Welcome to Ron's Education Site. This site http://www.educ.u-net.com
is concerned principally with distance learning. Occasionally, other educational
matters will be covered, either because of their topicality, or through
popular demand. That's an invitation to email me with requests, comments,
criticism, and suggestions. All are welcome. You can email me without
leaving the site by clicking on the Send email link at the bottom of this
page.
To help you obtain information on most aspects of education, I've included various features.
The Index Page helps you to navigate around the site and contains links to all current pages.
The Links Page includes links to some of the best education sites, and other information sources, on the World Wide Web. Other pages contain articles on various topics.
To access one of these pages, just click on the appropriate link.
One other feature is a search engine, accessed from this page, with which you can locate information sources on almost any subject, just by entering a key word, phrase, title, etc. I hope you will find these useful.
About Me
Over the years, I've worked as an electronics engineer, technical author, and educator, and my own education was an essential element, not just in furthering my career, but in getting jobs in the first place. I got involved with distance-learning when work and family commitments prevented my studying full-time and have since taken several undergraduate and graduate courses in the USA and UK. A combination of on-campus and distance-learning courses, and proficiency examinations has helped me achieve my educational goals.
Among my interests are various sports, the performing arts, and
amateur radio. I'm a life member of the National Rifle Association, and
of AMSAT (the Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation).
Advantages of Distance-Learning
Distance-learning is ideal if you want to take a formal course but cannot do so on-campus. You may have a job that entails lots of travel, live a long way from the nearest college, be prevented by illness or invalidity from attending college, or have small children to look after. Whatever the reason, provided you are motivated and committed to succeed, distance-learning
can help you achieve your goals. The great thing about distance-learning is that it doesn't recognize national boundaries and colleges in many countries offer courses to international students.
Precautions to Take
Education is big business and, like any other business, some very suspect characters sometimes get involved. They trade under fancy names like the "University of ABC" or the "Institute of XYZ" and offer worthless 'qualifications' in exchange for your hard-earned cash. Many claim accreditation by impressive-sounding but equally worthless agencies, often with "International" or "World" in their names. Through no coincidence, their advertisements appear in reputable publications, alongside those of some of the world's most prestigious universities. They get away with it because of loopholes in the law, and lack of information on the part of potential students. These shady operations are called diploma mills or degree mills. How can you avoid them? By subscribing to newsgroups like alt.education.distance
where many honest and experienced educators are waiting, eagerly, to help you. This help will cost you nothing but your time. You'll also find tips on avoiding scams, selecting colleges and courses, and translating knowledge and skills into college credit, on the pages of this web site.
SETI@home
Distance-learning on our planet can be exciting but distance-learning from intelligent beings elsewhere in the universe is really something. Once, anyone hoping to receive signals from extraterrestrial beings was considered (at the very least) weird. Nowadays, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) is a respectable branch of space science. There are many SETI projects around the world and one you can participate in is run by the University of California - Berkeley. The project is called SETI@home.
Raw data is received from the Arecibo Observatory radio telescope in Puerto Rico (photo opposite) but the amount of processing required is too vast for UC - Berkeley to cope. That is, without your help. By installing a special screensaver on your computer, the computer will process a piece of this data while it is otherwise idle. When it's finished, you send the processed data back to SETI@home via the internet. In return, you'll receive another piece of data to keep your screensaver happy. If you'd like to be a real space scientist, or just want more details, click on the SETI@home button below. Who knows? You may be the first to establish contact with a real E.T.
Alta-Vista
Alta-Vista is probably the most comprehensive of the search engines, enabling you to search the World Wide Web and Usenet for information on any subject. You can search Alta-Vista direct from this page, so why not try?
RON'S
EDUCATION SITE
Over the years, I've worked as an electronics engineer, technical author, and educator, and my own education was an essential element, not just in furthering my career, but in getting jobs in the first place. I got involved with distance-learning when work and family commitments prevented my studying full-time and have since taken several undergraduate and graduate courses in the USA and UK. A combination of on-campus and distance-learning courses, and proficiency examinations has helped me achieve my educational goals.
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