Warning: squirrels.

MIT OpenCourseWare / OCW Search

Tourbus readers know I have been a fan of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s OpenCourseWare project for quite some time. Back in April of 2001, MIT announced the ground-breaking, ambitious, and some would say unrealistic 10-year goal of posting the materials for all of its courses online.  Syllabi.  Course calendars.  Lecture notes.  Assignments.  Exams.  Everything. Available to the entire online world.  No charge.

Five years and 1,800 courses later, I’m still a fan. As are several other institutions of higher learning who have followed MIT’s lead and are now posting their own course materials online.  In fact, there are now so many free, online courses that finding the right course for you can involve a bit of cybersleuthing.   

Or you could just go to the OpenCourseWare finder.  If you've used some of the more advanced features inside of Apple's iTunes music store, you already know how to use the OpenCourseWare finder.  And if you've never used iTunes, well ... the OpenCourseWare finder is just like the advanced features inside of Apple's iTunes music store.  :)

Seriously, though, just choose and subtopic in the tag browser and the OpenCourseWare finder shows you, at the bottom of the page, a list of OpenCourseWare courses that discuss that topic.   Click on the course's title to be taken to the course's homepage.  The OpenCourseWare finder doesn't search through all of the world's free, online courses, but it does include courses from

• Carnegie Mellon University
• Foothill De-Anza Community College
• Johns Hopkins School of Public Health
• Tufts University
• MIT
• Utah State University

So, does this mean you can now get a free, online degree from MIT? Not on your life, Chester! While educators are encouraged to borrow MIT's course materials for their own curricula, and while everyone in the world is encouraged to use the OpenCourseWare materials for self-study, MIT has absolutely no plans to offer credit for the online versions of their courses.

Besides, what makes MIT MIT isn't its course documents. Covalent bonding works the same in Cambridge as it does in Irvine, and the second derivative of 2x² is the same along the banks of the Charles River as it is at the confluence of the 5 and 405 freeways. What makes MIT MIT -- and what makes MIT worth $33K a year -- isn't its course documents. It's its faculty. And that you can't put online.

Update: Sony notebook battery recall

This is kind of old news, but since this is a new blog I thought I'd post it anyway.

In my November 1 Tourbus post, I mentioned that approximately 10 million lithium ion laptop batteries manufactured by Sony have the potential of overheating, possibly resulting in a fire. And these potentially defective batteries can be found not only in certain Sony laptops but also in certain laptop models sold by Apple, Dell, Fujitsu, Gateway, Hitachi, IBM/Lenovo, Sharp, Sony, and Toshiba.

How can you tell if your laptop's battery is vulnerable? The following is a list of the laptop computer resellers that are voluntarily recalling certain Sony-made laptop batteries vulnerable to overheating. Check the list below for a link to your laptop reseller's battery recall page. There you'll find instructions on how to identify your battery and learn if it is subject to a recall.

• Apple iBook and PowerBook G4 Battery Exchange Program
• Dell Battery Recall
• Fujitsu Battery Exchange Program
• Gateway Battery Exchange Program
• Hitachi Battery Exchange
  Note: Hitachi has recalled 16,000 batteries installed in Flora 210W and Se210 laptops sold in Japan.
• HP Mobile Battery Replacement Programs
• IBM/Lenovo Battery Recall
• Sharp Battery Recall
  Note: Sharp has recalled 28,000 batteries sold in Japan.
• Sony VAIO Battery Replacement Program
• Toshiba Battery Programs

Acer uses Sony batteries in their laptops, but as of today the company has not issued a recall. Sony has also announced that they will initiate a "global replacement program for notebook computer battery packs" but the details are still kind of thin.