stuffguyswant:

Rejoice fellow uni students looking for some studyspo, we urge you to take a few free lessons, as well as academic lessons provided from actual universities on several topics. Have a look at the 50 top learning sites you can find online to help you save some time.

Art and Music

• Dave Conservatoire — Dave Conservatoire is an entirely free online music school offering a self-proclaimed “world-class music education for everyone,” and providing video lessons and practice tests.
• Drawspace — If you want to learn to draw or improve your technique, Drawspace has free and paid self-study as well as interactive, instructor-led lessons.
• Justin Guitar — The Justin Guitar site boasts over 800 free guitar lessons which cover transcribing, scales, arpeggios, ear training, chords, recording tech and guitar gear, and also offers a variety of premium paid mobile apps and content (books/ ebooks, DVDs, downloads).

Math, Data Science and Engineering

• Codecademy — Codecademy offers data science and software programming (mostly Web-related) courses for various ages groups, with an in-browser coding console for some offerings.
• Stanford Engineering Everywhere — SEE/ Stanford Engineering Everywhere houses engineering (software and otherwise) classes that are free to students and educators, with materials that include course syllabi, lecture videos, homework, exams and more.
• Big Data University — Big Data University covers Big Data analysis and data science via free and paid courses developed by teachers and professionals.
• Better Explained — BetterExplained offers a big-picture-first approach to learning mathematics — often with visual explanations — whether for high school algebra or college-level calculus, statistics and other related topics.

Design, Web Design/ Development

• HOW Design University — How Design University (How U) offers free and paid online lessons on graphic and interactive design, and has opportunities for those who would like to teach.
• HTML Dog — HTML Dog is specifically focused on Web development tutorials for HTML, CSS and JavaScript coding skills.
• Skillcrush — Skillcrush offers professional web design and development courses aimed at one who is interested in the field, regardless of their background — with short, easy-to-consume modules and a 3-month Career Blueprints to help students focus on their career priorities.
• Hack Design — Hack Design, with the help of several dozen designers around the world, has put together a lesson plan of 50 units (each with one or more articles and/or videos) on design for Web, mobile apps and more by curating multiple valuable sources (blogs, books, games, videos, and tutorials) — all free of charge.

General – Children and Adults

• Scratch – Imagine, Program, Share — Scratch from MIT is a causal creative learning site for children, which has projects that range from the solar system to paper planes to music synths and more.
• Udemy — Udemy hosts mostly paid video tutorials in a wide range of general topics including personal development, design, marketing, lifestyle, photography, software, health, music, language, and more.
• E-learning for kids — E-learning for Kids offers elementary school courses for children ages 5-12 that cover curriculum topic including math, science, computer, environment, health, language, life skills and others.
• Ed2go — Ed2go aims their “affordable” online learning courses at adults, and partners with over 2,100 colleges and universities to offer this virtual but instructor-led training in multiple categories — with options for instructors who would like to participate.
• GCF Learn Free — GCFLearnFree.org is a project of Goodwill Community Foundation and Goodwill Industries, targeting anyone look for modern skills, offering over 1,000 lessons and 125 tutorials available online at anytime, covering technology, computer software, reading, math, work and career and more.
• Stack Exchange — StackExchange is one of several dozen Q+A sites covering multiple topics, including Stack Overflow, which is related to computer technology. Ask a targeted question, get answers from professional and enthusiast peers to improve what you already know about a topic.
• HippoCampus — HippoCampus combines free video collections on 13 middle school through college subjects from NROC Project, STEMbite, Khan Academy, NM State Learning Games Lab and more, with free accounts for teachers.
• Howcast — Howcast hosts casual video tutorials covering general topics on lifestyle, crafts, cooking, entertainment and more.
• Memrise — Lessons on the Memrise (sounds like “memorize”) site include languages and other topics, and are presented on the principle that knowledge can be learned with gamification techniques, which reinforce concepts.
• SchoolTube — SchoolTube is a video sharing platform for K-12 students and their educators, with registered users representing over 50,000 schools and a site offering of over half a million videos.
• Instructables — Instructables is a hybrid learning site, offering free online text and video how-to instructions for mostly physical DIY (do-it-yourself) projects that cover various hands-on crafts, technology, recipes, game play accessories and more. (Costs lie in project materials only.)
• creativeLIVE — CreativeLive has an interesting approach to workshops on creative and lifestyle topics (photography, art, music, design, people skills, entreprenurship, etc.), with live access typically offered free and on-demand access requiring purchase.
• Do It Yourself — Do It Yourself (DIY) focuses on how-tos primarily for home improvement, with the occasional tips on lifestyle and crafts topics.
• Adafruit Learning System — If you’re hooked by the Maker movement and want to learn how to make Arduino-based electronic gadgets, check out the free tutorials at Adafruit Learn site — and buy the necessary electronics kits and supplies from the main site.
• Grovo — If you need to learn how to efficiently use a variety of Web applications for work, Grovo has paid (subscription, with free intros) video tutorials on best practices for hundreds of Web sites.

