Some men see things as they are and ask why. Others dream things that never were and ask why not.

George Bernard Shaw

As children, all of us passed through a “why?” stage. In the brain’s pursuit of adjusting to the world, our parents were bombarded with inquiries into the most mundane of things, so that we would learn and understand. They might have hated our incessant questioning, but we grew, listening intensely to their answers, and the world started to make sense.

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While it will not get you a degree or even course-credit, some of you that just enjoy reading and learning about a random thing here or there - and maybe wish to take a different avenue than simply crawling Wikipedia - should find MIT’s OpenCourseWare a very useful resource.

Certainly this is not news for many, but I’ve forgotten all about said great site. It offers lectures, slides and videos up for grabs, and there are a variety of courses in many disciplines made available¹. I believe having some direction in terms of what to study is nice, and the added freedom of at-your-leisure perusal should make this an enjoyable experience for many.

Michael Geist also wonders why academic institutions in Canada do not take part in OCW to a larger extent.

1. Not only MIT material, as the list of contributors is ever-expanding [↩]