Little did we know, this site actually became a very useful and heavily-relied-on tool. Piazza, which is Italian for public square or marketplace, doesn’t give you the answers to your homework problems, but it can assist in closing the gap that stands between class sessions and confused minds.

Don’t attending office hours and emailing the professors do that too, you ask? Yes, but conflicting schedules and full inboxes may easily get in the way. Facebook groups could probably help too, but professors nor teaching assistants can confirm peer-provided responses. Let’s check out why else professors and students should totally start using Piazza.

Real-Time Discussions

Instructors start by signing up at Piazza and adding their college-level courses. After activating their accounts, they can invite students and teaching assistants to join. Students and instructors (including TA’s) can then connect by posting and replying to questions and notes in real-time, just like Facebook, except Piazza can help you stay productive. You can even see when fellow students are actually replying to a question or editing an answer in real-time.

As you can see in the screenshot, Piazza is not only gorgeous but also absolutely functional, in contrast to many basic classroom websites lacking a commenting system and education boards that look like they could use a revamp in looks and features. The layout of Piazza consists of two panes, one of which is a sidebar containing a list of discussions, and the other one which is a larger area to see the conversation for a specific question.

Questions that have received a student response will have a green “sr” icon, while those that have received an instructor response from the professor or TA stand out with the orange “ir” icon. There might even be checkmark icons on questions that have instructor-endorsed student responses, which are always great since that means students that understand the subject can explain it it to their peers as simply as possible.

Students Can Ask Questions Anonymously

If you’re too shy to ask questions during class, ahem, like this author, Piazza will be a lifesaver as it allows you to post questions anonymously and/or privately. This is perhaps one of Piazza’s biggest benefits.

There’s a reason this site will get more action than your average class website, Blackboard or Facebook group. Students will feel free to engage in the discussion even if they might think their question sounded too “stupid” to bring up in class. Not only can students ask questions freely, they can also respond anonymously as well.

Piazza was founded by a former female CS student, a fact that I adore because only a student could know the pain of being shy and being confused by some obscure topic at the same time. Thus, being able to ask and answer questions anonymously is quite a welcome feature, at least to me.

General Efficiency

Not only is Piazza a great Q&A board to learn from some very lively discussions, it’s also more efficient and/or convenient for both the instruction staff and students, e.g. in cases where students sometimes cannot make office hours due to scheduling conflicts. Piazza is a good supplement (notice that I’m not saying substitute) to office hours because it can also help reduce redundancy. Students might ask a lot of the same questions so it saves time for both the instructor and the student to see a general place where one question can be posted and discussed, instead of emailing back and forth the same questions and answers.

Both sides will still get notification emails, but these are quite adjustable. As a student, you can skip real-time notifications and opt for a daily digest instead, or go with summary emails scheduled to be delivered anywhere from every hour to every 6 hours.

Other neat features include the ability to post notes (like illustrative YouTube videos and general class announcements), and polls. Not only can you post multimedia links, you can also embed images and post code with simple “<pre>” tags.

Piazza also allows you to use LaTeX expressions to type mathematical formulae and the like.

Piazza also has Android and iPhone companion apps for posting and checking answers on the go.

Overall, Piazza is an incredibly useful and well-thought-out product that you, as a student, should definitely request your professor to adopt, or as an instructor, should start using now! It will save you both time and you have nothing to lose by using it (unless of course, neither of you responds to the questions at all).

What are your thoughts on using an online discussion board for college classes? Feel free to share your comments below.

For several years now, colleges and universities have posted for free academic courses via iTunes podcasts. But now in iTunes U, Apple is expanding the service by providing access to complete courses from leading universities and other schools.

For now the courses are completely free–requiring only your time to work through the lectures and assignments.

iTunes App

The iTunes U app can be used on your iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch. When you subscribe to a coure all the core material for the course will be automatically downloaded to the app on your device.

Links to supplemental material will also be provided for download from the App Store, the iBookstore, and the iTunes Music Store. While the supplemental material may come at a cost, most of the video lectures and PDF document handouts seem to be available for free.

The beauty of iTunes U is how it packages core material into one application. A downloaded course typically includes a brief overview, a detailed course outline of lectures and assignments, a built-in Notepad, and links to course materials. The interface and setup is similar to how you might organize an analog three-ring binder.

Though courses are best viewed on the iPad, you can sync your notes and course information between your iOS devices. Unfortunately, however, Apple has not created a Mac client for iTunes U. Nor has it done so for its iBooks 2 textbook reader.

