This week marks the first anniversary of this blog. Looking back over the year’s posts, I see some patterns emerging. In this post, I’d like to share with you my 5 favorite sources of high-quality, free training and education. These folks all make it easy for me! I know they’re always churning out great new stuff on a regular basis, so I visit them often.

And here’s a challenge for you: Why don’t you check them out for yourself, find some new great stuff, then write a review. I’ll be happy to publish your review right here!

1. Alison — Alison’s products are consistently well-designed, easy-to-use, and cover lots of business and technical topics.

Alison

Go to — http://alison.com/index.php

2. BBC Learning – BBC’s training and educational materials are beautiful, humorous, fun, multi-media, even surprising! At the same time, they are well-designed from an instructional point of view.

BBC Learning

Go to — http://www.bbc.co.uk/learning/

3. Open Yale — Open Yale is accumulating quite a collection of comprehensive, semester-long academic materials. Of all the university-level open learning providers that I’ve seen, Open Yale seems to provide the best instructional design, most highly integrated learning materials, and easy-to-use downloads.

Open Yale

Go to — http://oyc.yale.edu/

4. Learn Out Loud – Plenty of high-quality freebies, newsletters, links to other freebies, and user reviews. Find out how much content you can cram into your i-Pod or MP3 player and start Learning Out Loud when you are waiting in line or exercising.

LearnOutLoud.com

Go to — http://www.learnoutloud.com/

5. Brian Johnson — Brian Johnson is someone to watch. Simply put, he’s changed my life with his PhilosophersNotes and Zaadz notes and big ideas. Brian’s freebies appear on LearnOutLoud and several other places on the net. So I try to follow him online and see what he’s up to next! (A very cool surprise may be forthcoming from Brian for all you freebie fans! So stay tuned!)

PhilosophersNotes