Here is a resource filled with free/paid courses that you can take to sharpen your skills. Summer is always a great time to start learning online and picking up courses, since you don’t have to worry about exams, and other classes. Courses include photoshop, language courses, programming and many others.

Free Courses

Udacity

Courses on html, javascript, programming (python) etc.

All are free with quizzes, “lectures” and exams. What’s great about Udacity?

• lectures aren’t long, they range from less than a minute to about 5 depending on the course
• it’s free, and run by University professors

Lifehacker Night School 

Courses available

• Know Your Network
• How to Build a Computer from Scratch
• The Basics of Photography
• How to Make a Website
• Basics of Video Editing
• Digital Painting the Complete Guide
• Getting Started with Linux
• Learn the Basics of Photoshop
• Learn to Code

What’s great about Lifehacker?

• “lectures” are video’s with voice over and excellent instructions
• it’s free and video’s are around 20-30 minutes long each

Duolingo

This is a website where you help translate the web while learning languages.

Currently Duolingo offers Spanish,French, Italian and German

Luis von Ahn discussed this program along with his development of reCaptcha in his TedEx talk

What’s great about Duolingo?

• While learning you help to translate sites like the Spanish Wikipedia site which helps to provide greater resources to those who speak non-English languages
• By providing your services you get to learn how to speak and write a language as well

Busuu

Learn languages online for free while helping out other’s doing the same

Can learn a variety of languages including Spanish, Russian, French, Italian, Arabic, Chinese etc.

What’s great about Busuu?

• You learn from native speakers while interacting with them on Busuu
• It’s for free, and there are a wealth of resources online for you

Academic Earth

Check out a variety of lectures organized by subject, university, instructor etc.

Coursera

Check out this website for a variety of courses from various universities.Courses include anything from Cryptography to Modern & Contemporary American Poetry.

What’s great about coursera?

• Learn from professors at well known universities including Univeristy of Toronto, Standford, Princeton etc.
• A choice between a variety of courses beyond programming and language learning.

Free/Paid Courses

Lynda

Courses cover a wide variety of topics from 3D+Animation to how to use eBay

Unfortunately full courses aren’t available for free on Lynda, with some video’s available for free

You can get a free trail for 7 days, and memberships start at $25/month or $250/year which in fact is a lot cheaper than University courses.