Sunday, November 29, 2009

Learnin' for Free

I found something incredible. The Ministry of Human Resource Development for the government of India has funded a program called The National Program Technology Enhanced Learning. It is an extensive program to help people get training in technology. I haven’t investigated the full reach of the program, but I have looked through the videos on YouTube.com and it is very impressive.

Incredibly, they have posted 4,251 videos. Most are one hour classes on different college level classes covering 117 different topics. Basically, it is a full college education on video free for everyone. All the videos are surprisingly in English, but the professors are Indian. Some are done very well, others not so much.

The list of topics looks just like a syllabus from any university. They include Electrical, Mechanical, and Civil Engineering, Mathematics, Physics, Computer Science, Electronics, and on and on. I have a couple that I am particularly interested in; Mechanical Robotics and Mechanical - Kinematics of Machines.

Here is the playlist for the entire program.  Very impressive.  To give you a taste, this is the video for Introduction to Robotics.

4 comments:

  1. Absolutely amazing. I'll certainly watch a good number of these... and pick up a nice indian accent along the way :D

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  2. hmm, copy&paste doesn't seem to work here so I'll have to omit the link...
    I was browsing the videos and it turns out that in Lecture 4 on Mechanical Robotics around 23:05 ... the professor actually uses LEGO to illustrate the movements of a robotic arm!!

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  3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7iBT5l599c

    Out of all the instructors, this guy is the worst. The sound is terrible, and it is the lesson I want to hear the most!

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  4. if you filter out highs and lows it becomes just bearable. Also, the guy sort of grows on you and whereas when you listen to a 5 second clip you can't make out a word, after listening for several minutes I only very occasionally miss one.

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