You can access and view all the courses in iTunes U either through the iTunes U application itself, or in iTunes on your Mac or PC. iTunes U already includes several dozen courses on a wide range of topics—from Basics of Culinary, Beginners Chinese, Masters of Photography, to Stanford University’s highly rated iPad and iPhone App Development course.

Standford CS193p

The Stanford apps development course, for example, includes 19 actual live lectures, slide show presentations, in course assignments.

Even better, the course doesn’t require you to purchase any additional supplemental material. And if you’re running OS X Lion you can download Apple’s app developers application Xcode for free from the App Store. All that is required on your part for this course is your time.

Copyright Course

Another interesting though lightweight course, titled Rights, Remixes, and Respect, is a five part series about the differences between creative inspiration, appropriation, copyright and fair use.

Kirby Ferguson, the developer for this course, provides short definitions of copyright related terms, and then presents excellent song and movie examples about sampling and remixing and creative productions. His video presentations are are linked to a website which means you don’t have to download those files to your device.

You can work through the course in less than a week, and it even ends with a couple of short quiz reviews. The course also requires a few paid download of songs from the iTunes Music Store.

Notepad

Another useful and practical tool in the iTunes U app is a built-in notepad. If you want to do pretty much all your work within your mobile device, this notepad will come in quite handy. It works similarly to to the default Notepad app in Apple’s mobile devices.

While iTunes U will never be as popular as the iTunes Music Store or the App Store, it’s a great opportunity and resource for self-motivated learning. And because courses are free, you learn as much as you like without taking out a student loan.

Let us know what you think of iTunes U.

Online dictionaries aren’t only about words and their meanings. They also bring in other cool features which make for a fun learning experience for both children and adults alike.

Dictionary.com and its resources make it almost a portal that takes you on a journey of word discoveries. Word has it that it is probably the most frequented of online dictionary and reference sources on the web. Why not – after all you can do much more than merely look up a word here. Try these 8 for starters.

The Hot Word

Words are never one-dimensional. There’s always an interesting story behind them or you can create an interesting one around a word. The Hot Word shows just how interesting the English language is. The blog not only dives into the origins of words, but also discusses their present context. Even a casual read through the blog gives you interesting tidbits like the language that’s only spoken in one tiny part of Portugal.

Words!

This is a weekly compilation that picks up interesting definitions from areas of medicine, gardening, cooking, and more. Browsing through them takes you to entire word lists and in turn to their meanings. The compilation perks up interest because you might thing that you know all about a specific area, but the word list tells you that you still have some learning to do. Dictionary.com comes with comprehensive listings on medical terms, abbreviations, cultural words, idioms etc.

Solve a Daily Crossword

I can’t get to the Times crossword or solve it, but I do try my word associations and recall with the Daily Crossword here. You can time yourself, pause and save your progress, and even print the puzzles though it’s much better to solve them online. The game also gives you letter and word hints if you are stuck at a square.

By the way, if you are attempting to solve the Times crossword, you can take the help of the Crossword Solver here at Dictionary.com. Just a helpful tool to bookmark if you are into crosswords.

Fun ‘n Free Games!

The fun doesn’t end at crosswords but continues with the cool word based puzzles and games in the Games section. Making words starting with a provided letter sounds lame, but some interesting rules make the game a bit more challenging. There are more ‘complicated’ games like Word Kingdom which is like playing Age of Empires with words. Word Games has a lineup of nice games that should set up someone who is trying to get better with English.

Become a Word Millionaire with Word Dynamo

Word Dynamo is a beta feature but it already looks useful as an educational tool. Word Dynamo is about learning words in an engaging way. Word challenges are arranged according to grade levels and topics. You have to progress up by unlocking the levels as in any game. Quizzes, word lists, and word games make up Word Dynamo. You can also learn a bit about French, Spanish and Latin.

Which Word Is The World Searching For Today?

A small section that is tucked away near the foot of the homepage shows what the world is searching for on Dictionary.com. Capturing trending words from the whole web would be too much to ask for, so let’s do with what the nearly 50 million visitors landing here are making popular each day. You can look at Popular Searches, Words in the News, and Where Is It.

Rave on Quotes

There are many places you can go in your search for quotable quotes. Dictionary.com happens to be one more. There’s the Quote of The Day right on the homepage and more quotes beyond that. You can cite the quotes or choose to embed them in your blog.

Simply Translate

Last but not the least; Dictionary.com includes a very handy translation engine that can handle 50 languages. The translation is limited to 100 characters, but that should suffice for short bursts. One limitation is that the translator does not detect the language when you insert it into the field.

Dictionary.com goes beyond being a simple online dictionary. What sets it apart are these add-on learning features which make this a complete ‘word portal’. Which is your favorite online dictionary? If it’s this one, tell us what appeals to you here when you come looking for some meaning.

