Since its launch, CS50 has maintained a firm stance toward openness through the Harvard OCW platform. In 2023, the course remains entirely free on the platform, including its certificate of completion. Above, you can see how the free certificate looks.
When taking CS50 on edX, you may upgrade to a verified certificate at any time. Technically, edX courses have an upgrade deadline ( -us/articles/227443947), but on CS50, that deadline is currently Dec 2023, and I think they keep pushing it back as it approaches.
Think First Certificate Teachers Book Free 149
There are more. Currently, the CS50 team at Harvard offers 9 courses that include a free certificate of completion, on topics such as Python, web development, and AI. You can find more details here: -cs50-guide/
The free certificate is available every year, including in 2023. The article currently discusses the 2023 edition of the course. But in the comments, you might also find links to previous editions, since I update this article annually.
I have spent seven years trying out different ways of learning Spanish, including doing it myself with books and CDs, radio, TV, movies, and also going to classroom courses at colleges and universities and a language school. So I knew something about the Spanish language without being able to speak much, nor understand the rapidly spoken real-world conversations. In retrospect this is probably because every way I tried focused on teaching me information about Spanish without a strategy of guiding me to understand and participate in real conversations with a live and perfectly interactive human being, with a view of helping me listen and speak rather than just feeding me static information. However my Baselang classes has been fully conversational from the beginning, and every class opens up more possibilities for me to listen more and speak more. I think this is why Baselang has been working wonders in me.
In many European states, religious education is either a mandatory, chosen, or optional subject at public schools. In Austria (the case that will be examined for the following considerations), for example, it is a regular, obligatory subject in the curricula of most public schools serving students aged six to nineteen years (however, with the possibility of opting out or, where available, switching to ethics).5 The classes in religious education are publicly financed, but the shaping of their curricula is more or less autonomously left to those religious groups that are officially recognized by the state (there are currently sixteen) and that want to offer such religious education;6 teachers must be approved by the religious groups and obey the state's various regulations about school teaching. Where corresponding academic theological education is available (such as at some German and Austrian state universities that currently offer academic programs in Islamic theology, in addition to the various Christian theologies), most religious groups require a degree at the master's level or other suitable certificates for their teachers. Religious education is usually not given or perceived as indoctrination; the curricula comprise a lot of de facto secular ethics, religious studies, personality formation, social sensitivity training, discussions of ethically relevant actualities, and so on; and the possibility of opting out is taken less than one might expect: participation in religious education is markedly higher than the percentage of churchgoers. Many pupils perceive the religion classes as forums in which not only their cognitive abilities but also their whole personalities are being taken seriously. Conversely, more-conservative believers sometimes lament the (in their eyes) lukewarm, unsubstantial content of the religion classes with overly ecumenical tendencies.
Third, for democratic citizens, serious information about one's own religious background tradition is probably more important than knowing the characteristics and differences of other religions, simply because the former is more relevant for personal and political behavior. But for a considerable number of pupils, some sort of confessional religious instruction is being done anyway: somewhere, by somebody, and under some circumstances, for better or worse. In the optimal case, it is perhaps taught by parents committed to the values connected with the democratic legal state and the values of a humanistically minded religiosity, or by a well-educated and pedagogically gifted appointed imam, rabbi, or parish catechist; in the worst case, perhaps by pseudoscientific creationist preachers or by the booklets, cds, or websites of freelancing, self-appointed radical preachers of dubious provenance. Religious instruction in public schools done by approved, well-educated teachers can help to counterbalance and minimize the influence of such indoctrination.
Fourth, confessional religious instruction in public schools is not an intellectual one-way street. It has repercussion effects on the religious groups that could be welcomed by both the state and the religious groups themselves. The involvement of religious groups and institutions in the state's legal and school systems creates and requires a certain publicity and transparency, it brings the challenges of professionalization in the role of a teacher working on equal terms with colleagues from other disciplines and under a certain quality control (such as in the approval of curricula and textbooks), it requires and fosters a certain theological level on the side of the teachers, and it bears the chance of a broader exposition to attention in public discourse. Religion teachers in schools can be important factors in the religious life of their groups; their institutional embedding contributes to the stabilization of the religious groups. Conversely, it offers the chance for the state to stabilize cooperation with religious groups and to exert a certain pressure to comply with the values of the democratic legal state. All that could not likely be achieved without the model of confessional religious instruction. The Austrian and German efforts over the last decades to establish Islamic theology as a university subject and to professionalize Muslim teachers toward an academic level comparable with other teachers provide an example for such a process of potential mutual beneficence.
There is probably no problem-free royal road toward securing minimal religious literacy in a democratic society. But religious instruction would be done anyway, somewhere, by someone, and in some fashion. Arguably, the solution to have it done via confessional religion teachers under the transparency conditions of public schools is not the worst among the available options. 2ff7e9595c
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