General College and University

• edX — The edX site offers free subject matter from top universities, colleges and schools from around the world, including MIT and Harvard, and many courses are “verified,” offering a certificate of completion for a nominal minimum fee.
• Cousera — Coursera is a learning site offering courses (free for audit) from over 100 partners — top universities from over 20 countries, as well as non-university partners — with verified certificates as a paid option, plus specializations, which group related courses together in a recommended sequence.
• MIT Open Courseware — MIT OpenCourseWare is the project that started the OCW / Open Education Consortium [http://www.oeconsortium.org], launching in 2002 with the full content of 50 real MIT courses available online, and later including most of the MIT course curriculum — all for free — with hundreds of higher ed institutions joining in with their own OCW course materials later.
• Open Yale Courses — Open Yale Courses (OYC) are free, open access, non-credit introductory courses recorded in Yale College’s classroom and available online in a number of digital formats.
• Open Learning Initiative — Carnegie Mellon University’s (CMU’s) Open Learning Initiative (OLI) is course content (many open and free) intended for both students who want to learn and teachers/ institutions requiring teaching materials.
• Khan Academy — Khan Academy is one of the early online learning sites, offering free learning resources for all ages on many subjects, and free tools for teachers and parents to monitor progress and coach students.
• MIT Video — MITVideo offers over 12,000 talks/ lecture videos in over 100 channels that include math, architecture and planning, arts, chemistry, biological engineering, robotics, humanities and social sciences, physics and more.
• Stanford Online — Stanford Online is a collection of free courses billed as “for anyone, anywhere, anytime” and which includes a wide array of topics that include human rights, language, writing, economics, statistics, physics, engineering, software, chemistry, and more.
• Harvard Extension School: Open Learning Initiative — Harvard’s OLI (Open Learning Initiative) offers a selection of free video courses (taken from the edX selection) for the general public that covers a range of typical college topics, includings, Arts, History, Math, Statistics, Computer Science, and more.
• Canvas Network — Canvas Network offers mostly free online courses source from numerous colleges and universities, with instructor-led video and text content and certificate options for select programs.
• Quantum Physics Made Relatively Simple — Quantum Physics Made Relatively Simple” is, as the name implies, a set of just three lectures (plus intro) very specifically about Quantum Physics, form three presentations given by theoretical physicist Hans Bethe.
• Open UW — Open UW is the umbrella initiative of several free online learning projects from the University of Washington, offered by their UW Online division, and including Coursera, edX and other channels.
• UC San Diego Podcast Lectures — Podcast USCD, from UC San Diego, is a collection of audio and/or video podcasts of multi-subject university course lectures — some freely available, other only accessible by registered students.
• University of the People — University of the People offers tuition-free online courses, with relatively small fees required only for certified degree programs (exam and processing fees).
• NovoEd — NovoEd claims a range of mostly free “courses from thought leaders and distinguished professors from top universities,” and makes it possible for today’s participants to be tomorrow’s mentors in future courses.

IT and Software Development

• Udacity — Udacity offers courses with paid certification and nanodegrees — with emphasis on skills desired by tech companies in Silicon Valley — mostly based on a monthly subscription, with access to course materials (print, videos) available for free.
• Apple Developer Site — Apple Developer Center may be very specific in topics for lessons, but it’s a free source of documentation and tutorials for software developers who want to develop apps for iOS Mobile, Mac OS X desktop, and Safari Web apps.
• Google Code — As with Apple Developer Center, Google Code is topic-narrow but a good source of documentation and tutorials for Android app development.
• Code.org — Code.org is the home of the “Hour of Code” campaign, which is aimed at teachers and educators as well as students of all ages (4-104) who want to teach or learn, respectively, computer programming and do not know where to start.
• Mozilla Developer Network — MDN (Mozilla Developer Network) offers learning resources — including links to offsite guides — and tutorials for Web development in HTML, CSS and JavaScript — whether you’re a beginner or an expert, and even if you’re not using Mozilla’s Firefox Web browser.
• Learnable — Learnable by Sitepoint offers paid subscription access to an ebook library of content for computers and tablets, and nearly 5,000 videos lessons (and associated code samples) covering software-related topics – with quizzes and certification available.
• Pluralsight — Pluralsight (previously PeepCode) offers paid tech and creative training content (over 3,700 courses and 130K video clips) for individuals, businesses and institutions that covers IT admin, programming, Web development, data visualization — as well as game design, 3D animation, and video editing through a partnership with Digital-Tutors.com, and additional software coding lessons through Codeschool.com.
• CodeHS — CodeSchool offers software coding lessons (by subscription) for individuals who want to learn at home, or for students learning in a high school teacher-led class.
• Aquent Gymnasium — Gymnasium offers a small but thorough set of free Web-related lesson plans for coding, design and user experience, but filters access by assessing the current knowledge of an enrollee and allows those with scores of at least 70% to continue.

helnastudies:

Today, we are going to talk about all those little nasty things that can pick our attention and ambition from that great deal of homework and make us absent untill sunset. 

