Open courseware collections focusing on health and medicine assist students and healthcare professionals learn more about their particular field, further their careers, and increase their learning potential without enrolling in and commuting to expensive continuing education organizations or colleges.

Health and medical open courseware collections are available free of charge and are accessible any time and any place, as long as you have a connection to the Internet.

Counseling

Counseling professionals and psychology students can find training guides and other educational resources on the Internet via open courseware classes. These courses provide students with a broad-based perception of all of the different kinds of counseling.

In addition, they also help students determine which sector of the field they would most like to pursue. These courses also provide working counselors and psychologists with access to cutting-edge theories and practices within the field. Anyone taking these courses will be able to build strong interpersonal, communication and decision-making skills as well as a firm understanding of the social and scientific issues that surround the field of health and medicine.

Classes in the counseling open course collection are provided by several fine schools such as the University of Massachusetts Boston, Utah State University, The Open University, the University of Michigan and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Health.

Dental Hygiene

For a basic background on dentistry and human biology, in addition to specific training in public health, denture care, and geriatric dentistry, students can use open courseware classes to build on their education and dentistry skills. Tufts University School of Dental Medicine offers classes in this collection covering topics such as cancer, dentures, elderly patients, public healthcare and water fluoridation.

The open courseware classes related to dental medicine and dental hygiene is effective in preparing students of advanced programs in the dental field as well as help professionals learn even more about the dental industry.

Emergency Management

Disaster relief, emergency management, and terrorism response are all rising fields in the healthcare industry. Respected institutions such as Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health allow students to use educational resources online that teach skills in making decisions, responding to terrorist acts, analyzing public health policies, treating mass populations, as well as treatment in a wide variety of conditions and symptoms.

Food And Nutrition Science

This open course collection features topics such as the basics of human nutrition, bioterrorism, official food policy and agricultural science. Schools such as the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Tufts University and the University of California Berkeley provide a wide range of resources and courses that will assist students in understanding farming and economics, environmental systems, the effects of terrorism and so much more.

Students will learn all about crop breeding, biology, plant infestation, healthy living, human metabolism, natural nutrients, as well as poison in public water and food supplies. Relevant classes are available for farmers, nutritionists, agricultural leaders, emergency management professionals, healthcare professionals and scientists to help them stay up to date in their specific fields.

Gerontology

Healthcare professionals who work with elderly or aging patients are able to increase their educational training with online classes through schools such as MIT and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The topics covered in these courses include Medicare, the aging process, nursing homes, mental disorders, health care policies, and neurological conditions in elderly patients as well as many more helpful subjects.

Rounding out the top ten free health and medical open courseware collections are courses in Health Care Administration, Occupational Safety and Health, Pharmacy, Public Health and Radiologic Science. Open courseware collections offer students and professionals with a unique opportunity to learn all kinds of relevant information to help keep them on top of their field. Stay tuned for more on these!

DENA WHITE is a freelance writer and covers topics such as nurse assistant and medical careers, health care topics, and more.

The gist of the tool is that it enables you to create what the foundation calls ‘factlets‘ that contain “information about historical events, persons, and so on, which you can string together to create historical ‘threads‘. These threads can then be visually represented on maps and timelines.”

You can only get a partial feel for the result through a still image, but here, for example, is a screen shot of the factlet for Shakespeare’s Works.

Image of Shakespeare Factlet

Weaving History struck a chord with me because it was precisely this sort of activity that, as a teacher of great books of the western world, first opened my eyes to the power of computer-based multimedia as a teaching and learning tool. Of course, back in those days I was using CD-ROMS on my Mac to put together the same sort of ‘factlets’ that Weaving History facilitates and would then use them in conjunction with teaching The Inferno or Madame Bovary to help put the works in context. (Context, of course, is such an important part of learning on so many levels!)

If you are trying to get a quick, high-level sense of context and timeline around a person, event, or place about which you are learning, this may be a good tool to have in your learning mix.

Jeff Cobb
Mission to Learn

P.S. - Follow Mission to Learn on Twitter at http://twitter.com/missiontolearn

Want to learn history from some of the best thinkers and writers on the topic? The Great Courses on DVD, CD, and Audio Download. Save 70%!

This is a guest post from Karen Schweitzer.

