CloudIntro.X: Recap

I know I mentioned a while ago that I was going to use the time between UNISA modules to go to town on my MOOCs. That didn’t happen. I got distracted by some exciting personal stuff. As I write this, I have another tab open in which I’m registering for my other two modules. Yay!

I joined this MOOC because not only is it offered by the IEEE, but it covers a topic that I’ve delved into more and more this year: cloud computing. The layout of the tabs in the MOOC is very nice, and the notes are comprehensive.

I’ve downloaded the study material for future reference, but I just don’t have the time right now to do it.

Networks Illustrated: Principles without Calculus – Week 1 & 2 recap

I’m on a bit of a mission to get a taste of what all the legendary colleges I hear about in movies have to offer. This is why I was quite pleased to find out that Princeton is offering a MOOC on an area of computer science that I really feel like I don’t know much about – networking.

The course has been very interesting so far – I like the way the topics have been constructed around questions like:

• When can you trust an average rating on Amazon?
• How does Google rank webpages?
• Why is WiFi at home faster than a hotspot?

To be honest, I haven’t really watched the videos. I skimmed through a few of them. I think that’s more to do with my aversion to watching online videos than anything else (even though I’ve downloaded them). Also, for the first homework questions, I randomly guessed the answers and got them right. Multiple choice FTW. I also discovered that question 1 of Homework 1 is Question 3 of the Polytechnic of Namibia’s second exam paper from November last year (???)

I’ve been sick for the past week as well, just as I was planning on catching up with all the MOOCs (funny how that happens). I only have about 3 weeks or so before I have to register for the other modules I need to do to get into Hons. After the experience with the 1st module, I will definitely be laying off the MOOCs for the next 6 months.