20 Places to Educate Yourself Online for Free

It seems like these days you can learn just about anything online for free, but of course some of that information is better than others. The good news is there are plenty of reputable places to educate yourself online for free, and here’s a TechProceed.com's compiled list of 20 of them to get you started.

1. Coursera

The coolest thing about Internet learning is that you can take college courses which in the past were only available to people who forked over immense sums of money to attend elite colleges. Coursera brings a bunch of those classes together into one site, offering nearly 400 courses ranging from Introduction to Guitar from Berklee College of Music to Constitutional Law from Yale.
Courses typically include videos and certain coursework (such as online quizzes) that must be completed in a certain amount of time, as these courses are monitored by a professor. Stop by regularly to see what’s new, or search for topics that interest you can put them on a watch list so you’ll be notified when a new class begins.

2. Khan Academy

Home to more than 3,000 videos on subjects ranging from SAT prep to cosmology, art history to calculus, Khan Academy is a great place to learn. Detailed courses are broken into smaller sections of text or videos for ease of learning that fits into your schedule, and all are self-paced so you can spend as much or as little time with the subject as you like.
You can also leave comments or ask questions if you want more information or if something isn’t clear in the lessons.

3. OpenCourseWare

The OpenCourseWare Consortium is a worldwide effort to make college and university level course materials accessible for free on the Internet. Search for a specific topic that interests you, or search by language (20 are available) or the source of the coursework.
There are more than 5,000 classes in English alone, covering everything from statistical thermodynamics (Middle East Technical University) to Epidemics in South African History (University of Cape Town) and Creole Language and Culture (University of Notre Dame).

4. ALISON

A global-learning resource with courses in English, French and German, ALISONcovers everything from SAT prep to health and safety courses required in Ireland. There are lessons on everything from study skills to American copyright law, currency exchange to nonprofit fundraising, and general accounting to negotiating when buying a house.
Completion of a course grants you “certification,” which is a British designation, but it’s still kind of fun.

5. MIT Open Courseware

If you always wanted to attend a big-name school like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, now you can do the next best thing by taking many of its courses for free from your home on your own time. The MIT Open Courseware site posts course materials from a wide variety of classes you can search by department.
Choosing a course will show you when it was originally taught and by whom, and will give you access to the syllabus, course calendar, readings, assignments and study materials. You can download the course materials and work through the course at your own pace.

6. Academic Earth

If you’d like a broader collection of courses than MIT provides, Academic Earthis a great place to look. This free course aggregator has a stunning collection of courses from around 50 universities across the globe. You can search by source or general subject.
Don’t miss the curated playlists on topics such as natural laws, the nature of evil and the economic crisis. The video electives—with subjects like how to take a punch and why World War II made us fat—are lots of fun, too.

7. Open Learning Institute

The Open Learning Institute from Carnegie Mellon University allows access to a handful of course materials so you can learn at your own pace from the same kind of materials and self-guided assessments that would be used in a classroom. Their offerings are limited, but there’s a lot of detail in the coursework. Instructor-led courses are also sometimes available.

8. Open Culture

This site isn’t very pretty, but Open Culture does boast a collection of more than 700 downloadable courses, including college-level, certificate-bearing classes, language lessons, educational materials for K-12 and more.
There are also just some interesting links that aren’t to courses but you’ll still learn something from, such as this post on a reading list suggested by Ernest Hemingway.

9. Open Education Database

The well-designed Open Education Database claims more than 10,000 courses from universities from around the world. Search by topic and you’ll see the number of full courses, as well as which courses have audio lessons, video lessons or mixed media, so you can learn in whatever way you like.
You can also use this site to learn about online and offline schools, should you choose to continue your education in a more formal way.

10. iTunes U

Many of these same online courses can be accessed away from your computer with the help of iTunes U, a free app that can be downloaded to you iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch. It says that it includes 500,000 different courses, with material ranging from elementary school to college-level.
There’s also educational material here from respected institutions like the New York Public Library and MoMA. You can also add notes to the videos, share with friends and keep your course materials in iBooks so you have everything you need to learn wherever you are.

11. TED

The TED talks are a legendary source of information on all sorts of topics, and any discussion of how to educate yourself for free online needs to include them. There are now thousands of videos on all sorts of topics available on the site.
If you’re a fan of whimsy you can also get the site to suggest a fascinating, beautiful or informative video for you, among other tags. This may not be formal education but it certainly can be life-changing.

12. 99U

Love videos by experts on all sorts of topics? After you visit TED, check out99U, which is another great source of educational videos on all sorts of topics. It has a strong focus on the subject of creativity, business development and innovation, so it’s sure to be of interest if you’re an entrepreneur or in a creative line of work.

13. Ignite

If you want to learn something new and you’re really pressed for time, check out Ignite videos. The purpose of this series of speaking events is to have each person share something innovative or inspiring in just five minutes. Sounds silly, but you can get a big dose of greatness in a short amount of time.

