May 27, 2012

LibriVox

LibriVox provides free audiobooks from the public domain. The LibriVox objective is “to make all books in the public domain available, for free, in audio format on the internet”.  LibriVox volunteers record chapters of books in the public domain and release the audio files back onto the net. Our goal is to make all public domain books available as free audio books.

In April 2012, it had a catalogue of over 5,400 unabridged books and shorter works available to download and produced on average 90 audiobooks per month. Around ninety percent of the collection is in English, although LibriVox recordings are available in 33 languages altogether.

February 16, 2012

Online Education Database (OEDb)


We’ve compiled the Online Education Database (OEDb) to help ambitious students and prospectives find the most convenient, valuable and relevant education programs to fulfill their academic and career objectives. Adults going back to school in pursuit of a higher degree, high school graduates curious about starting a college program, and nontraditional students in search of online education options are all welcome to survey our comprehensive reviews and rankings of online colleges and degree programs. Picking the perfect school is easy.

Start by comparing online colleges or by exploring the types of academic programs and degree levels these schools offer, in fields like engineering, business, the arts and humanities, and health care, plus many more. Our OEDb Library will guide you in your school search and will help you understand the unique dynamics of online education — how it works, who it serves, and how it can help you build an invigorating, lasting career.

Visit the Rankings page and database for information on the best accredited online colleges and universities cross the country.

February 13, 2012

Zotero


Zotero is an easy-to-use yet powerful research tool that helps you gather, organize, and analyze sources (citations, full texts, web pages, images, and other objects), and lets you share the results of your research in a variety of ways.

An extension to the popular open-source web browser Firefox, Zotero includes the best parts of older reference manager software (like EndNote) — the ability to store author, title, and publication fields and to export that information as formatted references—and the best parts of modern software and web applications (like iTunes and del.icio.us), such as the ability to interact, tag, and search in advanced ways.

Zotero integrates tightly with online resources; it can sense when users are viewing a book, article, or other object on the web, and—on many major research and library sites—find and automatically save the full reference information for the item in the correct fields. Since it lives in the web browser, it can effortlessly transmit information to, and receive information from, other web services and applications; since it runs on one’s personal computer, it can also communicate with software running there (such as Microsoft Word). And it can be used offline as well (e.g., on a plane, in an archive without WiFi).

January 3, 2012 • 12 notes

UoPeople - TUITION-FREE ONLINE EDUCATION

University of the People (UoPeople) is the world’s first tuition-free online academic institution dedicated to the global advancement and democratization of higher education. The high-quality low-cost global educational model embraces the worldwide presence of the Internet and dropping technology costs to bring university-level studies within reach of millions of people across the world. With the support of respected academics, humanitarians and other visionaries, the UoPeople student body represents a new wave in global education.

December 30, 2011 • 11,686 notes • obsessionfull

How to find textbooks online for free: a post.


obsessionfull:

Textbooks are fucking expensive, and if your professor doesn’t require a physical copy (most don’t - they just want you to have the book at hand. Or maybe even not. Some professors literally give no fucks about whether you have the book or not) and you don’t mind having your copy as an electronic copy - this is the post for you!

Most textbook companies put out new editions every year or so even though there isn’t really that much new information. Sometimes they’ll eliminate questions if it’s something like a math or chemistry book or they’ll add in a few sentences about updated legislation (the professor I work for teaches human sexuality, and the newest edition of the book she uses included the 2009 decision to allow same-sex couples have hospital visitation rights). These new editions are pointless and only created to make the textbook company money and to cut down on students selling to each other. You’re going to ignore that. We love older editions. Make sure when you’re searching on the following sites that you don’t include the edition number to give you more search results. If one with your edition comes up - great! If not, you can usually stick to something one to three editions behind without any major changes.

Sites you should be searching:

  • FilesTube - FilesTube searches THE ENTIRE INTERNET for files uploaded to file-sharing websites such as MegaUpload, Mediafire, or WuUpload. Sometimes people will upload pdf files of your textbook. This is always an important first search.
  • Google Books - You usually won’t find your textbook on Google Books, but it’s always worth a look. Sometimes pages are missing because it’s only a preview of the book, but again - always worth a look.
  • Scribd - People upload documents to Scribd and by becoming a member (free!) or connecting through Facebook (if you’re lazy!), you can download whatever files you may find. This sometimes includes textbooks.
  • BookBoon - website specifically for finding pdf versions of textbooks
  • Curriki - free open source materials
  • Flat World Knowledge - free business, humanities, and science textbooks
  • California Learning Resource Network
  • Open Culture
  • Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources
  • TorrentScan - textbooks are also uploaded to torrent sites in some cases - you may as well check.
  • If push comes to shove, you can try variations of googling “textbook name torrent” or “textbook name download” or “textbook name download free.” Sometimes things pop up and I never would have known about them.
  • LibraryPirate is a torrent search site specifically for textbooks. (Added 10 October 2011)
  • AMAZING Reddit post (Added 2 November 2011)
  • JenkThat - I haven’t tried this out yet, but I’ve heard good things from others. It’s also a good place to find other ebooks that aren’t textbooks. (Added 29 December 2011)

I’ve found all 8 of my textbooks for this term (19 credit hours, six classes) through one of the methods above. I’m not even going to look at retail prices, but checking BigWords.com (which, if you want to buy your books/can’t find them anywhere with one of the previous methods, will give you the cheapest price on the internet), I saved $497.87 by doing this. It takes time, but it’s definitely worth almost $500 worth of time. If you know of more ways to find free textbooks - please let me know!

(via absurdreasoning)