Internet University of IT in Russia

There is the Internet University of IT in Russia http://www.intuit.ru/.
Unfortunately is has no state status, but the initiative has to be praised and well-known. The idea is to allow everyone to gain professional skills and even to get a new specialty in IT area via e-learning using free courses on the web site. This system already works and plenty of courses are available. I have browsed through forums at the mentioned site and found students asking for trial (educational) projects to implement, so the study would not be pure theoretical issue.

My best whishes to the project and the people behind them!

To catch new directions and trends

As I’ve understood from the discussion with Sergey Naumenko, I am trying to describe the system with property of self-organization, the system that inherently has an ability to catch new directions and trends. And it does not matter what area it is: IT, power generation or economics. As much new knowledge and experience are emerging as more projects that required them are posted on the system and more buzz for this area appears.

How to search for free educational materials

Of course, I thought that there are a lot of free online courses exists. But the thing is that it is possible to get info about them in the centralized places e.g. http://creativecommons.org/education/The left side bar of the mentioned web page already contains some interested links.

Existing engine for the system

It seems that an interesting engine has appeared in Russia. Upgraded it’s probably can carry the functionality of the ad-hoc education system. Ekaterinburg based company Naumen http://www.naumen.com/go offers this thing (citation): NauLearning is e-Learning authoring, publication and management system, it is intended for working out educational programs and conducting distance learning by educational establishments and departments with different occupations.

Earlier they positioned themselves as developers of open source products. Now I could not find any signs that they follow this business model. More detailed (but still stingy) description of NauLearning in Russian is given here:
http://www.naumen.ru/go/products/naulearning/naulearning_university