14. Wikiversity

If you prefer your learning to be text-based, check out Wikiversity. As you might imagine, this site is part of the Wikimedia Foundation and includes detailed pages on a variety of subjects. It includes information of value to learners from preschool to college and beyond, and like other wiki projects is open-source and collaborative.
This is a good site or browsing, and the “random” button is a lot of fun

How to Find Out Which Windows Process is Using a File

Ever try to delete, move, or rename a file only to get a Windows system warning with something like one of these messages?
  • "Cannot delete file: Access is denied"
  • "There has been a sharing violation"
  • "The source or destination file may be in use"
  • "The file is in use by another program or user".
  • "Make sure the disk is not full or write-protected and that the file is not currently in use"

One of the best ways to handle locked files or folders is to use the free Microsoft program Process Explorer. Here is how to use it to find out what program, DLL, or handle is using a file or folder. You will need to run as administrator.



How to find out what program is using a file


In Windows 7 or 8, the system message may tell you what program is using the file. If it doesn’t or if you are using Windows XP, there is a simple way to find the program:
  1. Open Process Explorer, running as administrator.
  2. On the toolbar, find the gunsight icon on the right (shown highlighted in the figure shown below).
  3. Drag the icon and drop it on the open file or folder that is locked.
  4. The executable that is using the file will be highlighted in the Process Explorer main display list.



How to find out which handle or DLL is using a file

  1. Open Process Explorer, running as administrator.
  2. Enter the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+F. Altenatively, click the “Find” menu and select “Find a Handle or DLL”.
  3. A search dialog box will open.
  4. Type in the name of the locked file or other file of interest. Partial names are usually sufficient.
  5. Click the button “Search”,
  6. A list will be generated. There may be a number of entries.
  7. An individual handle in the list can be killed by selecting it and pressing the delete key. However, care is necessary when deleting handles, as instabilities may occur. Often, just rebooting will free a locked file.

How to Stop Google from Keeping a Record of Every Search You Make

Do you use Gmail, the Chrome browser, or other Google service? Then Google may be keeping a record of every search query you make. That’s right; if you have a Google account, Google may know everything you ever looked for on the web. That is, unless you turn off Google’s collecting of all your searches and clean out the web history they’ve kept. Here’s how.

Turn off Google Web History
  1. Go to the web page https://history.google.com
  2. Sign in to your Google account if you aren’t already signed in.
  3. Click the gear icon in the upper right corner (example shown in figure on the right).
  4. Choose “Settings”’
  5. The page that opens contains the section shown in the figure below.
  6. Click the button “Turn off” to stop Google collecting the data. If you change your mind, you can always turn Web History back on.

Delete items in Google Web History

  1. Previously collected data will still be there. To remove it, click the link contained in the word “delete” in the sentence, “You can also delete all past Google search activity or remove particular items from your recent activity.” The link is hard to see and I have highlighted it in yellow in the figure. 
  2. You will get a dialog box asking if you want to delete all items
  3. Click the button “Delete All”
  4. You can also delete only selected items by using the link contained in the phrase “recent activity” as indicated in the figure


What does Google do with this data? Why, they sell the information to advertisers, of course. Or maybe, they also give it to the government. Who knows?

Android/iPhone tip: How to wipe all your saved web passwords

Sure, it’s handy that your smartphone can remember and fill in usernames and passwords for your various web accounts. But it also means anyone else with access to your handset can log in to your most sensitive accounts, too.

Indeed, the more often you tap “yes” when your iPhone or Android phone asks “Would you like to save this password?”, the more saved passwords you have sitting in your pocket—and that could lead to big trouble if your precious smartphone ever lands in the wrong hands.

A good rule of thumb is to select “Never for this site” or “Not now” when your phone offers to save passwords for your most important accounts, such as your online banking site.

But what if you’ve already saved passwords for more sites than you can count?

In that case, you might consider starting fresh by wiping all the web passwords from your iPhone or Android phone’s memory.

You might want to think twice before saving passwords for sensitive online accounts on your iPhone.
For Android phones:
  • Open the Browser application, tap the Menu button, select Settings, then tap “Privacy & security.”
  • Scroll down to the Passwords section and tap “Clear passwords.” You’ll get one last chance to change your mind; if you’re ready to go ahead, tap the “OK” button.
  • If you want your phone to stop asking to save web passwords, clear the check from the “Remember passwords” checkbox.
  • For iPhone:
  • Tap Settings from the home screen, then tap Safari.
  • Next, tap AutoFill, then tap the “Clear All” button under the “Names & Passwords” setting.
  • To keep your iPhone from saving any more passwords, flip the “Names & Passwords” switch to “Off.”

What to Do with a Hung or Unresponsive Windows 7 Program

Sooner or later it happens to all of us – a Windows program gets hung up and just sits there frozen. You can open Task Manager (Ctrl+Shift+Esc) and try to close the hung program or use the command line to kill it. But sometimes you might want to see if you can find out why the program got hung up in the first place or you may want to try to unfreeze it. In that case, Windows 7 has just the system tool you need.

It’s called Resource Monitor and has many features. One of them is a way to troubleshoot programs that don’t respond. Here is how it works:

  • Open Resource Monitor by entering “resmon” in the Start-Search bar. Alternatively, open Task Manager( keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Shift+Esc), and click on the "Performance" tab and then the button "Resource Monitor". 
  • An example of the window that opens is shown in this figure. In the CPU section of the "Overview" tab, right-click the executable file of the hung application. The listing of the hung application will be colored red. 