Finding ways to stretch and exercise your brain is important for a long happy life. Fortunately, the Internet is flush with games, tools, and web apps that will boost your mental power and leave your brain sweating. Here are 25 sites to try today:

Brain Games

BrainBashers - BrainBashers are a collection of brain teasers, riddles, games, puzzles, and optical illusions. This impressive brain game site updates games and puzzles regularly.

BrainDen.com - This brain teaser site provides a variety of games and trivia to challenge your mind. BrainDen.com offers jokes, puzzles, trivia, riddles, games, and optical illusions–all designed to exercise your brain.

Sharp Brains - Sharp Brains provides 50 top brain teasers and games everyone will enjoy. These games help to work your language, logic, math, memory, and attention skills.

Braingle - With over 17,000 user-rated brain games, Braingle is the perfect place to boost your brain power. As an added bonus, this site also offers exercises to increase memory, vocabulary, creativity, and stress management.

Brain Metrix - Brain Metrix is designed to build brain fitness. The site can increase your memory, reflex, and concentration through a collection of activities.

Brain Teaser Central - Brain Teaser Central is a good place to stretch your brain with logic, math, illusions, games, puzzles, trivia, and more.

Fit Brains - Fit Brains is a site with fun, free games that exercise five key cognitive brain areas: memory, executive, visual-spatial, concentration, and language.

Brain Teasers Network - With daily brain teasers and an assortment of popular and challenging games, Brain Teaser Network is a handy site for building mental capacity.

Oxbrain - Oxbrain offers lateral thinking puzzles and crossword puzzles. These custom-made crossword puzzles are entertaining and educational.

Thinks.com - Thinks.com offers several fun games to challenge your brain, including crosswords, word searches, jigsaw puzzles, chess, and brain teasers.

Brain Boosting Techniques

Speed Reading - Speed reading is a great way to boost your brain power for sales, education, and careers. This free speed reading course builds memory and comprehension.

Increase Brain Power - Increase Brain Power offers five simple and easy-to-use techniques for increasing your comprehension and memory.

About.com - This site features 10 useful strategies for improving your memory. These techniques are simple to incorporate into everyday life.

Illumine Training - Illumine Training offers workshops to increase creativity, mental agility, and concentration. The workshop on mind mapping is an excellent way to expand your mind and organize ideas.

Fun-with-words.com - This mnemonics page from Fun-with-words.com offers three different mnemonics to retain important information like words, numbers, and names.

Web Apps

Flash Card Machine - Flash cards are a super way to study and retain important information. Flash Card Machine features a free web app for creating and sharing your own flash cards.

OuTWIT me - This free Twitter app contains games for improving and exercising your mind. OuTWIT me features games like Code cracker, Tweet word, Tweet quiz, and Story teller.

Imagination Cubed - Looking for a way to exercise your creative side? Check out this free app from GE. It allows you to illustrate and share your ideas with free drawing tools.

Mindmeister - Mindmeister is a brainstorming app that increases your brain power through creative thinking. The app allows you to organize and visualize your ideas through mind mapping.

Twivia - Twivia is a Twitter app that exercises your memory through daily trivia questions.

Misc Tools

LibriVox - Books are an excellent way to keep your brain fit and active. LibriVox offers lots of free audio books to keep your mind moving.

Visuwords - Visuwords creates a visual neural network to demonstrate how words associate with one another–a great way to exercise your memory and build your vocabulary.

Creative Writing Prompts - Creative writing makes connections with your thoughts, ideas, and the world around you. This site of writing prompts will give your creative side a major workout.

Popling - Popling is a desktop app for people who want to learn without studying. It regularly displays small windows with questions on your computer screen so that you can learn languages, chemistry, geography, and more without really trying.

WebMD - Exercise is the best way to keep your body and mind healthy. WebMD illustrates how exercise can make you think clearly and perform better.

Guest post from Karen Schweitzer, the About.com Guide to Business School. Karen also writes for OnlineCollege.org an online college resource.

P.S. - If you enjoy what you read here on Mission to Learn, I encourage you to subscribe to the RSS feed or use the e-mail subscription form at the top right side of this page

One of the things I like about the list - and a large part of the reason that I mention it here - is that the author has done a good job of organizing the resources. Too often these kinds of lists are purely about quantity in an effort to attract links. In this case, however, an initial table of contents is provided along with additional navigational tools for locating the language and resource of interest. Here’s a screen shot from the courses section to give you an idea of what I mean:

If learning a language online, on you iPod, or on your iPhone is part of your summer learning plan, definitely take a look at this list. And also check out the range of language learning resources here on Mission to Learn.

