This is why colleges open their doors for inspection to new recruits before the college year begins. Now, many colleges are opening virtual doors through blogs that may reveal a school’s perspective on itself and on the world. Continue reading →

Do you ever wonder why the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) might be more memorable than other technological schools? To become memorable, a school must reach out to people in ways that seem beneficial. Alumni organizations can help spread the word about their alma mater. Great sports teams and debate teams also can help boost a school’s standing. But, another fork to take in the marketing path is through the Internet, as MIT and other schools have done in sharing courses online and without charge.

MIT and other schools are up front about these open source offerings – no one can earn credits from taking the courses, nor can they use the courses to claim a degree. But, when MIT and other colleges opened their virtual gates to allow the average person to get a glimpse behind their ivory towers, these colleges became well known for their altruism and transparency. Open Courseware has become a marketing tool, as it helps schools that use this option to become mroe well known in a local and global community. Continue reading →

Movement way back in 2002 started by MIT to propagate and launch the concept of free online learning soon developed into a revolution of open course ware imbibed by other universities and educational institutions. Following are some of the websites of directories for open course ware as a result of initiative taken by MIT.

A World of Ideas
This directory is collection of videos and audio lectures on academic subjects and topics according to discipline, theory and topic. Links to various university sites and radio stations are provided under discipline and subject for the lectures. Most of the links are to be the video or audio data or otherwise is provided to the pages where data should be looked checked out for. More to run data a mix up of media players like real player, windows media player or quick time player is needed.

Archive Grid
ArchiveGrid is an important center where collection of historical documents, personal papers and family histories is restored as to receive archives around the world. It has collection of nearly a million descriptions as contributed to it by libraries, museums and archives.

British Academic Portal
It is the portal of British academy which consist directory of online resources in the humanities and social sciences. It aims to provide excellent high level of educational level by serving and providing resources at its pages. This British Academy’s directory of online resources in the humanities and social sciences is designed as an entry point to provide resources for people working in higher education and research.

DOAJ
It is the Directory of Open Access Journals that provides free, full and qualified controlled scientific and scholarly journals. It has relatively journals in all subjects and languages. There are nearly 4345 journals in the directory. Its 1649 article level journals have nearly 312508 articles in the DOAJ service.

Economics Network
UK’s academy of higher education’s network of economics provide publications, events, funding opportunities and other resources to support University teachers of economics. From the website that is leading education site nearly 6000 documents are downloaded by human users, daily.

Intute
This is a free online service that helps you to learn about the best online resource for the purposes of your studies and learning. Among million of resources as available on Internet, it has the most specialized and reviewed content. The Intute consortium consists of University of Birmingham, University of Bristol, Heriot-Watt University, The University of Manchester, Manchester Metropolitan University, University of Nottingham and University of Oxford

Librarian’s Internet Index
Librarians’ Internet Index (LII) is a publicly-funded website and weekly newsletter that consists care fully selected websites covering news and events on topics like current events  and issues, holiday and seasons, tools for information users, human interest and more.

Merlot
Merlot is an advanced searchable collection online learning materials catalogued by registered members and a set of faculty development support services. The purpose of this online collection of information is to develop into a prominent online community where faculty, staff and students around the world can share their learning material.

Open Course Ware Finder
OCW Finder let students search for free online courses called Open Course Wares. It also facilitates other Universities and other OCW providers to get their course register with it. The OCW Finder was developed at Center for Open Sustainable Learning at Utah State University and the project of development was funded by Andrew W Mellon Foundation.

Voice of the Shuttle
Started in 1994, as a suite of static Web pages VOS serves content dynamically on the net that is offered in form of free resources for learning on subjects ranging from humanities to subjects related to social sciences.

The tradition of open course ware that was started for the professionals and specialized courses by MIT way back in 2002 has picked up the stream and courses weaved around that concept are readily available with other universities and social media sites. Twitter though new at this concept, however, has well adapted to this development. As now one can seek assistance on any subject from a good number of professors providing free literature to their students. Following are a few of the most famous professors spreading learning on Twitter.

Christopher Penn: Co founder of Podcamp, he provides information on financial indicators and courses in Finance and Online Marketing, daily. He also provides tips on online marketing too. To know him more you can get into reading of like christppherspenn.com, The Twitter Power Guide.

John Abyrne: Offering tips and advice on business, finance and journalism, he is Editor-in-Chief at a national business magazine’s website. More one can understand him as Digital Journalism Advocate.

Jeremiah Owyang: The Senior Analyst in Social Computing at Forrester Research he provides free information on Social Media Web Strategy. He is also an effective salsa doctor too.

Beth Kanter: On Twitter, she delivers lectures on non profit and its relation with social media for better co-ordination and operability. She tells about use of social media as mean for better connectivity with patients, families, caregivers and potential doctors.

Ann Handley: Being as a Chief Content Officer she has more to deliver on Content Marketing and has picked up Social Media as a method to get connected with her audience on marketing issues and topics.

Chris Brogan: As a New Media proponent, he is an expert campaigner of Online Business communication.

Sarah Evans: The founder of the community #journochat her lectures and references are filled with high end information on communications, New Media and Community Building.

Tara “missrogue” Hunt: With specialization in marketing to existing communities she provides lectures and notes on Online Community Marketing and Personal Branding.  To read her more one can go to horsepigcow.com and Whuffie Factor.

Jennifer Leggio: She is an active blogger expresses her ideas prominently on Social Media, Technology and communications.

Jay Rosen: Professor at NYU Journalism School he delivers and shares his learning on Journalism and New Media.

Online universities have received a significant increase in the number of enrolments in the past few years. This is because people have realized they can still obtain their degrees from learning online. When it comes to the choice of an online university, students have a hard time selecting a suitable one but online university rankings makes it easier because you can now know the best to go for depending on the program you want to pursue.

There are some universities that are always striving to provide the best online studies and because they remain reputable, they never miss places in the top ten best online universities. The universities that are in the top ten positions at the moment are Kaplan University, University of Phoenix, Capella University, American Intercontinental University, Liberty University, Baker College Online, Devry University, Grand Canyon University, Westwood College Online and Boston University.

Online university rankings are just meant to assist students in selecting a university but you still have the responsibility of looking up the institution on your own and see the services and courses it provides before you make a decision. A university may be ranked number one but it may not provide the course you want the way you would like to have it hence you don’t have to select it just because it is highly ranked. This can, however, help you in comparing since you already have the best and now it’s just to select based on your own criteria.

To come up with the rankings, there are many things that are used to compare the institutions. They may be ranked according to the quality of their programs but sometimes the researchers may use the university resources that aid in learning or the number of student enrolments. You should find out the research methodology used because what was used to come up with the ranking may not be what you are looking for in a university to study in hence you shouldn’t rely so much on the rankings. The ranking is also a way to encourage the universities to aim to provide the best.