49 best free websites and apps to learn something new

Once upon a time, if you wanted to learn something, you had to a) pay a bunch of money, and b) go to a school or classroom, a place specifically dedicated to learning. Those days are over.

Now, a profusion of apps, websites and institutions offer us a wider variety of (often superior) educational experiences than ever before- and we can access them from anywhere in the world, often for free. The apps and websites on this list can teach you practically anything- from coding and cooking, to surfing and negotiating.

In this day and age, there is simply no excuse to not know something you’d like to know. You can learn anything, for free, at your own pace, anywhere you can access the internet. We’re out of excuses not to educate ourselves- short of downloading knowledge directly into your head, this is as easy as it gets.

This time, I am going to share inspiring apps, websites and tools that you can use to ease your life and take full advantage of without paying a single penny. The era in which we are living is completely digital and full of knowledge that we must keep on learning in order to move forward. So take a look at the list below and don’t forget to share if you find it valuable J

Take free online courses on a variety of subjects

Khan Academy- High-quality free courses on a variety of subjects

Alison- Free online courses from the world’s top publishers.

CourseBuffet- Free online courses created by universities.

Edx.org – Free/Paid online courses from World top universities (Harvard, MIT, UCBerkeley, Dartmouth, Cornell, Columbia etc)

Udemy- Huge selection of free and premium courses- mostly on technical skills.

Highbrow- Free 10-day courses, divided into 5-minute daily lessons and delivered by email.

Academic Earth- Free online academic education for everyone.

Learnist- Print and video content, crowd sourced and curated by experts.

Degreed- Unlimited learning. Free forever.

Get healthier, be more productive, and learn faster

Memrise- Learn a variety of subjects via digital flashcards and crowd sourced mnemonics.

Greatist- Articles on becoming healthy and happy.

ZenHabits- Minimalist productivity advice, with a focus on psychology.

Anki- Free flashcard software.

Hello Healthy- Short, actionable health weight loss and fitness articles.

Fitocracy- Free workout, fitness tips and fitness tracking.

Learn coding and other technical skills

Codecademy- Learn Javascript, HTML, CSS, Python and more.

Free Code Camp- Learn to code, meet other coders, build projects that help non-profits.

Code.org- Introductory coding lessons, designed for k-12 students.

Data Camp- Free and freemium courses on R, Python and data visualisation.

CodeCombat- Introductory coding lessons, in the form of a fantasy RPG.

Lrn- Phone app with free interactive coding mini-quizzes.

Learn a new language

Duolingo — Learn over 20 different languages, including Klingon for some reason.

Babbel- Free language learning with integrated speech recognition.

Drops- Study a language on your phone for just 5 minutes a day.

Busuu- Community-base language learning. Interact with native speakers.

CoffeeStrap- Practice a new language by voice chatting with native speakers with whom you share common interests.

Lingvist- Learn a language in 200 hours.

Sharpen your social and career skills

Improve Your Social Skills- Free social skills guide from a guy who overcame Asperger’s.

Succeed Socially- Free social skills guide for awkward people.

Job-Hunt.org- Free articles on job hunting, getting promoted, freelancing, personal branding, and other career skills.

Mind Tools- Free tools and videos for improving career, management and communications skills.

Make something

Makezine- Online magazine for makers with guides, projects and news.

Snapguide- Free user-created guides for makers.

ChefSteps- Mix of free and premium cooking classes.

Instructables- User-created guides for making everything from cookies to buildings.

Allrecipes- The web’s largest collection of recipes.

Become a human encyclopedia

InstaNerd- Read a never-ending series of random factoids.

TED-Ed- Curated, high-quality educational videos.

Brain Pump- Watch a random educational video.

Now I Know- Fun facts delivered in a daily email newsletter.

Curiosity- 5 fun new facts, delivered to your phone every day.

Zidbits- Huge collection of articles on fun and unusual (mostly scientific) topics.

Big Think- In-depth videos by experts.

Curious- Sharpen your brain with daily “workouts”

Do something fun

Yousician- Learn your favorite guitar, bass, piano and ukelele songs.

Parkour & Freerunning World- Free Parkour and Freerunning video tutorials. Be careful!

Chesscademy- Learn chess from the masters, and solve chess puzzles.

Pianu- Learn to play piano online.

Surfedukators- Free surfing videos, tips and tutorials

Flowkey- Free piano training app.

Source:- medium.com

Sanity – To Keep You From Going Insane

It is all about the smart phone today. You might or might not have food to eat but you definitely have a smart phone, and why should you not? A smartphone is increasingly becoming the solution to every problem. The survival skills classes have been modified in schools and camps to incorporate a smart phone in the list of essential things, including water and food. And the stronger internet connection you have, the better.

Internet is the fuel that enhances the smartness of a smart phone, without which it is not that smart. This is because apps make a smart phone smart. And most of the apps that connect us to the world run on the internet. This keeps us well connected all the time.

However, connection with the world sometimes tends to become stronger that we would want it to be. This is because of the mighty web crawlers. Through the internet, these web crawlers keep such a strong tab on our online activity to understand our general behaviour and our preferences, mostly to annoy us with silly marketing calls that the internet becomes quite a nuisance for us. But like everything, the internet comes with its own set of good and bad.

Fortunately, like poison, the internet is its own cure. So, to combat this particular problem what we need is sanity which can be achieved by an app called Sanity – to keep you from going insane.

Sanity makes your phone calls better, easier and healthy. It is your personal assistant to:

– audio record your phone calls in mpeg4, 3gpp or amr format (also automatically)

– announce caller and SMS: speak the caller’s name when receiving a call or a message using the synthesised voice (text to speech)

– block unwanted calls and SMS: automatically refuse incoming calls and SMS filtering out the phone number (include or exclude anonymous and/or unknown numbers, favourites, contacts and groups; enable the block by choosing date and time); advanced: choose between different block methods to confuse the caller!

– auto answer: automatically answer the call when phone is ringing by choosing phone numbers, date and time and if respond only when using headphones.

– urgent calls: choose what phone numbers your phone will ring or vibrate also when it’s in silent mode

– automatic speakerphone: automatically turn on/off the handsfree when the phone is far/close to your ear

– outgoing anonymous calls: make private calls by hiding your caller ID (also automatically by filtering the phone numbers to call)

– reduce electromagnetic waves: automatically turn on/off wifi, bluetooth, GPS and mobile data (2G/3G) when you speak at your phone

– choose different volume levels during calls: one for normal calling, loud handsfree, wired headsets volume and bluetooth headsets volume

– automatic bluetooth headsets: automatically enable bluetooth for a limited time when the call starts

– timeouts for restoring silent mode and airplane mode: just enable the silent/airplane mode (in any way) and Sanity will ask you how much time to stay in that mode

– vibrate the phone when the call begins and when the call ends.

– fast SMS: displays the received SMS allowing you to respond immediately.

Sanity uses proximity sensor for turning on/off automatically the antennas and the handsfree when the phone is close to your ear. In this way, Sanity can make your calls healthier by lowering the electromagnetic fields. It can be also useful while you’re driving car: through automatic handsfree, the headsets are no longer needed.

Most of Sanity features are configurable through the most advanced phone number filter: choose whether to activate a function for all numbers or for anonymous numbers, unknown numbers, contacts (all or some), favorite contacts, contact groups and also filter by prefix number. Sanity is light, small and very fast. Sanity is a free software, open source, released under GNU Public License version 3.

Thus, you might be fed up of random calls when you are at work in an important meeting, at home relaxing or in the loo. Sanity will prove to be the solution to an ‘unnecessary calls free’ living.

Source: Drippler