Teach yourself what you need to know - with free online resources

So education costs too much and the good stuff is always someplace you aren't, so the web is stepping up to help you help yourself. After all, we really educate ourselves, when it comes right down to it.

Stanford University in California USA started offering some excellent university courses free online. This is what's on right now, for example:
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2012/september/online-courses-fall-090712.html

More about free online courses at Stanford: http://online.stanford.edu/

Webmaker from Mozilla (maker of the awesome open-source Firefox browser) is now making it easy for you to teach yourself how to build your own cool stuff on the web: https://webmaker.org/en-US/

Copyright and media law - how to protect yourself:
http://www.citmedialaw.org/legal-guide/fair-use

MITx, HarvardX and BerkeleyX:
EDX

MIT:
http://ocw.mit.edu

Coursera:
https://www.coursera.org

Khan Academy:
http://www.khanacademy.org

Codeacademy:
http://www.codecademy.com

Programr:
http://www.programr.com

Cheap design and web tutorials at Lynda.com: Pay as little as a dollar per day for all you can learn: tutorials on design, photography, audio, video, business, and getting up to speed on various software tools, like Photoshop and Dreamweaver:
http://www.lynda.com/membership?btn=supbtncd_newsite

P2PU - learn with others:
https://p2pu.org

Edupunk's Guide to a DIY Credential:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/60954896/EdupunksGuide

HIVE "hip hop" building by Zvi Belling and Prowla.RDC Melbourne - via Soulful Creative

Call for Artists: DJ Spooky's Imaginary App

Book: Alex Trochut

http://mendo.nl/books/alex-trochut

New book: Design is a job: how to manage your design business

Win a Core77 Scholarship to the Pensole PS2 Footwear Design School

Designers: build your portfolio through battle, maybe win a little money

Generally, we take a pretty dim view of design contests and things that cause people to do work on spec, but there are some websites where you can battle in public for graphic arts money, which seems a bit more interesting. 

Some of you might want to use sites like these to build your portfolios, get some design exercise, and see how you shape up next to the competition. If you're in a place where US$300 is a lot of money, you might even make rent. 

Read the fine print. Often this sort of work will result in "work for hire" art, which means the copyright is sold with the design. When you sell your copyright, you can't sell that design again, but you can usually display it in your portfolio or hang the original on your wall. 

If you have a choice, licensing the "right to use" your work is a better plan. That way when the license expires, the work belongs to you again. Of course, legal and copyright law likely varies by country.

99designs.com

designonclick.com

http://fiverr.com/

Touring: Cut & Paste 2010

Blog: Global Graphica

Art and design photoblog: drwr.it