Where once google and a thesaurus were my closest allies for taking on a new subject, the wiki and dict firefox keywords have now taken their place. Even textbooks themselves are becoming less and less necessary to learn some new subject. The internet is fast approaching the point where there is enough relevant and accessible information available that you can learn just about any new topic without ever stepping into a classroom or opening a textbook.

I’m not suggesting that you attempt to use Wikipedia to teach yourself differential equations, but it does not take long to browse the external links for the article where you will find, among other things, a link to video lectures for MIT’s DiffEq class. Regardless of your beliefs as to the reliability of Wikipedia as a credible source of information[link], the articles often provide a good starting point (via external links) to learn more about a subject. There are also many free textbooks you can find on the web.

Most often however I don’t attempt to use the internet as a substitute for class, but rather as a supplement. When I study now, I will usually keep a Firefox window open. As I come across unfamiliar or poorly explained topics, I can simply type “wiki someword” in the location bar and have it’s Wikipedia page brought up. It’s easy to set-up similar shortcuts [link] so you can quickly look up words in a dictionary, thesaurus, other encyclopedias, etc. If you are stuck with a lousy lecturer, see if MIT or any of the other universities that offer free video lectures have something on the topic. When all else fails google it.

I think that the main limitation right now to the use of the internet as an educational resource is the limited material available for more specialized fields of knowledge. This of course is true with traditional resources as well: the more specialized the topic, the smaller the number of people who understand it. Hopefully over time more and more schools will follow in MIT and Berkeley’s footsteps by posting video and audio feeds of lectures online. It would be neat to see a trend, not just towards open science and open source, but also towards open education.