Online Avenues of Knowledge
By Farhan Jumani
Our times are unparallel in the history of mankind. We are lucky that knowledge is freely available at our finger-clicks. In the past, one has to go through series of troubles to get information handy and accurate. But today knowledge travels electronically to become accessible to all.
“This has been described as the age of technology and blessed may be those who through their technological discoveries have enabled man to conquer space and to hope one day to draw sufficient food from the earth and the sea to feed himself. Blessed also may be those who have helped eliminate from this earth such crippling diseases as poliomyelitis and perhaps one day cancer. But through all this development, hand in hand and side by side with it, the spirit of Islam must survive. A society without a strong sense of its own identity has time and again in human history proved to be well on the way to decay.”
Every time I read and reflect over these words of Aga Khan –IV, these invoke new and deep meanings. First time when I read these words, I picked up the topic religious identity of Ismaili youth to explore further for final thesis in my graduation programme. During this time, when reflecting, it led me to think about the notion rapid transition of change. The above words constantly focus on the transition in a way of life through constructing knowledge. Over the past few years, much time and efforts has been made to improve the education level of general masses. Quality education is the only way which can create the impact in order to cope-up the challenges of socio-economy.
In the age of information, access to knowledge is on single click of the general masses. For the educators, scholars and religious preachers, they not only need to update their knowledge with time. It is also important to guide the masses to take quality education in order to improve their information which they have collected in the chunks from different sources.
Now-a-days, technology discoveries have made this task easier. Now there is no issue of managing funds in order to enhance the knowledge. Only thing which is required to attain the information and knowledge is a thirst of knowledge. There are many top-notch universities and educational institutions are valuing this dire need. Therefore, in this regard with the help of technology they are offering the quality education at your foot step. There are many websites nowadays offering online free courses via the internet.
In the writer’s opinion every individual as well as educators, scholars and religious preachers should know about this websites and they should guide individuals to take advantage from these website in order to boost their career, to expand their knowledge or to improve the resume. From these courses, one can take several advantages. In fact, the writer itself use the contents from the courses for the preparation of own sessions.
In this article, few websites are suggested on which plenty of courses are available for everyone.
Coursera
Coursera’s vision is to empower people with the quality education in order to improve lives. This is an education company partnership with the top universities and organizations around the globe such as Common wealth education trust, National University of Singapore, Northwestern University, and Columbia University to teach million of people by offering free onlinecourses.
People who enrolled in their courses can watch lectures and reading material which are provided by outstanding professors, students also have opportunity to interact with each other by using the discussion forum. Coursera offers programs in the several fields such as Computer Science, Business Management, Comparative Religion Studies, Humanities, and Social Sciences etc.
Open Course Ware
In order to empower minds, OCW offers their course’s material for everyone. Through these digital publications, one can unlock the world ofknowledge and enrich their lives and the lives of the community where they live in.
They are offering brilliant courses in several fields such as Economics, Mathematics, Culture studies, and Computer programming etc. which are easily accessible to everybody.
Learnstreet.com
They offer the diverse learning programmes for computer programmers. Those people who like to increase their computer skills instead of going to expensive computer centres can learn different courses from their programmes and easily save money. Students and professionals enhance their skills which are needed for their employment in the software industry. They offer more than 100 interactive exercises within their courses; by exploring them one can quickly understand the fundamentals of coding.
TED Talks
TED started out in 1984 with the aim to bring people together from three worlds Technology, Entertainment, Design. They bring the first class thinkers and speakers to deliver motivational talks in 18 minutes or less. They are offering their lectures and talks free to world. At present more than 1500 talks are available which are inspiring to the community ofcurious souls in order to engage with the ideas.
These lectures are not like the formal classroom talks given by instructors but can be life changing because they can change your perspectives to look at world around you. One who has never logged on to this website surely missed out something special.
Udacity.com
By offering various courses of technical education. Udacity is providing opportunity to all students across the world to have high quality education in the field of Computer Science, Business, Mathematics, and Sciences.
Learners by signing up with Udacity.com can gain the knowledge ofsubject suitable to their interest match to their interest and skills.
These are the avenues open for all to get maximum benefit. However, one should be mindful that there is a need of basic knowhow to exploit these online resources. This includes Basic English language, computer literacy and some operational knowledge of computer machine to get access to these resources.
The writer is an educationist who has written extensively on Social Issues.farhanjumani@gmail.com
