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"It was about 12 or 13 years ago, that we decided to design a class website template. It seemed that student materials were heading online and at Melbourne Business School we opted for a faculty-designed solution. For those days, it was pretty slick and it was the main template used for about a decade. A few years ago, wanting more features the School moved to Blackboard. And when I got to the University of Toronto there Blackboard was again. My kids' school uses Blackboard. It is everywhere and it is terrible. While it has all the features you could want and it has some integration with University systems, it is very cumbersome to use. So much so that I kept its use to a minimum for my course this semester and opted for my own WordPress hosted solution."

"'MITx' will offer courses online and make online learning tools freely available."

"A list of all the best places to learn for free online."

"The lessons employ clever game mechanics to create an effective user experience. I'm like a broken record at this point: designers, filmmakers, and creative communicators of all stripes should to learn how to code. Clever tools and study guides abound for helping non-hackers start getting their hands dirty on the command line. But speaking personally, none of them have done the trick of getting me to actually just do it. Why? Because they're not interactive. Reading a book or watching a video series (no matter how well-designed) just isn't "sticky" enough to get me to stick with it. "

For Wall Street Occupiers or other decriers of the "social injustice" of college tuition, here's a curveball bound to scramble your worldview: a totally free college education regardless of your academic performance or background.  The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) will announce on Monday that they intend to launch an online learning initiative called M.I.T.x,which will offer the online teaching of M.I.T. courses free of charge to anyone in the world.