  • The context menu that opens is shown on the right. You can close the hung process from this menu or you can choose the entry “Analyze Wait Chain…” to see what other processes may be interacting with the hung program. If you know that an entry in the wait chain is not crucial you can try ending that process to see if it frees up the hung program. However, take care not to end a process that is vital to system operation. Ending a process here is not permanent, however, and rebooting the computer will normally restart everything.

15 Awesome, Useful Internet Tricks

1. For clumsy fingered folks, if you accidentally close a tab on Google Chrome, press Control+Shift+T and it’ll come back from the dead.
2. If you’re in a particular country that can’t access important content on US websites like Hulu or Netflix, Firefox and Google Chrome offer a free extension called Media Hint that can have you watching Orange is the New Black and other American exclusives in no time.
3. Control+F or Command+F will allow you to find specific terms on a page. If only life had a version of this for when we lose our keys, phone, dignity, etc.
4. Want to surf the web in private with no recording of your web habits? For Firefox users, press control+shift+p, or for Chrome it’s control+shift+N, and you’ll be browsing off the record. This isn’t just for porn watching purposes as one might think, but for several other benefits such as websites that track your cookies and use ‘em to their advantage (I’m looking at you, hotel & airline companies). This simple incognito window defeats their swindling ways.
5. If you hate YouTube’s (or other website’s) ads before the start of your videos, Adblock Plus is what you need in your life. It’s basicallylike having Dikembe Mutombo protecting your eyes from any type of advertisement.
6. If you put define: in front of a word and Google it, you’ll get that word’s definition.
7. What you type into the URL bar can be surrounded by www. & .com by pressing control + enter.
8. For more specific search results, try utilizing the AROUND feature. It allows you to find separate phrases, not just mentioned in the same article or page, but inside of a specific amount of words apart. For example, if you wanted to find writings about ‘Kanye West’ and ‘pizza’ within 12 words of each other, your search would look like this:
“Kanye West” AROUND (12) “Pizza”
Having the terms you’re searching in quotation marks, the word AROUND written in ALL CAPS and the number in parenthesis are all necessary for this to work.
9. Another way to improve search accuracy is by taking advantage of the minus sign. E.g. Selena Gomez -Bieber. Boom! – you’ll get all the glorious Selena results without any of Justin’s douchey, mop bucket urinating shenanigans killing your vibe.
10. If you’re too lazy to lift a finger and click on your desired tab, control+tab (or control+shift+tab) will switch you between ‘em. As a lethargic tab hoarder, this is a great way to minimize hand movement while allowing that article from three weeks ago, that you swear you’re going to read, to remain open.
11. Corrupt A File is an enabler that can be a procrastinator’s best (or worst?) friend, allowing them to corrupt a file and make it seem like they did their work on time, but it’s unfortunately malfunctioning.


12. You can find a lot of textbooks on Google if you enter their title, then the desired file type. So an example would look like this: Book Title filetype:PDF


13. Too lazy to get up and grab your glasses? Control + or control – will allow you to adjust text sizes larger or smaller.
14. Need a disposable e-mail to avoid putting yourself at risk for spam? There’s a place called 10 Minute Mail that’s pretty self-explanatory.
15. If you’re going to do online shopping, try leaving your desired purchases in your cart for a while, and eventually you’ll get some type of discount code in an email that gives off desperate ex vibes, borderline begging you to finish the purchase. (This doesn’t ALWAYS work, but it happens enough that it’s worth trying if you don’t need whatever you’re ordering hastily.)

How to Download Whatsapp for PC or Laptop (Windows 7/8 and Mac)


How to use Whatsapp on Computer?



Are you the one who don't have a Smart phone? and still want to use whatsapp?
Want to run android apps and play android games on pc?

We have Solution for all your Questions:-

Then you are at the right place now you can use whats app on your PC for free.whats app helps you to connect with friends family.

Yes its simple you need to install bluestacks offline installer to run whats app on PC.

Install Whatsapp on your PC:

  1. Go here : http://www.bluestacks.com/ and Download bluestacks
  2. Now run the downloaded application.(click here for how to install bluestacks)
  3. Now you have installed Bluestacks Successully.You can skip the below step.
  4. If you are Getting Some Error as below while installing
  5. Error: "The application failed to initialized properly (0xc0000135) . Click on ok tp terminate the application",then .NET framework is missing on your PC. Go to End of article to get .NET framework Note: Get .NET Framework only if you are getting Error 
  6. Now open the application you can find the screen capture just like below picture
  7. Now Click on Search icon and search for Whatsapp
  8. Now choose the whatsapp messenger form any market .its your wish.
  9. Just click and Download whatsapp after selecting from any app store
  10. You can find downloaded app in My Apps.
  11. Now click on Whatsapp fill the details and start using it.
  12. If you want to uninstall any app just hold the app and click cross button.

If you Still have any problem feel free to comment below.I will help you :)