Success no longer comes at a price, especially when it comes to success in the IT world. Today, all it takes is choosing where to start, and there are no limits on what you can learn to achieve. [highlight ]You need not stick to your school curriculum anymore, or be inhibited by a non-technical college course; the Internet has the answer to all your technological cravings, at zero investments.[/highlight]
Free eLearning might seem too good to be true, but it is true and is available for everyone to see. There are people out there who understand the importance of computer education accessible to all, empowering the budding programmers, web designers and developers. Alas, so few know about these portals that many a times their dreams never come to fulfilment.
So hitherto presented are the top 5 (mostly) Free- eLearning portals for tech enthusiasts.
[alert type=white ]Disclaimer: I am including websites that provide Information Technology related education EXCLUSIVELY. This excludes any sites that provide courses related to music, art, science, mathematics, etc. So websites like Coursera and Ted-Ed, no matter how awesome they may be, are being left out.[/alert]
[button color=”red” size=”big” alignment=”center” rel=”follow” openin=”newwindow” url=”https://www.codecademy.com/”]1. CodeAcademy[/button]
This website provides highly interactive and dynamic environment for learners of coding in any language. It is primarily focused on making the users familiar with coding environment and feeling comfortable with creating and editing their source code. It is a highly innovative website for introduction to various scripting and coding languages. Unlike the most free eLearning portals, lessons are in the form of interactive hands-on assignments, instead of tutorial videos, with step by step instruction at each stage.
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[button color=”blue” size=”big” alignment=”center” rel=”follow” openin=”newwindow” url=”https://code.org/”]2. Code[/button]
A toddler’s step towards learning to program in any language, this website has instructional videos featuring the most eminent and well-known personalities from the IT world. An introductory course “1 hour of code” introduces the user to the basic rules of syntax and algorithms in the most fun ways possible.
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[button color=”green” size=”big” alignment=”center” rel=”follow” openin=”newwindow” url=”http://www.w3schools.com/”]3. W3Schools[/button]
One of the most renowned name among web developers, it is the original web development education hub. It contains lessons for almost all modern scripting languages that are in the most demand. All of them are in the same interactive lesson format that most learners are comfortable with. The lessons aren’t in plenty, but they are enough to give you a good start; and you do know what they say about the tasks well begun.
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[button color=”grey” size=”big” alignment=”center” rel=”follow” openin=”newwindow” url=”https://www.youtube.com/course?category=University%2FEngineering%2FComputer%2520Science%2FProgramming%2520Languages&feature=edu&list=ECF7C73918190889CE”]4. Principles of Programming Languages[/button]
This 35 hour long video series covers concepts of type checking, monomorphism, normal forms, structured data, programming commands, environments, syntax and binding. It is not as interactive as the other members of this list, but it is really helpful in visualizing concepts of programming. If you want to start with the absolute basics of programming, this series is the best for you.
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[button color=”brown” size=”big” alignment=”center” rel=”follow” openin=”newwindow” url=”https://see.stanford.edu/”]5. Stanford Engineering Everywhere[/button]
Coming straight from one of the biggest institutions of technological education, SEE is an initiative by Andrew Ng at Stanford University to offer a number of Stanford courses online for free. When you look at the actual number of courses, you might be a little turned off, but you have to understand that it is not a matter of quantity but quality. The two most interesting fields of technology that every geek wants to know about- Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence, are available completely free of cost.
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