Friday, February 29, 2008

How to downlaod video's from MIT

MIT OpenCourseWare (MIT OCW) is a large-scale, Web-based publishing initiative with the goal of providing free, searchable access to MIT course materials for educators, students, and individual learners around the world. These materials are offered in a single, searchable structure spanning all of MIT's academic disciplines, and include uniform metadata about the contents of the individual subject sites.

How to download MIT OCW streaming video lectures to my computer for viewing off-line?
Most of the video that MIT OCW provides is in a Real Video format delivered through streaming servers. MIT OCW goal in providing video in this format (in multiple bitrates) is to enable users with a variety of Internet connections to sample MIT OCW video offerings with a common browser plug-in without having to download large media files.

MIT OCW video streams can be recorded by video stream recorders supporting Real Video streamed through RTSP protocol like RM recorders, but users are able to download MIT OCW non streaming video files if they prefer to play these files off-line. There are two typical URL structures for links to MIT OCW video lecture delivered in a streaming format:

  • OCW video files stored on the Akamai network will have URLs that look something like this
    http://mfile.akamai.com/7870/rm/mitstorage.download.akamai.com/7870/18/18.06/videolectures/strang-1806-lec01-26aug1999-220k.rm
    If you want to download this file and play it off-line, use the following URL -- the only difference is in the first part of the URL:
    http://ocw.mit.edu/ans7870/18/18.06/videolectures/strang-1806-lec01-26aug1999-220k.rm
  • This same basic approach will work for all of the MIT OCW streaming videos stored on the Akamai network. Simply find the URL to the streaming media, and replace the first part of the URL
    http://mfile.akamai.com/7870/rm/mitstorage.download.akamai.com/7870
    with
    http://ocw.mit.edu/ans7870
  • OCW video files stored on the Internet Archive (such as those for "Course 18.03 -- Differential Equations, Spring 2004") will have URLs that look something like this:
    http://www.archive.org/stream/mitocw.18.03.f03.videolectures/mit-ocw-18.03-lec1-05feb2003-220k.rm
  • To download this file and play it off-line, use the following URL -- the only difference is that you replace "stream" with "download":
    http://www.archive.org/download/mitocw.18.03.f03.videolectures/mit-ocw-18.03-lec1-05feb2003-220k.rm
This same basic approach will work for all the MIT OCW streaming videos stored on the Internet Archive network. Simply find the URL to the streaming media file and replace the word "stream" with the word "download."

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MIT Open Courseware

The most well known among open course providers is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), whose open course ware can be said to have brought about a revolution in this field. The content provided by MIT can be expected to be of the highest merit considering the reputation to uphold. OCW shares free lecture notes, exams, and other resources from more than 1800 courses spanning MIT's entire curriculum. Courses targeted at undergraduates and postgraduates are available here, and of late they have started courses even for High school students. The nature of the information provided includes assignment and exams with solutions, lecture notes (PDF format), presentation slides etc. Further you can download the entire course in the ZIP format. Apart from this there are classroom lecture videos available for viewing online. These recordings are available in Real Media format for both slow (56Kbps) and fast (220Kbps) connections. Further these files are also available for download from iTunes®. They can also be downloaded in the audio format if needed, a boon for students living in countries with slow internet speeds . A word of caution, the above text doesn’t mean that all types of contents are available for download. The amount of information available depends on the comfort levels of individual faculty members at MIT. The availability of information on the MIT open courseware or for that matter on any courseware doesn’t mean that you can dump your books. These open courseware’s are only for supplementing the educational needs of the learner, for example discovering a new technique to solve a given problem. Students and learners will still need a comprehensive source of information.
To summarize, MIT's open courseware initiative was a revolutionary way of disseminating information to learners and educators worlwide. The students can gain much from the expertise of the worlds best teachers.

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Open courseware

Freely and openly available course ware’s are one of the best choices for you to learn online. The open course ware consortium, which is a group of open course providers, defines open course as “free and open digital publication of high quality educational materials, organized as courses”. The OpenCourseWare Consortium is a collaboration of more than 100 higher education institutions and associated organizations from around the world creating a broad and deep body of open educational content using a shared model. The mission of the OpenCourseWare Consortium is to advance education and empower people worldwide through opencourseware.

The consortium has institutions and organizations from over 20 countries currently participating in OpenCourseWare Consortium activities.


To visit the consortium click here

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Why this Blog

In my opinion education is meant to be free and acquired at one’s own pace without any timetables, syllabi and without deadlines or assignment. Every individual must be given the freedom and opportunity to study at his convenience. The internet provides an opportunity to achieve these aims. This blog is an assimilation of all thats best in the world of education and yes free too. Now many wonder as to why cant they google and find for themselves. well, its time consuming and boring. So just keep visiting this site for all your education needs

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

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