Free Alternatives to LexisNexis

You may have heard of LexisNexis, the giant full-text, searchable database of newspapers, magazines, legal documents,and other printed material It’s used extensively by journalists, law students (and lawyers), as well as a variety of student researchers.

Lexis.com is geared primarily to law, while Nexis.com covers the non-legal branches. While no website offers full-text archive searching for free (outside of those with access to a college or University that has subscribed to the service), there are ways to get much of the information for free.

Current Newspapers: http://www.abyznewslinks.com/ ABYZ News Links provides a listing of thousands of newspapers, along with their location and their URL.

Newspaper archives (free/pay-per-view) http://news.google.com/archivesearch Google News will allow you to search for news articles in both free and pay-per-view sources. While the amount of free articles returned is debatable, it will allow you to identify a newspaper and article time/date for use with another system.

Magazine articles: http://books.google.com/books?id=tuMDAAAAMBAJ Google Books provides several archives of magazines online. The included link is to Popular Mechanics. A listing of several of them can be found at Wikipedia here.

Legal decisions: US Supreme Court, a variety of other US Courts. Supreme Court of Canada decisions. A variety of other Canadian courts.

While no resource quite matches LexisNexis’ convenience and breadth, I hope these websites will allow you to learn a little less expensively.

Be Your Own Doctor

There’s a wealth of knowledge on medicine out there for people willing to look into it. While it’s not recommended that people literally become their own doctors, there’s plenty of information out there to educate yourself on medicine.

One of the most under-used resources is the military and military contractors. They produce field manuals, textbooks, and other resources, many of them for free, that can be downloaded and used.

FM-71 First Aid for the Soldier (PDF)

Military Medicine and Humanitarian Textbooks (covering all aspects of medicine, via the US Virtual Naval Hospital)

Brookside Press (huge number of textbooks, information, and videos on military medicine)

The Lowdown on Accreditation

If you’re looking into online education, you may have heard or seen the term accreditation being used, and not really known what it’s about or why it’s important.

Having accreditation means that a certain regulator has certified that school or program meets a certain educational standard. This means, for instance, that a University’s program meets the standards required to issue a degree, and for that degree to be recognized by the State or Employers.

Accreditation is normally a non-issue with large public Universities (at least from a student perspective), as those in the public eye are easy to shut down if their accreditation or standards were to lapse. However, with accreditation for online education, things begin to get sticky.

In the US, accreditation is normally broken down into two categories: national accreditation, and regional accreditation. National accreditation is carried out by a group designed to apply a broad set of standards across the country. For US online programs, the group doing this is known as the Distance Education Training Council, or DETC.

DETC-accredited programs have met a certain standard, but DETC accreditation is often looked down upon, and nationally-accredited programs can have difficulty being accepted for transfer to regionally accredited Universities, employment, or tuition reimbursement (e.g. from the military.)

Regional accreditation on the other hand, is performed by a body in the area (for example, the Southwestern United States.) They claim to have higher standards (though this is debatable), and regionally accredited institutions offer their students the full luxury of transfer credit and reimbursement.

Another thing to keep in mind is that public institutions normally have regional accreditation, while private and for-profit institutions tend to get national accreditation.

If the online program you want is only offered at a University with national accreditation, don’t dismiss it outright. But do your homework; nobody wants to pour thousands of dollars into a degree only to have it be useless in the workforce.

Prior Learning and Recognition

Do you have several years career experience but no diploma? Do you need one to get a promotion, enrich your resume, or just for personal satisfaction? Well, you don’t have to spend the 2 or 3 years normally required to earn a diploma.

Through a concept known as Prior Learning and Recognition (PLAR), you can use your previous knowledge gained through self-study or in the workplace (as well as any formal college courses) to gain recognized college credits towards a diploma.

For instance, if you’ve spent several years writing computer programs, and now you’re interested in a diploma, PLAR is the way to go. There are several avenues to proving your expertise. These include interviews, challenge exams, and attestations of work experience.

If your employer is willing to write out your job experience, you can use that as proof that you have the knowledge required to pass “Numeric Computing”, “Critical Thinking and IT Concepts”, and “Object-Oriented Programming using Java”, for instance.

Challenge exams allow you to prove you have the knowledge of that course by completing a comprehensive test regarding that content. This would be an excellent way to earn a credit for an “Operating Systems” or “Web Design and Development” course.

Of particular interest to those who would like to write challenge exams is the CLEP (College Level Examination Program.) You can write exams in subjects to gain credits in over 30 subjects. Most exams give you three credits (equivalent of one course) but some exams can give you six, nine, or even 12 credits per exam.

The CLEP website is here.

Interviews are more often suited for courses that have broad, easily discerned requirements. For instance, “Technical Communications” or a careers course.

One important thing to keep in mind is that even if you have all the knowledge required for the diploma, there are normally “residency” requirements. This means you’ll only be able to earn 75% (often less for Universities, sometimes more) of your diploma or degree through PLAR.

75% is pretty good, if you ask me! Contact your local college or University to enquire about their PLAR process, and the fees. They normally charge a service fee per course (e.g. $40 per assessment.) It can be a great way to shave off diploma requirements if you’ve got the experience, however.

The OpenCourseWare Consortium

The OpenCourseWare consortium is a group of Universities who provide the courseware (e.g. lecture materials, PowerPoint presentations, audio/video clips, and so on) for certain courses for free, in order to advance the pursuit of knowledge.

