Archive for October 2007

From Visa and the NFL, here’s a cool web flash game for learning the fundamentals of finance. Although the some of the questions are pretty simplistic, this could be a great tool for introducing these concepts to a high-school class. Downloadable teaching modules are also available.

Here’s a great site for history afficianados. In addition to a comprehensive listing of history shows, the site also links to individual episodes on great people. For instance, if you’re interested in Winston Churchill, you’ll find a list of episodes from British History 101, Hardcore History, Speaking of History, etc.

The Textbook Revolution archive is the largest collection of free textbooks on the web. What could be wrong with that? Well, the bad side is that some of these great additions don’t get all the attention they deserve.

For instance, economics students or professionals needing to brush up on some concepts should visit this large link-list from the economics dept at Oswego. In addition to some good overview materials there are some advanced materials focusing in on topics like econometrics and money mechanics.

Speaking of economics, if you haven’t seen Prof. McAfee’s Intro Econ textbook. This is one of the best free textbooks available - large, complete (and did we say free?).

Boing Boing pointed out this collection of stunning and original “jumping sheet” photos from William Hundley. These extreme stop-action shots create some lovely images and brilliant color contrasts. On the slide show, also look at the underwater shots.

Monu is an excellent Dutch magazine on urbanism which posts all articles as pdfs on its website. Using Zaragoza as a case study, the recent issue contains a fascinating look at secondary European cities reinventing themselves through the magic formula of 10 ingredients including superstar architects, low-cost airlines and an Ikea.

Lots of good documentaries find themselves posted on Google Video - the neglected older child of the “non-evil” conglomerate. Dmitry Davydov has collected some of his favourites on his Best Free Docs blog, such as the BBC’s Dangerous Mind documentary (above) on four brilliant mathematicians whose discoveries drove them insane. Also check out this guy’s great collection.

Here’s a new webpage from Jon Bischke at learn out loud. 10 Things TV is another step towards educational YouTube-esque videos. While some sites are doing this - notably VideoJug, Expert Village and SuTree - there is still a long way to go. Jon’s got the right idea on focusing in on language learners. Right now only Spanish videos are available but more are to come. Keep track of this site.

If you are a Spanish learner, all see some of these two podcasts discussed over on the Stingy Scholar.

Here’s a great post discussing semi-serious palentological analyses of the biological plausability of Godzilla. Click on the links (such as Dexter’s) for more discussion. Looks like a great topic for a high-school biology class.

Back in 2005 when I first started writing about free educational materials, my Stingy Scholar blog posts were just a personal attempt to keep track of some good sites I came across. As I kept looking I was amazed by the depth and quality of sites such as Learn Out Loud and Textbook Revolution. I was also amazed by the number of people interested in free educational materials.

Two years down the line more and more universities, companies and individuals have gotten on board to develop and share great resources for free. Many good lists have been put together such as this one. Skimming through the list you see iPod courses from universities, reference pages, free software and eBooks.

We’ll take at some of the great sites and new entries in these sub-categories in posts to come.