Free Online Academic Resources (Updated: Sep 2010)

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Looking for online academic resources (courses, lectures, etc.)? Here is a listing of useful sites for you to get started:

• Khan Academy
  The Khan Academy is a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) with the mission of providing a world-class education to anyone, anywhere. Despite being the work of one man, Salman Khan, this 1600+ video library is the most-used educational video resource as measured by YouTube video views per day and unique users per month. We are complementing this ever-growing library with user-paced exercises--developed as an open-source project--allowing the Khan Academy to become the free classroom for the World.
  
  
• 150 Free Textbooks: A Meta Collection
  Free textbooks (aka open textbooks) written by knowledgable scholars are a relatively new phenomenon.
  
  
• Search Tools for OpenCourseWare Consortium Courses
  
  
• AcademicEarth


• Berkeley WebCast


• Harvard@Home


• iTunes U


• MIT OpenCourseware


• OpenYale


• YouTube EDU


• Free Online Courses from Top Universities
  


• Free Foreign Language Lessons


• Free AudioBooks

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Misusing Footnotes, Endnotes & References in Academic Writing

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An American Editor has penned a witty piece on the use and abuses of footnotes, endnotes and references in academic writing: Footnotes, Endnotes, & References: Uses and Abuses.

This is a must-read for students and academics writing academic papers. The author reminds academic writers to focus on what is really important and avoid excessive and unnecessary references that distract from the main text.

Link: Footnotes, Endnotes, & References: Uses and Abuses



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Plagiarism Resources

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Plagiarism is becoming more rampant on U.S. college campuses. To address this problem, several universities have come up with online resources to help students understand and avoid plagiarism. Here is a list of online resources that I use:

• Plagiarism Test: How to recognize Plagiarism (Indiana University Bloomington School of Education)
  
  
• Plagiarism Resource Site (Center for Educational Technology/Colby/Bates/Bowdoin)

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Decoding text Messaging and Chat Abbreviations

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Ever been stumped by an abbreviation in an e-mail, instant message, or text message that you received? You might want to consult Webopedia's Text Messaging and Chat Abbreviations: A Guide to Understanding Text Messages, Chat Abbreviations, and Twitter Messages. With more than 1,300 abbreviations defined and the list is updated and expanded regularly, you should be able to find the meaning of any e-mail, instant or text message abbreviation that you encounter.

Link: Text Messaging and Chat Abbreviations: A Guide to Understanding Text Messages, Chat Abbreviations, and Twitter Messages



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Online Stylebooks

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Needing to look up a specific style quickly?

Mary Beth Protomastro has collected a helpful list of online style manuals and guides at: OnlineStylebooks.com

You can search by keyword or even browse online stylebooks alphabetically or by subject.

Link: OnlineStylebooks.com

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Search Tools for OpenCourseWare Consortium Courses

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Looking for free/open access university courses that are published under the OpenCourseWare (OCW) Consortium initiative? Here are some tools/search engines to get you started:

• OCWSearch
  
  
• OCWFinder
  
  
• OpenCourseWare Consortium's Course Finder
  
  
• Online Education Database's OpenCourseWare Collections
  

See also my previous blog posting: Free Online Academic Resources

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Free Online Translation Tools

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Here is a list of useful, free online tools that allow you to perform on the fly translation:

• Google Translate (NB: simply the most useful free online translation tool that allows you to translate webpages, text, or upload a document for translation.)
  
  
• Free Online Translator (from Translation-Guide.com)

Free Online Academic Resources

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SEE UPDATED POST: Free Online Academic Resources (Updated: Sep 2010)

Looking for online academic resources (courses, lectures, etc.)? Here is a listing of useful sites for you to get started:

• Search Tools for OpenCourseWare Consortium Courses
  
  
• AcademicEarth


• Berkeley WebCast


• Harvard@Home


• iTunes U


• MIT OpenCourseware


• OpenYale


• YouTube EDU


• Free Online Courses from Top Universities


• Free Foreign Language Lessons


• Free AudioBooks

.