I Love the Internet

Posted by stephen on Tuesday, 01st November, 2005 @ 23:31

So I decided to follow up on one of my little inspirations, all the wifi stuff, and I decided that I need a better understanding of electromagnetism so that I might be able to construct useful antennas.

I began my hunt on Google, as always, and found some interesting reading materials, all the information I could possibly read. And as I began to read I realised I'm rubbish at absorbing information that way. I'm so much better watching someone explain things or playing around with stuff myself to get my head around it.

Just when I thought I'd probably have to give in on this approach, I refined my query and Google spat out a link to the MIT website. I remember reading a few years ago now that MIT planned to produce videos of some of their courses and make them freely available online, calling the project OpenCourseWare. Well, the project has borne fruit, and Google took me straight to this page which was exactly what I needed.

I'm part way through the first lecture at the moment and it's bringing back lots of memories of science lessons at school, stuff I'd forgotten I knew. And I find the style of presentation very effective. I think the crazy Dutch Professor helps with that!

Go check it out if there's anything you're interested in learning, they've got plenty of materials for all kinds of subjects online. I love the free software philosophy that spawns this type of project, the idea that knowledge wants to be free. And I love that we have a medium available to get it to so many people.