In the education domain, there came the era of information and technological boom. Today, you do not have to go to Europe to acquire the finest knowledge. Lectures of eminent professors of top universities can now be attended from home. Moreover, you can discuss, ask questions and share your thoughts with them without leaving your house. Such opportunities are provided by a number of educational websites, which we will cover in today’s post.

A computer, the Internet and a couple of hours a day of free time, this is all which takes to study the history of the bloodiest wars, deadly diseases and fevers, get acquainted with the operation processes of your internal organs, learn some new culture, marketing, programming languages and much more. All you have to do is enroll in some online course and do assignments systematically.

For interactive sites, neither your physical location, social standing, sex, age, nor physical abilities matter. Everyone there learns on their own, doing a number of fascinating assignments and reinforcing their knowledge through small tests and quizzes.

The duration of courses primarily depends on the chosen course and the university: some take only 14 days, while others require not less than a year. At the same time, a significant number of educational services not just provides access to their resource, but also issues a certificate confirming that the person has really learned something.

When examining such rapid development of online educational services and their growing popularity, there is a reason to expect that, in the future, these platforms will become a very serious alternative to traditional education. At least, this judgment is quite true for the following five services for your education:

1. Coursera

Coursera.org is an educational platform that is considered to beone of the best online education platforms. Here you can find lectures on biology, medicine, sociology, politics, economics, jurisprudence, history, mathematics, informatics, management, design, music, and many other disciplines. Its lectures are uploaded there by more than 110 educational institutions of the world, including Stanford and Preston Universities, University of Lausanne, Rome University of La Sapienza, University of London, and so on.

2. FutureLearn

FutureLearn.com is an international learning service. Here you can find unique educational information on a variety of topics: history, art, medicine, psychology. Materials are provided in English and are of excellent quality.

3. EDX.org

EDX.org is a project of two of the strongest universities – Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology – where the knowledge is provided without admission exams and often free of charge. Here you can come across lectures provided by MIT, Harvard, Cambridge, and University of California at Berkeley on artificial intelligence, electronics, programming, computer science, chemistry, etc. The description of each course usually specifies the requirements for students (for example, knowledge of the basics of mathematics), but these are just recommendations from the authors of the course.

4. Udacity

Udacity is a service that will be appealing to those who like exact sciences but not humanities. Speaking of the latter, you can check out this popular essay writing service university students majoring in exact sciences to get some assistance with written assignments. Anyway, at Udacity, you can find courses in programming languages, cryptography, robotics, and physics. It is noteworthy that not only university professors work here, but also specialists from leading companies including Google and Microsoft. What is particularly great about working with this service is that users do not need to be always connected to the Internet to use it.

5. Udemy

Udemy is a real fair of knowledge because the service offers tens of thousands of both paid and free video classes. In addition, Udemy is among the best teacher websites, since it gives you the opportunity to earn money by becoming a teacher yourself. Distance learning is provided by leading experts of the world. Among the teachers are Mark Zuckerberg and similar giants in the IT industry. In addition to web development and programming, there are lectures on art and photography, health and fitness, hobbies and needlework, music, linguistics, entrepreneurship and much more.

Some more simple tools for your education:

1. Library of Congress

The National Library of the United States is an amazing, free education source of the literature of various genres. Most of the books are available online on the library’s website. Whatever it is that you want to learn, you can always find the books you need in the Library of Congress.

2. Google World Wonders

This one is probably the best website from the list. Learn the ancient and modern world on a magnificent online service from Google. Enjoy new art, culture, adventure and amazing stories that appear every day.

3. Internet Sacred Text Archive

The largest online repository of free books on religion and spirituality. What’s more, here you can find everything about mythology, parapsychology, alchemy and a lot of folklore.

4. MeetUp

Find out what is new and interesting happening in your favorite industries or hobbies. Go to meetings and communicate with people, as this is the best way to self-improve every day.

5. Trivium Education

Critical thinking is a very important skill, which, unfortunately, is not taught in school. Trivium offers free educational materials that will help you hone your rhetoric, grammar, and logic.