MIT OpenCourseWare and Free Information

MIT offers an incredible range of educational materials as part of its OpenCourseWare project.

The project is

a free and open educational resource for faculty, students, and self-learners around the world. OCW supports MIT's mission to advance knowledge and education, and serve the world in the 21st century. It is true to MIT's values of excellence, innovation, and leadership.

"Information wants to be free." is a fundamental part of the hacker ethos. While few may have the resources to duplicate the scope of MIT's efforts, institutions and even individuals can contribute to the sharing of information. One of my goals of this blog provide resources to other faculty inside and out of my own college. It has helped my own professional development even if no one reads it, as it forces me to actively look for material to post and to reflect upon my own teaching. However, my hope is, of course, that a few others read it and find some benefit, either in my own thoughts, or in the resources provided.

Blogs, wikis and other sites (say, flickr or del.icio.us) that allow average people to be creators and not just consumers of information, are helping to make real the vision of Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web, who wrote in a 1996 article:

The World Wide Web was designed originally as an interactive world of shared information through which people could communicate with each other and with machines. Since its inception in 1989 it has grown initially as a medium for the broadcast of read-only material from heavily loaded corporate servers to the mass of Internet connected consumers. ... In the future we look toward the web becoming a tool for even smaller groups, families, and personal information systems.