Category — Free Resources

If you are like me, you may want to go to grad school, but live in a place where your local colleges do no offer a program that has to do with your field. I have recently been looking at online programs that would minimize both cost and not interupt my work schedule. I found Distance Grad Schools to be quite helpful. You can choose the subject you are looking to work in, and the site lists prospective schools you could apply for.

stickK is a website that encourages you to finish what you started by having you create a committment contract, and giving yourself a time frame to do it in.  This could be useful if you are working on a big project, such as a group project or dissertation, and need an extra push to see it through by your deadline. You can also put money on yourself, and if you don’t complete the committment, it can be donated to charity. If you complete it by the deadline, you receive the money back. Sounds like a good source of motivation to me!

 A tool that always helps me with my work is mindmapping, whether it is making a decision about something, or trying to figure out a topic for your dissertation (click on the thumbnail for an example). Glinkr is a web-based mind mapper that can be used to share all over the web. You can add links and notes to each box, and they can be viewed by clicking on the box. It is free to try out in their Sand Box section, but you have to register to save you mind map.

Remember back in the day when we used to have to hand write our class notes? I know, what an archaic thought . The dark ages! (Or just earlier this decade.) Nowadays though we have those paper thin laptops we tote to every class making it oh so much easier and cooler looking to be studious and take notes.

Taking online notes is super easy with NoteSake, a free app that lets you take notes, save them, organize them, search them and print them in a handy dandy .pdf or .doc. One of the coolest features is that you can easily share your notes with a group (as big as ya want!) so that they’re easy sharing of info between classmates.

NoteSake makes staying organized easy even for the most absent-minded of students. This equates to less time searching for notes, allowing you to spend your time doing more important things, such as getting actual work accomplished.

Source: Lifehacker

Whoever said that nothing in life is free was obviously not familiar with the internet. The other day I told you about 4 Universities that offer OpenCourseWare, a program where educators and students and self-learners from around the world have the opportunity to take classes for free at some prestigious institutions.

But there’s more! The Education Portal lists the 10 Universities with the best free online courses. If you’re short on cash (and what student isn’t?) and you have a hungry mind, you’ll love that resource. Isn’t the web great?

I have to think that some of the richest people on the planet are own bookstores that sell University text books.

There is one thing that is a thorn in my side–you go into the book store and pay lots of dough for a used text book that has been highlighted, chewed and is almost falling apart, and then after the quarter is finished you go back to said bookstore and re-sell your text books getting only pennies on the dollar for a book that is basically the same shape they were sold to you. Argh!

That’s how they get ya!

Thankfully web savvy students may have found a way to put some cash back in their wallets by getting some of their text books from The Public Domain Books Reprints Service , which is an unofficial go-between for free copyright sites like Google Books’ public works and Project Gutenberg, and also for inexpensive self-publishing services like Lulu.com.

This is not free guys, but it sure is a heck of a lot cheaper than the University bookstore!

Source: Lifehacker
Photo: Old School

This is perhaps the greatest invention of this millennium. Ready to burn to a disc for Mac or PC, the Software For Starving Students package is bundled with all sorts of free apps that will make your life a field of tulips dappled in sunshine.

And can you believe it’s free? From their website:

The cost of a college education is always increasing — usually faster than students can earn money. We hope our efforts will help lower students’ software costs. We obtain all of this software, legally free of charge, via the Internet. Most of it is open source, the rest is obtained and distributed by permission. It doesn’t cost us anything but our time (for the most part), so we pass the good will on to you.

Software For Starving Students

Source: Lifehacker

The National Academies of Science and Engineering and the Institute of Medicine offer students a free online career/grad school planning guide called “Careers in Science and Engineering“. Included are topics such as evaluating career goals, deciding on graduate school, and choosing your graduate research topic. Make sure to click “contents” to get inside of the book!

Definr has to be one of the quickest online dictionaries that I’ve ever used! With a simple interface and no advertisements, this site will definitely help you with writing those thesis papers! As you type in your word, Definr shows possible words that you might be typing. Click “meep”, and it gives you every definition imaginable! Happy word hunting!

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to take classes at top notch universities such as MIT, Tufts, or Johns Hopkins? Well wonder no more–now you can, for free! Here’s the deal:

MIT has a program called OpenCourseWare where educators, students and self-learners from around the world have the opportunity to take classes at MIT for free!

Of course this is completely virtual–you take the classes from your home at your own convenience. You get all the class notes, quizzes, exams, discussion groups and some audio/video of the lectures for over 1400 classes they offer–at no cost. Classes are available on the graduate and undergraduate levels.

Some of the departments I’m looking at are Anthropology, Foreign Languages & Literature, and History. It’s MIT, so they also have the science/techie departments. Under each department there are tons of classes to choose from, all at different levels.

Since it’s free, you don’t get any direct teacher interaction, and there are no grades. You also don’t get credits for taking these courses, but this could be a great way of exploring other fields of interest before or after you start graduate school.

There are 3 other universities in the US that are also offering OpenCourseWare:

Johns Hopkins University School Of Public Health
Tufts University
Utah State University