Coursera

A few days ago, Dad discovered something to help me with my homeschooling. It is an online program called coursera that is absolutely free. It offers people free online college courses in many topics. Dad, (who goes for about ANYTHING free,) decided to sign me up for a course on songwriting. It start March 1st. I am very excited as I enjoy singing and attempting to write my own music. Hopefully this course will teach me how to do so properly.

The cool thing about coursera is that you have to actually do homework and get it in by a certain time. Coursera also allows other students to review other students' work and tell them how they are doing and share ideas. For the songwriting class, I think you have to write a song and sing it following the teachers instructions. You need an attachable microphone or your computer's built in microphone. It doesn't matter how well you sing, as the course is on writing, not performing.

The courses require you to put in about 8-6 hours a week, at any time you choose to work with your schedule, and runs for about 7 weeks. You take about 4 courses a week. I have previously taken college courses, but they are pre-taped and on a disk, and there are no time assignments, so this will be something totally new for me. If you want to give coursera a try for free, go to www.coursera.org.

If and when you successfully complete a course, you get a college certificate signed by the professor of your course stating that you successfully completed a college course. Dad says this will help me when I get to college. When I go to college, Dad suggests I go for business management since I hope to start my own bakery someday. Also, I would like to go to a culinary school at some point after college.