I'd like a class on how to pick which online classes I should take.
Actually, I'm only partially joking. I am guessing that there's just going to be an explosion of these opportunities in a couple of years. I believe in lifelong learning, but this is ridiculous, there's only so many hours in the day.
A class dedicated to teaching people how to plot their own course through all of the educational opportunities that are becoming available would actually be quite valuable.
For example, which courses you take and in which sequence is hard to figure out. Some inputs might be your learning style, your existing knowledge base, your IQ, your available time, whether you're a thinker or a doer, etc, etc.
I'm all for making an informed decision, but sometimes you just have to go on a whim based on an "I always wanted to take a class like that."
Case in point: Years ago, I was a technical bureaucrat and it was the first job where I had a little extra money. I took a jazz-singing class, primarily because it was close to the office and I liked jazz but didn't know how to play an instrument. I learned how to perform comfortably in front of an audience (if you can scat, you can certainly do a 30-min work presentation.) Best of all, I met my wife in the class.
Two years later I was married and giving presentations/teaching for a living. Not much more money, but much happier.
For the future, it would be really cool if those courses would feature one preview lecture and a schedule to decide if one wants to get into it or not - now that it's getting so broad.
A nit: the start date field, in an amusingly non-intuitive way it took me a few seconds to figure out, sorts alphabetically by the month's name rather than by the date.
I just spent several hours today digging through Poor Charlie's Almanack trying to build a more complete understanding of his mental models. You always hear references to them, but I have yet to find a list of them in one place. Not unlike the Colonel's eleven herbs and spices. What great timing.
Yeah, that keeps popping up, but the summaries on the rest of the site seem to be of poor quality, and it felt a bit scammy. $3 isn't much, but I don't want to support these "scrape together a bunch of blog posts and sell it as an ebook" types. I'll just wait for the class.
Scott Page who is the guy who is giving this class wrote an excellent book called "The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies": http://tinyurl.com/cbv2pm9
Certain types of mental models are covered in the book, but not in a concentrated way. The book was also highly recommend in one of Nassim Taleb's books (I think it was "The Black Swan").
What are some more... unconventional classes HNers would be interested in taking?
Internet marketing?
Better thinking? Something like this: http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=3285535
Optimizing communications with the opposite sex if male?
Language hacking? Aka learning languages faster/smarter.
Study hacking? Ie optimizing college, or autodidactic pursuits.
Give me some tips on stuff you would like to learn via an online class.
I'd like a class on how to pick which online classes I should take.
Actually, I'm only partially joking. I am guessing that there's just going to be an explosion of these opportunities in a couple of years. I believe in lifelong learning, but this is ridiculous, there's only so many hours in the day.
A class dedicated to teaching people how to plot their own course through all of the educational opportunities that are becoming available would actually be quite valuable.
For example, which courses you take and in which sequence is hard to figure out. Some inputs might be your learning style, your existing knowledge base, your IQ, your available time, whether you're a thinker or a doer, etc, etc.
Sounds like you need a course on goal-setting.
I'm all for making an informed decision, but sometimes you just have to go on a whim based on an "I always wanted to take a class like that."
Case in point: Years ago, I was a technical bureaucrat and it was the first job where I had a little extra money. I took a jazz-singing class, primarily because it was close to the office and I liked jazz but didn't know how to play an instrument. I learned how to perform comfortably in front of an audience (if you can scat, you can certainly do a 30-min work presentation.) Best of all, I met my wife in the class.
Two years later I was married and giving presentations/teaching for a living. Not much more money, but much happier.
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Yeah, that's a decent idea actually.
May I post it here? http://ideashower.posterous.com
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_thinking
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_thinking
Clearly, this is a plot to prevent me from getting anything done.
For the future, it would be really cool if those courses would feature one preview lecture and a schedule to decide if one wants to get into it or not - now that it's getting so broad.
I just sign up for all of them and decide which ones I'll keep watching once they start.
The instructor is actually from University of Michigan, so it appears that this phenomenon is spreading.
Similarly, SAAS Class is taught by instructors from UC Berkeley.
Time for a HN spreadsheet for all the classes?
I built this over the Thanksgiving weekend to keep a track of all the classes: http://www.class-central.com/
That's really nice, I think it deserves its own submission.
A nit: the start date field, in an amusingly non-intuitive way it took me a few seconds to figure out, sorts alphabetically by the month's name rather than by the date.
Nice list, thanks for putting that together!
Nice! Will definitely come in handy :).
Don't forget to add Model Thinking to the list!
I just spent several hours today digging through Poor Charlie's Almanack trying to build a more complete understanding of his mental models. You always hear references to them, but I have yet to find a list of them in one place. Not unlike the Colonel's eleven herbs and spices. What great timing.
Here you go... http://thinkmentalmodels.com/page67/page67.html
Yeah, that keeps popping up, but the summaries on the rest of the site seem to be of poor quality, and it felt a bit scammy. $3 isn't much, but I don't want to support these "scrape together a bunch of blog posts and sell it as an ebook" types. I'll just wait for the class.
Scott Page who is the guy who is giving this class wrote an excellent book called "The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies": http://tinyurl.com/cbv2pm9
Certain types of mental models are covered in the book, but not in a concentrated way. The book was also highly recommend in one of Nassim Taleb's books (I think it was "The Black Swan").