Jeff Cobb
Mission to Learn

If you aren’t familiar with it, Century of the Self is a fascinating four-part documentary series that explores the influence of Sigmund Freud and his nephew, Edward Bernays, on modern life, particularly in the areas of public relations, advertising, and politics. Really, it is a must see if you want to have a better grasp of the types of influence at play in all parts of our lives. And yes, that certainly includes learning!

Below is the first installment of the series. And here are the links to all four parts:

• Century of the Self, Part I, Happiness Machines
• Century of the Self, Part II, The Engineering of Consent
• Century of the Self, Part III, There is a Policeman Inside All Our Heads: He Must Be Destroyed
• Century of the Self, Part IV, Eight People Sipping Wine in Kettering

It’s a bit of a time commitment to watch all of these, but I think you will find it is time well spent. Trust me

Jeff Cobb
Mission to Learn

P.S. - If you enjoy what you read here on Mission to Learn, I encourage you to subscribe to the RSS feed or use the e-mail subscription form at the top right side of this page.

Jeff Cobb
Mission to Learn

P.S. If you enjoy what you read here on Mission to Learn, I encourage you to subscribe to the RSS feed or use the e-mail subscription form at the top right side of this page.

Not sure what a hashtag is, or for that matter, how to send out a “tweet”? Check out the excellent presentation below from Jane Hart. And when you are done, consider adding Twitter to your learning mix. (If you don’t see the presentation, click through to the original post. I also recommend clicking the “full” icon toward the lower left of the Slideshare box to view the presentation in full-screen mode.)

(Note: Jane has embedded video from Commoncraft in this and Slideshare seems to set it autoplay - at least in Safari.) Click forward a few screens until you get to the video and hit “pause” to stop the audio. A pain, but worth it for the content.)

Jeff Cobb
Mission to Learn

P.S. Follow Mission to Learn on Twitter at http://twitter.com/missiontolearn

Jeff Cobb
Mission to Learn

P.S. If you enjoy what you read here on Mission to Learn, I encourage you to subscribe to the RSS feed or use the e-mail subscription form at the top right side of this page.

Learning a language on your own can be done, but it’s much more fun and potentially easier to learn through communicating with others. The Web provides a great forum for this, with tools of all kinds that let language learners talk to one another and learn from direct, immersive communication. Here are a few collaborative language learning tools you may want to try:

• LiveMocha: LiveMocha offers a wide ranfe of self-paced language lessons, but the real power of the site is in its focus on social language learning. The site features real-time text and audio chat tools that let users converse with native speakers to build skills and confidence in the oral and written practice of the language.

• Babbel: Many people learn well with the aid of flashcards. This site lets users create and share their own flash cards through a slick and user-friendly interface. That isn’t all that the site has to offer, though. Users can also chat with others in the language that they’re learning and take advantage of a  host of other useful tools. Right now the site is limited to English, French, German, Spanish, and Italian.

• italki: If you’ve got Skype you can take advantage of this great language learning add-on. Through the italki interface you can find other users to talk to, chat with them using Skype or a host of other online chat tools, find language resources, and communicate with other learners through the online language forums.

• Busuu: Busuu features language tools at all levels that incorporate both writing and speaking practice. Once users have completed a few lessons and built up a general knowledge, the site offers video chat as well so learners can test out their new skills with someone who speaks the language.

• LingoPass: LingoPass is like a bartering system for those willing teach their language to another person while also having the opportunity to learn a new language of their choice. Everytime you lead a one-hour discussion class in your language of expertise, you earn credits to participate in all other language discussions on the site for a week. If you want to keep learning for free, you have to keep teaching!

This post was contributed by Caitlin Smith, who writes about associates degree programs. She welcomes your feedback at CaitlinSmith1117 at gmail.com.

Interested in writing a guest post? Contact Mission to Learn.

1. School

2. Books, magazines, and movies

3. Professional (or other highly structured) sports

4. Computer games

I refer you to the post itself for more detail - and the promise of more to come.

Jeff Cobb
Mission to Learn