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Online learning: Opportunities for everyone!

As the Internet started to become the thing that everyone was talking about, the technology came with promises of new-found convenience. While we're still waiting for things like the paperless office, we have seen some really neat stuff come out of the Internet, for the average person, such as actual telecommuting and now the advent of courseware that lets you study at home, (at the risk of sounding like Sally Struthers) for your chosen career.

As you might imagine, online courses don't replace conventional classrooms, labs and textbooks, yet. However, they do offer an interesting, alternative learning style when you're digging into the reams of material you have to study and research while taking a course. Many online courses are 'self-paced', and let you go as quickly or as slowly as you like through the material, giving you the opportunity to race ahead of your fellows at school.

Here is a sampling of some online campuses you can access as easily as opening your browser. Since the courses mentioned below are just samples, and are largely geared towards computer science, they might not fit into your career plan or the program you are taking at university or college. If this is the case, take a moment and hit the search engines with the key words 'online courses'. Keep in mind that online colleges will require that you pay tuition of some kind. With any online course, make sure you are completely comfortable with the payment options and the secure nature of any online credit card transactions.

The first stop on our tour of the online alma mater, is the Discovering the Internet Web site. The Discovering the Internet Web site is part of a series of correspondence courses designed to take you from the very basics of the Internet on through to the specifics. Learn how to use your Web browser, search, add plugins and use e-mail. Explore newsgroups, mailing lists, IRC, chat programs, ftp, telnet and compression programs. Publish and create your own Web pages and more! If you're just getting started with the Internet, this site is perfect for getting up to speed with many applications and clients.

Io Systems Online Classroom: http://www.iosys.com/iooc Io is a self-proclaimed 'fun and easy way to learn to program in C and C++'. Io takes you from the absolute begin-ner's course to socket programming in C. The courses have been broken down into modules that run about $25. each. As a perk, the course also offers you free compilers so you can run the programs that you write, while taking the course!

Mathematical Foundations: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/academic/class/15299 Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science - Carnegie Mellon. This course takes you through how to rigourously formulate and solve problems relevant to computer science. Examples are taken from algorithms, complexity, probability, and more.

If strong math is required for your programming courses, check it out at: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/academic/class/15299/

Why buy the cow when you're getting the milk for free? Well, in the case of online courseware, getting the milk free often requires considerable prerequisite knowledge in order to get full benefit from the course. Here are some examples of such free courses.

Program in Perl: http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/General/Training/PerlIntro

Photo-seminars.com: http://www.photo-seminars.com/
Courses and workshops, as well as general photography resources.

Novel Writing: http://www.writerspage.com/

Playing Golf: http://clevermedia.com/arcade/golf/

ISO9000 standards: http://www.isogroup.simplenet.com/

As with any course, you will want to research the benefits versus the cost. Of course, when it comes to free courses, the only investment is time. Once you decide, the course presents the material in a way that works with the way that you learn best! In either case, online courses can be a great way to supplement your skillset at home, or enhance classroom courses you are already taking!