Feel like you are too old to go back to college? Intimidated by the requirements? No time, no money, not much energy? Cheer up! There are still options for you to keep learning, keep exercising your brain, and keep growing. The internet offers a wide variety of college class lectures and material online and many of them are free! Perfect for caregivers! You may not get a degree, but you would still be able to list these classes on a resume. And using your brain and keeping it active has been proven to help stave off Alzheimer’s Disease not to mention midlife crises, boredom, etc.

If you do want to get a degree, there are plenty of colleges offering online courses. Picking the right school will allow you to earn an AA or even a BA working almost totally at home. I earned an AA and was able to complete it by doing online courses for my last five or six classes! Some were easier than others and none were free, but it was such a nice feeling to finally accomplish a goal I’d set twenty years prior!

I considered going on for a BA but decided it wasn’t the right thing for me. However, I’m keeping my eyes open for interesting courses that will help me accomplish short-term goals at home and this time I do want free! I want some Frugal Tips for Caregivers for you and me both and I found some! Here are two sites I found with loads of free options for us both:

Wendy Boswell has written a great article at Lifehacker listing more than ten options for learning at the college level for free. She includes language classes (Italian, anyone?), math classes, and even courses from Ivy League schools. I was particularly interested in the free CPR classes listed. I have tried twice in the last couple of years to take another CPR class to stay up-to-date on the info, but schedule conflicts didn’t allow for it. Looks like I just might get to take it after all! The CPR offerings are at -http://depts.washington.edu/learncpr/ . That would be a useful site to bookmark even if you don’t take the classes as it has CPR info to print out as well. The whole article is at -http://lifehacker.com/software/education/technophilia-get-a-free-college-education-online-201979.php

Even easier is Apple’s iTunes U. If you don’t already have iTunes on your computer, download it at – http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/ .  Once you have iTunes, open it up. Everyone’s view can be different. On mine, I look at the left column and click on iTunes store. This opens several boxes including one labeled iTunes Store. Almost at the bottom of that box, I click on iTunes U. That opens several more boxes including Categories. Clicking on those leads to a huge variety of classes you can take for free. There are Christian and secular colleges listed. Under Humanities I found “The Life of Christ” taught by Dwight Pentecost from Dallas Theological Seminary. If you’ve ever wanted to learn Greek or Hebrew, you now can. Click on Language, then pick Concordia Seminary’s classes in either of those languages, along with other offerings such as Spanish, French, and even Sign Language (ESL). If you need more help navigating, you can go to  http://www.apple.com/education/itunesu_mobilelearning/itunesu.html and watch a video explaining iTunes U.

Are you currently studying any classes online? Do write and tell us about them. Just leave a message in the comments section below, or email us at Kaye@SandwichINK.com .