Browsing through the University list it’s quite obvious there are plenty of options to look for material.

Visiting UC Berkeley’s website, we see courses ranging from Biology to Statistics to Religious Studies are available. Similar offerings can be found at one of the nearly 60 Universities participating, in a variety of languages.

Of course this material has more uses than just for a student looking for non-credit learning. A teacher looking to prepare a new course or a University student looking to brush up on his knowledge can equally benefit from the available information.

Learning French for Free

There are many resources online that allow people to learn French with little to no price involved. French is a very popular language, with an estimated native speakership of 200 million people (http://www.utm.edu/staff/globeg/profren.shtml.)

Here are several French courses or places that link to French courses

http://www.frenchtutorial.com/standard/toc.php

http://globegate.utm.edu/french/globegate_mirror/frlesson.html

http://www.realfrench.net/index.php

The Foreign Service Institute is the United States’ diplomatic service training school. Their language materials are all in the public domain. Several French courses are available here:

http://fsi-language-courses.org/Content.php?page=French

The Defense Language Institute is the United States Army’s principal language training organ. They produce courses for multiple languages that are in the Public Domain. The following is a link to the DLI Basic French course:

http://www.tlwh.com/johnson/HOME.HTM#french

Edit: 16/11/09 1:40PM – I just realized the link I provided for the DLI course excluded the textbooks. Here they are, provided by the Education Resources Information Centre (ERIC):

Volume 1

Volumes 2 and 3

Volumes 4 and 5

And a French proficiency test:

http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~IK2R-MYR/acctopma.htm

Use, Advantages, and Drawbacks to the GED

Many people who have dropped out of high school or who are considering dropping out may have heard of the GED, or General Education Development diploma. The GED is a formal diploma that certifies that its holder has an education level similar to that of a high school graduate.

Normally to write a GED you must meet several eligibility requirements. These differ depending on your State, Province, or country, but most often include an age limit (such as being 18 or older), and the requirement that you be out of high school.

Other requirements can include a certain period out of school, or a requirement that you not have earned a high school diploma.

When a person attempts to earn their GED, they are actually writing a series of five tests. These include Writing, Reading, Mathematics, Social Studies, and Science.

The GED is designed not to test specific facts or knowledge, but rather the ability to apply and analyze information. This makes the GED suitable for those who have been out of formal education for many years, but who have gained life-skills through employment.

The writing of the GED is often offered cheap or free to people through associated Community Colleges, Universities, and other educational institutes.While the GED may be the first step in continuing a person’s educations, there are some drawbacks.

While a GED can be used for admission into post-secondary education, it may not always be considered equal in employment.

For instance, the United States Army requires GED holders to obtain 15 credits of post-secondary credits before they’ll be considered on par with High School diploma (HSD) holders.

In addition, employers may look down on a GED holder, believing them to be not as capable because they don’t possess a HSD. While these characterizations are wrong (and sometimes illegal), there isn’t much a prospective applicant can do to change them.

The bottom line is that while a GED is an inexpensive way to gain admission into a post-secondary program for people who never graduated High School and satisfying personal goal for many people, its direct use for employment may be limited.

Useful Links:

Information on Earning the GED by State:

• Alabama
• Alaska
• Arizona
• Arkansas
• California
• Colorado
• Connecticut
• Delaware
• Florida
• Georgia
• Hawaii
• Idaho
• Illinois
• Indiana
• Iowa
• Kansas
• Kentucky
• Louisiana
• Maine
• Maryland
• Massachusetts
• Michigan (PDF)
• Minnesota
• Mississippi
• Missouri
• Montana
• Nebraska
• Nevada
• New Hampshire
• New Jersey
• New Mexico
• New York
• North Carolina (PDF)
• North Dakota
• Ohio
• Oklahoma
• Oregon
• Pennsylvania
• Rhode Island
• South Carolina
• South Dakota
• Tennessee
• Texas
• Utah
• Vermont
• Virginia
• Washington
• West Virginia
• Wisconsin
• Wyoming

Or Your Province:

• Alberta
• British Columbia
• Manitoba
• New Brunswick
• Newfoundland
• Northwest Territories
• Nova Scotia
• Nunavut
• Ontario
• Prince Edward Island
• Quebec
• Saskatchewan
• Yukon Territory

The Professor Dustin Blog

I’m Professor Dustin! The reason I started this blog was to help you realize just how much potential the Internet offers for learning and educating yourself.

You can earn your high school diploma, college diploma, or University degrees completely online. If you’re not interested in for-credit courses, there’s an even larger body of courses, tutorials, and training programs to learn absolutely everything.

In addition to reviewing offline education products that I’ve purchased and showcasing online resources for learning, I’ll also be writing my own courses on topics that interest me, such as Science, Technology, History, Military Studies, and Business.

I’ll do my best to post at least once a day, but I do have a job with quite frequent hours, so we’ll see how it works out. Not every post will be a written blog either; I’m a fan of both podcasts and video-blogging.

Trends in education are interesting to me, but I’m not exactly a reliable source. So instead, my podcasts will focus on issues in education, getting the most out of your education and furthering it without the years in the classroom traditionally required.

Video-blogging will be reserved as an educational material; for the courses I plan to offer, it’s often much easier to have a 60-minute streaming video teaching the material than to have a 60 minute’s worth of reading, that could easily be skipped.

So, I hope everyone is ready for the ride, and the chance to enrich themselves; Professor Dustin certainly is!