StraighterLine is a new kind of remote education company, offering online college courses in basic subjects such as math, accounting and writing at an extremely low flat rate of $99 a month.

Using the internet to learn new things is a commonplace practice. But what’s the cutting edge of the internet-education, DIY phenomenon? Cooking, building a car, hacking electronics? How about delivering a baby. Marc Stephens, a naval engineer from Redruth, Cornwall spent a mere 30 minutes watching YouTube videos on the birth process, and was able to successfully use this knowledge to help deliver his premature child.
The Guardian reports:
Feeling nervous about the imminent birth of his child Marc Stephens had a look at childbirth videos on his home computer.
Four hours later his wife, Jo, went into labour three weeks earlier than [...]

We’ve written about a variety of learning tools that have been popping up on the web in recent months from institutional examples like Academic Earth and iTunes University to more grassroots models like Moontoast and the School of Everything, causing us to rethink the ways we view the availability and cost of education. And while these online alternatives are freeing knowledge from the confines of the classroom, we’re not ready to call traditional college educations obsolete, for the time being at least. Which is why we were particularly excited by Flat World Knowledge, a company that hopes to revolutionize higher learning [...]

“Together we know everything” is a tag line of Moontoast, a new online video education service. This online marketplace of human knowledge is similar to The School of Everything in that it brings together teachers and people looking to learn a new skill.  Moontoast uses face to face live video chatting as its communication medium, so the learning experience can be more intimate and interactive. To get started teaching it’s as simple as making a profile and setting your rate. And although it’s fairly new there are a lot of interesting subjects already being offered on the site including: guitar [...]