7 Free Educational Resources to Learn New Skills During the Pandemic
Edited by Allison Chen, Yunshu Li, and Dylan Zhao
For most people around the world, the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a lot of time spent confined within the same 4 walls. Although the situation has limited us physically, it has also introduced substantially more free time into our everyday schedule.
Luckily, the internet is full of educational content that can fulfill this free time. So, to help you kick start your isolation-motivated learning process, we’ve compiled 7 apps and courses that are now 100% free due to the COVID-19 outbreak. You’ll surely find something to match your interest as they all vary in difficulty, industry, and topic.
Table of Contents:
- Coursera Together
- Duolingo
- Scribd
- Blogging for Business Course
- Skillshare Learn
- LinkedIn Course
- Teach Your Monster to Read
1. Coursera Together
Coursera is an educational platform that contains dozens of courses led by top-notch professors and industry experts. This source will be your best bet if you’re looking for a class that mimics a classroom setting as it’s filled with quizzes, tests, and even certifications.
Coursera Together is a selection of various standard Coursera resources that are now 100% free and can be accessed by anyone. You can pick from free online courses for:
- College level classes
- Career development
- High school level classes
- Public health
- Mental health/Well-being
- Cloud technology
2. Duolingo
Duolingo is a free educational app for learning and improving upon several language skills. The main advantage of this app is its simplicity and game-like feel, making it the perfect learning tool for kids and adults alike.
When you begin, you will choose a language of interest and then be given the option to either start from level 0 or pick up at a more advanced level. Regardless of what you decide, Duolingo will guide you through all the steps with its interactive interface, notifications, and messages.
Duolingo even published an article that guides parents on how to best utilize the app for teaching their children. The article includes resources to organize lessons and get to know the material beforehand.
3. Scribd
Due to the pandemic, Scribd now offers free access to their entire library of audiobooks, magazines, books and documents, all for 30 days. So, take advantage of the offer — go read or listen to all the books you’ve been meaning to get to!
Scribd allows its users to download all their content so they can listen offline and on-the-go. The app also offers the newest editions of popular magazine subscriptions.
If you’re looking for inspiration, give Austin Kleon’s Keep Going a try, or if you’re looking for ways to maximize your business in your free time, check out Rory Sutherland’sAlchemy: The Dark Art And Curious Science Of Creating Magic In Brands, Business, And Life. Happy reading!
4. Blogging for Business
The newest creation from Ahrefs, Blogging for Business, is a keyword research tool that helps you optimize your website and the content you create by using the best SEO practices.
The video course is taught by Tim Suolo who goes from the basics of business blogging to how to create and promote content for your business blog.
In addition to Tim’s expertise, you will also hear from Noah Kagan, Bryan Harris, and Ramsay Taplin, who are all experts in growing audiences, building email lists, and starting blogs from scratch, respectively.
If you’ve ever wondered whether you should start a blog for your business or have always wanted to start a business-oriented blog, this is the course for you.
To be honest, content like this could be easily sold for a couple of hundreds but for the time being, Ahrefs has made the entire course free. You can watch the playlist on Youtube or access it directly from their Ahrefs Academy platform.
5. Skillshare
Skillshare is a platform that contains thousands of lessons on various topics from creative industries. In fact, Skillshare can be considered a Coursera for creatives — both platforms offer in-depth, video-based lessons taught by true experts. For example, on Skillshare you’ll find lessons led by craft masters such as Shantell Martin, Debbie Millman, and Simon Sinek.
One of the best parts of the Skillshare lessons is the projects most of the courses end with. By ending with a task, you can distill all the knowledge you’ve received into something tangible while also reinforcing the new skills you’ve learned!
Right now, all new members can join for free for 2 months! During this period, you will get access to Skillshare Premium which means you can browse through their entire library of lessons and download them to access them offline.
6. LinkedIn’s Remote Working Course
Whether we like it or not, remote work has become the current status quo.
For some of us, working remotely is nothing new but for the vast majority of us, this is an entirely new experience.
In light of these circumstances, LinkedIn has put together over 13 hours of video content to help optimize their work-from-home experiences.
And don’t worry, this course is not another rambler listing productivity tips for remote work. Rather, the authors and lecturers take every aspect of working remotely into consideration, including (but not limited to):
- Presence during video calls
- Well-being and stress management
- Managing virtual teams
- Creating a schedule
- How to use common tools like Zoom and Microsoft Teams
If you find yourself struggling with any of these aspects of work-from-home, you will find that Linkedin’s free course will be well worth your time!
Sign up for LinkedIn Remote Working Course
7. Teach Your Monster to Read
The last app we have on our list is for parents who have recently found themselves juggling their children’s learning along with their many other newly added at-home responsibilities.
Teach Your Monster to Read helps to kick starts your child’s journey with letters and sounds, as well as to teach more advanced monsters who are already capable of creating full sentences.
Of course, when it comes to teaching children, you, as a parent, have to have full confidence in the resources you use. Teach Your Monster to Read was designed in collaboration with leading academics and was awarded many honors, including being nominated for a BAFTA game award.
You can rest assured that this app consists of some of the best content you can use to help teach your kids to read.
It’s time to learn!
Okay, now the easy part is over, it’s time to get your hands dirty!
While taking the first step is it’s usually the most challenging part to commit to, we all know that practice makes perfect. So, if I were your Johny best-advice-ever Uncle, I’d say, pick one resource/topic that you’re really interested in. Take a look at the way each lesson is structured and put them into your calendar so you have a specific time slot for a specific topic to learn. This will make it much easier to sit down to learn, and it takes away the decision part of the process which is often the hardest.
Nevertheless, remember that it’s always a privilege to learn! Enjoy the process and find ways to cherish every opportunity you have been given to try something new 🙂
