200 Free Online Classes

I found a high quality list of 200 free online classes for every topic under the sun from all over the internet. Most of the content is high school or college level material. You now have no excuse not to be smart!

Free Typing Programs

Free internet-based typing games, lessons, and tests for all ages.

Totally Free Children's Learning Network

Internet based programs, games, online databases, virtual tours, all this is available at the Totally Free Chidlren's Learning Network.

Free University Courses Online

Lifehacker.com has a thorough listing of free online university courses. They also give tips and tricks for finding free material online in the most unlikely of places, such a blogs, online books and podcasts.

Free Language Lessons Online

When someone on Metafilter asked about how to learn a language online, some really great resources showed up.

Radio Lingua - French, Spanish, Italian, Polish and German podcast lessons.

Japanesepod101 - podcasts to learn elementary Japanese.

Mango Languages - Many languages taught through podcasts.

Open Culture Foreign Language Lessons - All levels of many different languages. Many podcasts to choose from, from different sources.

MIT Courses for High School and Teachers/Parents

MIT has had its college level open courseware available for a while. Now, they are introducing a new set of online self-paced courses for the high schooler, or adults who would like to brush up on high-school level material.

Free Online Writing and Journalism Courses

The News University offers courses on news writing. Right now all the courses are free. Registration is free. If you are interesting in journalism, this is a great place to start.

University of California Online College Prep Courses

Free online courses offered by colleges might just be the next generation of high school education. The University of California is offering online courses that aren't for credit, yet prepare kids for the classes they are going to have in college. And it's free!

Free Online University and K-12 Education

Free World U touts to be totally free, and designed to eventually cover all levels of learning.

Is this the new model of education? Is this site legit? Feedback welcome.

Free Classes Through Free-ed.net

I found free-ed.net today. Seems like a great opportunity. However, I was unable to find any off-site reviews by people who have taken one of their courses. Feedback welcome in the comments. If it's not a legit site (say, they try to sell you stuff once you get the "free" stuff), I'll take it off the blog. If it's legit, I'll leave it.

The topics they teach are:

GED prep
Health Care
Information Technology
Business, Marketing, Economics
Building and Construction
Electronics
Mathematics
Science

What I like about their list, is a lot of courses focus on how to use this stuff in a real live job. Not just to get a grade. Information that will make someone's life better and really open up opportunities because their knowledge is useful.

If it's truly free, this is about as good as "real" education gets.

MIT OpenCourseware

MIT has 1700 complete courses for free online. These courses do not give you school credit. But the information available here is the same stuff the MIT students learn. Subjects range from Music to Women's Studies, Engineering to Anthropology.

If you have a teen who is looking to get into MIT, this might be a good way to get a feel for the courses. And, it wouldn't hurt to mention it in their portfolio.