Is There Any Disadvantages In Learning Science On My Own?

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Emor
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29 Apr 2009, 4:45 pm

I'm getting kind of fed up with the school's curriculum. We just stopped learning genetics and moved onto healthy eating, and it's just really annoying, because I was really interested in genetics, so I'm debating on whether I should start learning Science online, and then re-learning it at school.
I know there'd be a lot of advantages to this, I'm just wondering if there's any significant reasons why I shouldn't. I'd also appreciate how people found it when doing this.
I sort of did this by accident with ICT, and now I'm constantly correcting my teacher, and ICT is just a complete bore now.
I'm pretty sure I have the ability to learn it all, and if I have questions I'll just ask them online(maybe Y!A or something).
I know I learn a lot better from books anyway, and I always find my self reading on in the books we're given, so, yeah.
Does anyone have any views on this? Should I just continue with the school curriculum and learn it step by step? I'm pretty confident I'd be able to learn next years work in 2 months or so...
Also, another worry is that I'll focus to much on the parts I like, and to little on the parts I don't.
But yeah, I'll stop going on.
Thanks for the answers in advance,
EMZ=]



Orwell
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29 Apr 2009, 5:03 pm

Go to physicsforums and see what resources they can point you to. Biology is harder to get off the Internet, largely because the content in the field is not as open as in, say, mathematics. Math, physics, and chemistry you can pretty much get online, but in bio you have to fork over the cash to get the books, and whatever book you get will be outdated and wrong in a couple years.


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Emor
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29 Apr 2009, 5:07 pm

I'm not very interested in Physics, tbh. I'll probably express some interest, but it's mainly biology, and most definitely Chemistry.
I don't mind spending some of my money on books. I'm obviously going to go to University and stuff, but I think it'd be beneficial to have a decent head start.
I'll check out the Physics forums later on tomorrow though. Thanks.
EMZ=]



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29 Apr 2009, 5:11 pm

Physicsforums also has sections for math, chemistry, biology, etc. If you want to do biology, be prepared for a lot of soul-crushing memorization.


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29 Apr 2009, 5:31 pm

Please don't be like me. I purposefully learnt as little as possible to try and limit the boringness of school. It started for me in a science class where the teacher told us we could read ahead for that topic and learn at our own pace. So I did. In a week. Took them the rest of the term to cover the material. So after that incident to make school have any sort of challenge I would see how well I did if I slept/otherwise amused myself during class and did no homework.

I wasted all those years.

Things are better for me now though (out of the horrid school place)



Emor
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30 Apr 2009, 9:51 am

I'm not very interested in Physics, tbh. I'll probably express some interest, but it's mainly biology, and most definitely Chemistry.
I don't mind spending some of my money on books. I'm obviously going to go to University and stuff, but I think it'd be beneficial to have a decent head start.
I'll check out the Physics forums later on tomorrow though. Thanks.
EMZ=]



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03 May 2009, 9:39 pm

Do step by step, and use your extra time for extra activities.
You should concentrate in languages, maths and chemical as you say.

You must follow the line and walk no the line very tight, and do what ever out of it.....

I enjoyed Chemestry... It is great


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04 May 2009, 7:26 am

I have a simular situation at college but the course I was forced on does not have science at all because the yobs that make up most of the class can't understand a basic food chain (I tried to explain what a food chain was but it didn't work)

This is frustating as science is my main subject.


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CyndiAn
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07 May 2009, 12:36 am

You might be able to lean biology at the free Online MIT Courses. Some of them are lectures so you do not need to purchase the books. They have some amazing chemistry courses you can download and learn from.....Textbooks work well too.



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07 May 2009, 12:52 am

CyndiAn wrote:
You might be able to lean biology at the free Online MIT Courses. Some of them are lectures so you do not need to purchase the books. They have some amazing chemistry courses you can download and learn from.....Textbooks work well too.

MIT OCW is over-hyped. Google Berkeley Webcasts to get a better and more extensive listing of free online courses.


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CyndiAn
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07 May 2009, 12:56 am

Thanks Orwell. I will check it out. I thought about transferring to Berkely, so it will be interesting to view the presentations. I have been learning with the MIT courses between school breaks. Thanks again.



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07 May 2009, 2:29 am

Lots of universities are starting to jump on the "free online classes!" bandwagon, but much to my chagrin most of them only provide token offerings. Do I really want to listen to Yale's class about death? Nope. I did enjoy Berkeley's Western Civ course (and they offer multiple semesters of it- archived content going back years) and MIT has a decent math class or two. My beef with MIT stems from them banging on about having 1800 classes available online when there's probably closer to a few dozen that have enough material available to be useful. I'm subscribed to their Youtube page, and they have been expanding, but it's slow.


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07 May 2009, 5:21 am

Orwell wrote:
Lots of universities are starting to jump on the "free online classes!" bandwagon, but much to my chagrin most of them only provide token offerings. Do I really want to listen to Yale's class about death? Nope. I did enjoy Berkeley's Western Civ course (and they offer multiple semesters of it- archived content going back years) and MIT has a decent math class or two. My beef with MIT stems from them banging on about having 1800 classes available online when there's probably closer to a few dozen that have enough material available to be useful. I'm subscribed to their Youtube page, and they have been expanding, but it's slow.


That MIT page annoyed me too. Some of the lectures were pretty interesting, but it's not a lot of good if they only give a portion of the course.

Does the Berkely website upload full lecture series? Do you know any other Universities that do the same? Though I'm aiming more towards History and the Humanities


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30 May 2009, 10:43 am

When a person tries to teach themselves a subject they have a problem that they do not normally have a person to answer questions and guide them through the topic.

One of the problems in life is that you need to work out the right question to ask the literature to find out the answer, if you do not know what questions to ask or how to phrase your question then you can get stuck.

I am in favour of a combination of self teaching and normal teaching from a real expert in the field. You need to hear what the prof or expert says and then go home and study on your own to get the best outcome.


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