Stanford Professor Creates Free Online School

Google Fellow and Stanford Research Professor, Sebastian Thrun resigned from Stanford in order to instruct a program he designed called Udacity, which will teach online computer science classes 100 percent free of charge. Thrun is joined by University of Virginia Professor of Computer Science, David Evans.

The first two courses they will be teaching are CS 101: Building a Search Engine and CS 373: Programming a Robotic Car. The first class is to go over a seven-week span, and is promised to make the student fluent enough in building search engines to create an engine like Google or Yahoo. Thrun's typical class size of 200 has been minimized to 30 for the online course, but still - taking Stanford classes for free is no small feat.

The natural-born teachers are the ones who do it just so others can learn; not for the money - which is a trait that's simply not feasible in this country or economy (unless you come from a hefty monetary background, or if you're like Thrun who I'm assuming has made plenty of dough teaching at Stanford and working with Google). You know you've got a real passion for teaching when your retirement hones you straight back into doing your job for no income.

Good for Professors Thrun and Evans! This is a truly amazing program and the participants are without a doubt extremely thankful for his generosity and drive for learning.



Check out the full article on Gizmodo, or visit the Udacity website for more information.