It is an incredibly frustrating feeling. You are all set up by your table with books and pretty pens and music on your phone….aaaaaand its midnight and you have done actually nothing. What have gone wrong? WHYYYY???

There is no magic, no time thief, no aliens to make you angry with yourself. You are infested with little nasty things, bugs of distraction.

here they are dangerous, spreading ineffectiveness and procrastination. I will tell you everything about them and how to get rid of them. Lets start.

1.  Your body. It can actually be superbably distractive. Iching feet, dry skin, uneven lenses, headaches, amirite? Yeah. But the most uneasy are hunger and thirst. 

• Problem: Walking out of your room every 5 minutes for a cup of water is a good excuseand a goot opportunity to never ever finish that math problem.

Solution: get yourself a decent bottle of water. No, a cute pretty bottle you have is a no-no. Its damn small. A decent means a 1L bottle at least. Go big or go home. 

• Problem: a healthy snack is not the best idea either. You’ll eat in 1st 5 min, and then will go to get more. Or will be even hungrier. This horrible surgery math chapter is not reading itself, you know. 

Solution: Get yourself a minty gum. It will clear your mind, as well as your breath. Also, its proven, that chewing the same flavour gum at home and at a test helps you remember information better. 

A little addition from me as a doctor. The gum cheving habit gets rid of other mind bug most of us have – neurous instability. The same stuff all those fidget spinners are made for. I bet everyone experienced a leg -shaking or pen-shaking experience which annoys teachers as well as your classmates. A simple solution is a piece of gum. It awakes that good old reflex of sucking on your mother’s nipple which is a very very comforting action for everyone. Its in our nature. It also kills the feeling of hungry. No more unscheduled night chocolate! No more getting outta shape just because your studies are more important than your appearance.

• Problem: Your hair. It swooshes around. It falls. It tickles your ears and face. You are constantly touching it trying to make yourself some space to read. As as you touch it its getting greasier and dirtier. Ewwwww.

Solution: get yourself a rubber band, or a hair tie, a couple of hair clips or whatever you have. You will feel instantly much free.

• Problem: miscellaneous things around your face. OMG, is that a pimple? Oh and your nails are not in the best shape too!

Solution: lock away your mirror, nail scissors and pliers. They will get you away for hours and hours of grooming. It can be done later!

2.  Technology – A blessing and a curse of humanity, it made it extremely easier to get information, but beware of its beauty! It suck us in like a pretty siren whose sweet song made poor saillors go drown. 

• Problem: phone. It’s always near, clicking, ringing, providing tons of enjoyful activities at the tip of your finger. Temptating, isnt it? Even if there is no internet, you can simply slide between your selfies choosing the best one.

Solution: get it away. Put it in the other room. lock it in a drawer. put it in the closet, somewhere you can not see it. Turn of sound and get it away. 

What? Oh, you gotta question and you need to find the answer? get yourself a piece of paper and write it there. You ll learn it later, especially if its a question if there were wigs for Barbie dolls.

•  Problem: computer. this little bastard can be tricky. You have some books there, slides and stuff, but you keep playing minesweeper or refreshing your anti-virus? 

Solution: print it! Its the only option for me and you can always use recycled paper for those needs. Also its easier to read. 

• problem: Internet in general

Solution: find all your textbooks and slides, download them and now- go turn off that wi-fi router. I SAID TURN IT OFF!! you will find yourself a lot less distracted.

3. Enviroment. Its going dirty and polluted, but also might be a huge bug, being right around you.

• Problem: noise. That thing is complicated. You can not get rid of all your relatives, little siblings, roommates or cars outside. But you can make them less noiticiable. 

Solution: White noise is a good decision, and it may vary accordingly to your taste. Some people prefer some monotonous sounds like ocean or nature, some like ambiance, lo-fi or classical music. 

Its scientifically proven that Mozart’s music stimulates our brain and makes it work faster.  Here is the link to my soundcloud collection of Mozart’s compositions Mozart Daily

As for me, I prefer listening to Psaltyr, A read book of prayers and psalms with a little addition of russian orthodox church music. It goes in ancient slavic so it doesnt really distract, as it is not really understandable. It also get me in a sort of a spiritual way, and it might as well work for you, as it has a very calming effect on the nervous system. Here is a link on Youtube Psaltyr (i couldn’t find one on soundcloud, sorry)

• Problem: climate. Sitting in front of a window is a constant battle between freezing and sweating.

Solution: Our brain doest work when there is too little oxygen around. Open your window, make you body breathe. Also get a blanket, you dont want to get cold, do you? “Keep your feet warm, your head cold, and your stomach empty” – said a famous russian battle commander once. I guess, he’s right!

• Problem: window view. Oh, how many pigeons are there again? And what is that red thing in the neighbour’s window? 

Solution: pull your blinds, close your curtains. Stop counting on birds and stray cats, and that peculiar trek of a paper bag on the street has nothing to do with your hometask.

 Well, all right. Now you are all set and ready to start. 

I hope this post will be any helpful to you. See you soon!