Extra-Curricular Resources for Students?

rende asks: "With school soon starting or having already started for many, this seems like a timely question. The MIT OpenCourseWare project is looking like a great resource for additional information to supplement my own coursework this year. I was very delighted to find this information freely available online, and wish I would have known about it previously. I would like to ask Slashdot: Are there any other resources, offered by other schools or independent sites, that offer such a robust selection of information that would fit in nicely, with the standard classes of a science related major?"

The only meaningful knowledge is within you

[Dancin_Santa]

Drop some acid and open your mind.

the library

[Goldsmith]

My favorite source of information has always been the library. Not only do you find books on what you might be looking for, but you'll often find the original research paper on a topic.

You might scoff, but librarians will show you where you can find those books and articles online as well.

Google it.

[YahoKa]

I often search for information on the internet about topics I didn't fully understand from my textbook/teacher. There isn't really a one site that has it all in any subject. I just google for a topic, and often there is a university course site that comes up with some reading/practice problems. I've found great resources on calculus that way...
Anyways, obvious advice i suppose ... but it works.

The simple answer is NO!

[DaoudaW]

MIT's commitment to put all their course material online is unprecedented. Within the ed tech community it got a huge amount of press when it was launched. I'm always surprised to find otherwise computer literate educators who don't know about it. There have been various other efforts, but nothing which comes anywhere near the scope and financial commitment of OpenCourseware.

Additional Material

[bulldog2260]

At the college I go to school, North Lake College in Irving, TX, the head of our UNIX department made this site: http://snap.nlc.dcccd.edu which is material and courses for UNIX. My college has a UNIX Systems Administration degree, and this is the site in which all of the material that we use is posted. I am also looking for projects/ learning experiances to further my education.

Open your mind

[Anonymous Coward]

As a 20 IT veteran, I am always amazed at how few job candidates do nothing else but course work. I am 100% self taught and easily 95% more knowledgeable than anyone out of school. I spent my teen years doing instead of reading and homework. College and degrees have there palce but they are ONLY a starting point. At home I had a computer and pounded on it 18 hours a day. I did, I learned, I opened my mind. Get the degree but for god's sake apply yourself like crazy.

ACM Digital Library

[InfiniterX]

The ACM Digital Library [acm.org] saved my ass several times during my undergrad for sure. It was nice being able to look at the actual paper published describing an algorithm or data structure, for example, when trying to complete a programming assignment that involved it.

Call me a nerd, but journal articles are still interesting reading just so you can keep up on what's the state of the art, as well as being able to look back on some of the more famous pieces of published work... take Dijkstra's "Goto Considered Harmful," for instance.

Granted, the ACM library may not be free, but I know that my university's entire /16 worth of IP address space was covered under a site license, so your school might also have such an arrangement.

Re:ACM Digital Library

[Anonymous Coward]

ACM membership isn't very expensive for students and full access to the DL used to be available for a very small additional cost. IIRC, they changed this about three years ago so that all student members now have full DL access (no additional fee). It's something like $45/year I believe. Even professional membership isn't outrageous, but it's certainly affordable for students. If you really are poor enough that $45/year is a problem, they have provisions for subsidizing membership through a "hardship" progr