We’ve shown you Ubuntu chemistry applications for students, but we somehow missed this extremely simple and information-crammed version of the periodic table. That’s too bad. There is a lot of information to be found in gElemental, and it’s very logically arranged. There’s a reason it’s so highly rated in the Ubuntu Software Center, and I think it’s more than a competent replacement for a mere poster.

Whether you’re a student or just a science enthusiast, this is an application worth having around for offline reference. If you’re a real nerd, you can just explore it for fun in your spare time. Science is fun.

Using gElemental

If you’ve seen the periodic table of the elements before, the main screen of gElemental will be familiar to you. You’ll see the elements, all in their proper places.

Hover over an element and you’ll see its name, the series it belongs in and its atomic number at the top. By default elements are color-coded according to series; you can find a legend by clicking the drop-down menu at the bottom of the window. You can change this color code in the menu to any of dozens of factors, which is certainly something a poster can’t do.

It’s a simple interface but what else do you want? If what you want are details about the various elements I highly recommend clicking one of them.

You’ll find a variety of information right away, from basic chemical stats to the year and place it was discovered. Click the “Physical or Atomic” tab in this window and you’ll see even more information:

Under physical, you’ll find the melting and boiling points, the heat of fusion and vaporization and more. The atomic tab contains even more information. Rest assured, there’s more data here than most posters you’ve seen.

Are you wondering where this information is all coming from? There’s a complete list of sources which you can find in the menu.

You’re free to look through this and decide how trustworthy the information is, which is particularly nice if you need to cite something you find in this program.

Installing gElemental

Are you ready to install this program? Search your Linux distro’s repository for “gelemental” and you’ll have it in no time. Are you a Ubuntu user? Then simply click here to install gElemental, thanks to the magic of the Ubuntu Software Center.

If you can’t find gElemental in your repositories, head over to the gElemental homepage, where you’ll finds the source code to compile it yourself.

Conclusion

I love simple applications that do one thing very well. So far as I can tell, this program is a great way to quickly pull up information about the periodic table of the elements. Do you agree? As always, leave your thoughts in the comments below along with any alternative applications for the job.

Below are three fun, simple ways in which you can try Ruby in your browser, right now, for free, without installing a single file.

Rubymonk

Hailing all the way from India, Rubymonk offers a series of over 50 short, interactive Ruby exercises and it saves your progress. Above is what I saw when I went back to Rubymonk after leaving the website (I solved the first couple of exercises).

Let’s look at what a single exercise looks like:

The exercise starts with a simple explanation, followed by a snippet of code. If you hit the Run button, the code is immediately evaluated and you get to see its output. Next, you get a simple assignment. Write the code you think is the right answer, and hit Ctrl+Enter to run it (or click the Run button). The Rubymonk now spits out an answer:

Once you finish working through some of the exercises, you will be presented with a problem to solve on your own:

You get an explanation of what you need to solve, some template code to get you started, and you’re on your own. This is great, because it’s much closer to actually coding than filling in one-liners in response to narrow questions.  If you get stuck, you can always click “See the Solution” and the solution will instantly appear in the text box.

Once you’re done with the first problem, you are transported to the table of contents, where you can pick and choose what you want to learn (and whether you want a lesson or a problem). Lessons look like this:

And a problem looks like this:

The tags are lessons which you should work through, in order to acquire the skills you need to solve the problem. The whole thing is very polished, and just generally fun to work with. Highly recommended.

Ruby Koans

The Ruby Koans are hosted over at Heroku, and are even more steeped in mysticism that Rubymonk. Check it out:

Say what you will, but this is definitely not boring. Fill in what you think is the right answer (trivial, in this case), and hit Enter. The snippet will be evaluated, and colored accordingly:

The Ruby Koans are a lot of fun, and they seem much more advanced than Rubymonk. They start off with asserts and testing, rather than arrays or other basic concepts. One small niggle is that your progress is not saved between koans, so you’d better bookmark where you stopped for the day. It’s not as AJAXy as Rubymonk, but I think it’s still great, and it’s a project that inspired many imitations, such as the JavaScript Koans.

Try Ruby

Try Ruby was created as a tribute to why’s (poignant) guide to ruby (link to PDF), one of the craziest programming textbooks I have ever laid eyes on. It’s a great book for the Ruby language, and although the author no longer takes an active role in the Ruby community, I have a feeling he would have approved of the project. The website is built as a large ruby prompt, with instructions on the side:

The text is simple and playful (no mystical references here). You type real Ruby code in the prompt, and work through the simple exercises one by one. The whole thing doesn’t take very long.

