openCourseWare yatua bongo

Noorali Jiwaji, left, of the Open University of Tanzania and Fralern Hassan, OUT system administrator, right, hold equipment for the MIT "OpenCourseWare" system in Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, Friday, Dec. 21, 2007. An MIT initiative called "OpenCourseWare" makes virtually all the school's courses available online for free _ lecture notes, readings, tests and often video lectures.

INTERNET OPENS ELITE COLLEGES TO ALL by JUSTIN POPE AP Education Writer

Gilbert Strang is a quiet man with a rare talent: helping others understand linear algebra. He's written a half-dozen popular college textbooks, and for years a few hundred students at the elite Massachusetts Institute of Technology have been privileged to take his course.

Recently, with the growth of computer science, demand to understand linear algebra has surged. But so has the number of students Strang can teach.

An MIT initiative called ``OpenCourseWare'' makes virtually all the school's courses available online for free - lecture notes, readings, tests and often video lectures. Strang's Math 18.06 course is among the most popular, with visitors downloading his lectures more than 1.3 million times since June alone. Read more...