Final Thoughts

Personally, I feel that learning by doing is one of the best ways to absorb new material. These may not make you into a code ninja, but they will definitely give you a feel for Ruby. If you’re curious about the language, pick the one you like best and take it for a spin! Let us know how it went in the comments.

We’re not talking about merely podcasts and videos. The courses on iTunes U include everything, and that means handouts, exams, answers and much more material in the form of PDF files you can download for free. The app offers courses on numerous different topics, which come from big places like Harvard and Cambridge, or small ones like community colleges, and even includes K-12 courses.

The main screen of the app looks very much like iBooks, and displays the courses you’ve subscribed to on the familiar wooden shelf. You can browse the iTunes U catalog by institute, browse new courses, or search for your favorite topics. When you subscribe for a course, iTunes U downloads all the core material, and informs you that supplemental material may be purchased from the iTunes Store, App Store or iBookstore.

This venture of Apple’s goes hand in hand with their new iBooks textbooks, and is aimed at both educators, who can design entire courses and make them available through the app, and for students, who can easily access course material and sync it between their different devices.

What do you think of iTunes U? Are you planning to use it?

Source: TUAW

The ukulele is considered the easiest stringed instrument to play. With just four strings the ukulele has an incredible range of chords but only a few which are essential to learn in order to produce music. Ukuleles are therefore a good entry-level instrument for those who want to play guitar or another stringed instrument, but don’t have the confidence to start on something so complex.

Ukulele Tuner

Ukulele Tuner is first on the list as tuning your ukulele is the first thing you’ll need to do. Get-Tuned offers an online ukulele tuner which is simple yet very effective. You get a choice of five presets, including standard, full step-up, and full step-down, as well as a complete set of notes to choose for yourself. You can also choose between a ukulele sound and a sine wave depending on your preference.

Get-Tuned also has tuners for guitars, banjos, violins, and other stringed instruments, articles such as introductions and how-to’s pertaining to these instruments and even a Java-powered virtual metronome with different sound effects and tempo options.

Uke School

Uke School, or Pineapple Pete’s Uke School to give it its full title, is a great place to head after your new instrument is tuned to perfection. The bulk of the site is dedicated to simple and intuitive lessons broken down into Beginner, Basic, and Advanced, and further into individual drills and instructions. The lessons are perfectly pitched, being easy to follow and detailed.

There is also a section talking about the ukulele, including the types available and the history of the instrument, a section featuring songs, and even a section dedicated to getting babies playing the ukulele. The site is free to use thanks to unobtrusive advertising and a donation page.

Ukulele Underground

Ukulele Underground exists to help the next generation of ukulele players, dispelling the notion that the instrument is just a toy. There are lessons and tips presented in the form of videos, and even the occasional video collaboration by members. There is also the opportunity to form or join a group, and to read or contribute to the forum.

The basic lessons are free, again supported by advertising and the chance to donate. There is also a paid option called UU+ for those who can afford it. This offers more-detailed lessons, live seminars, downloads, and giveaways.

Easy Ukulele

Easy Ukulele is another site built for newcomers to the instrument. There is a wide range of content on the site, from tips for tuning and strumming right through to video lessons and chord charts. The passion the site’s owner Kainoa has for the instrument is obvious and empowering, and it makes it a lot easier to listen to what he has to say on the subject.

As well as the lessons there are also reviews of different ukuleles, basic information on uke musicians and festivals, and links to a multitude of other websites ukulele players will find useful.

Ukulele Songs

Ukulele Songs is the place to visit after you have learned the basics and want to do more with your uke. There are pop songs available to play, with all the chords needed to perform tunes from ABBA to U2 all laid out neatly. There are also videos and chord charts. Worth it simply for the tablature needed to play The Wind Cries Mary by Jimi Hendrix.

Uketoob isn’t quite worthy of a full entry on this list, but it’s a fantastic site nonetheless. It isn’t a resource as such, instead being a ukulele video blog, featuring a new clip which includes a uke or ukes on a daily basis. But it’s a must-visit for all ukulele players both new and experienced.

Conclusion

These five fantastic ukulele resources on the Web will provide new and established ukulele players with tips, tricks, chords, tabs, lessons, and much more besides. If you play the ukulele then please feel free to share other (preferably free) resources you have found on the Web.

If you don’t play the ukulele then why not? Do you prefer another instrument? Do you think the ukulele is nothing more than a trendy toy? The video embedded above should hopefully help dispel that myth.

Image Credit: Monsieur Gordon

So whether you are into motion graphics, action sequences, or artistic animations, these sites right here will teach you some pretty advanced stuff. Take a gander at them, and try out some of these tutorials for yourself!

Video Copilot

This definitive web-location for all things After Effects – Video Copilot – has been a longtime go-to source for VFX junkies. What I really like about this site is the fact that Video Copilot often takes on some pretty advanced techniques and then delivers it into bite-sized chunks for anyone to understand. The tutorials are all very thorough, and I’d recommend them to anyone with a creative mind and some time on their hands.

With that being said, you should recognize that Video Copilot is merely a starting point for most people, a place to learn techniques that you can build onto your own work. From my point of view, I would recommend just playing around with these tutorials. However, don’t apply the exact step-by-step results to your personal projects (for demo reel purposes), but if you are extremely new to After Effects, you should probably jump into the After Effects Basic Training, a nice set of free tutorials to get you started with the application. Furthermore, Video Copilot offers a great deal of production products for sale through their online store.

Motion Works

Motion Works is an Australian-based source for After Effects tips and tutorials that are presented in an easy-to-use format on an easy-to-read site. These tutorials are very detailed, and as mentioned with Video Copilot, you should use them as starting points for your own personal projects. The tutorials are all great exercises, and they even include instructions on how to create effects and motion graphics that you would see on television or in the movie theater.

One of the great things about Motion Works is that it actually provides downloadable presets that you can bring into your own project. Simply change the text, colors, and what-have-you, and you’ll have something presentable in no time. Personally, I would use these presets as a way to explore what exactly each setting and effect can do. Think of it as if you are reverse engineering these video effects, and that way, you can learn to make things from scratch.

AE Tuts Plus

AE Tuts Plus is a pretty solid source for After Effects, and I like a lot of what it has to offer. The tutorials range from full-length tutorials to quick tips, so if you’re easily distracted (like I am), you can learn something in a very short amount of time. With that being said, if you have time to kill, watch some of the longer videos and enjoy the power of self-serving education. The tutorials are high quality and interesting to try, but as always, try to use them only as a foundation for your work.

The unique feature I liked about AE Tuts Plus was the fact that it offers more than just tutorials, for there are plenty of VFX-related blog posts included on the site as well. From DIY gear to inspirational articles, you’ll leave AE Tuts Plus with a whole lot more than just a VFX education.

Conclusion

These sites are great, but there are probably hundreds of YouTubers out there who have dozens of tutorials for After Effects if you just go search for them. By no means should you only use these sites to build your After Effects repertoire. Heck, some of them are only kids, and I would watch them as closely as I would any professional – sometimes even more so.

With that being said, what other sites do you go to for After Effects tutorials? Any favorite tutorials from the ones mentioned here? Do you have any personal tutorials to share with us here at MUO?

Lectures are available online to watch at your leisure, as are reading materials and quizzes. Teaching staff monitor forums so that important questions can be answered. Dedicated students should find it is possible to learn as much from these courses as from their paid, internal counterparts.

Since Stanford expect very high enrolment numbers for these subjects, they have ensured the Q&A forum for each class is quite sophisticated. When a question is asked, students can respond and they can rank both questions and answers given. When the teaching staff monitor the forum and offer their expertise, the difficult questions will be easy for them to spot in the midst of the forum action.

Stanford don’t seem to have created a page specifically to list of all their available free subjects, however there are links to all of the currently available courses at the bottom of each course page. For an example, see the Human-Computer Interaction class page.

And remember, it’s not about accreditation. It’s about what you learn and the great minds you meet along the way.

Source: Stanford Human-Computer Interaction Course

Their program, called Code Year, is a straightforward, fairly easy to follow three-part course for learning JavaScript, and two separate Codecademy Labs for the object-oriented language, Ruby, and Python. You can complete the lessons in the site’s online text editor, and work at your own pace. The lessons are designed for beginners and those experienced with coding in other languages. And Codecademy says their labs are actually “designed to create your own programs and share them on Twitter and Facebook, and show your friends what you have learned.”

As you complete tutorials, you are awarded points and badges designed to show off and track your progress. Learning code is like learning any language – it takes practice and concentration. Coding will enable you to build intricate websites, online or computer games, and mobile apps.

The Codecademy doesn’t yet include an online forum for students to troubleshoot lessons, but you can share your progress with friends, on Facebook and Twitter. The difficult part in learning say JavaScript is making sure you’re using the proper syntax, like surrounding declared names with quotation marks.

As writer Douglas Rushkoff contends, “If we don’t learn to program, we risk being programmed ourselves…program or be programmed.

Source: Techcrunch
Image Credit: Shutterstock