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Learn something new this fall with these great sites

Improve your skills in cooking or photography or even take a college course—all from the comfort of your own home.

Learn something new this fall with these great sites

[Photo: Raul_Mellado/iStock]

BY Doug Aamoth2 minute read

Learning a new skill is a popular hobby nowadays, with people turning to online classes for cooking, business, photography, design, and more.

One of the reasons these classes are so popular is that unlike in-person classes, they’re often available around the clock to suit your schedule. Early bird? No problem. Night owl? Light that candle.

So whether you’re looking for a challenge or just want to keep your brain engaged, here are some great online options to explore.

America’s Test Kitchen Cooking School

Cooking is an essential skill, but not everybody is culinarily confident.

If you’re more of a watch-cooking-on-TV type of person, check out America’s Test Kitchen Cooking School, which offers hundreds of self-paced training courses.

There’s plenty here for beginners and experts alike, running the gamut from cooking fundamentals to advanced recipes for experienced chefs.

Fans of the show will be pleased to see host Bridget Lancaster and a handful of cast members leading various classes as well.

Pricing runs $180 a year or $20 a month for unlimited access.

See also: Top Chef, BBC Food, Kitchn

CreativeLive

CreativeLive provides a mix of live broadcasts, workshops, and on-demand content led by experts from around the world.

It’s a great resource for creatives looking to bolster their skillsets, with classes in photography, video, art, and design. It’s also home to a Money & Life section, which focuses on the business side of creativity: marketing, writing, leadership, time management, and finance.

Courses can be purchased as one-off bundles that offer essential training, or via an unlimited pass for $149 a year, $15 a month with a two-year commitment, or $39 a month with no commitment.

See also: Skillshare, Udemy, LinkedIn Learning, MasterClass

Curious

Sure, we all want to learn something new, but not everyone has the time to commit to in-depth courses.

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For that, there’s Curious, which shows up in your inbox as 5-, 10-, or 30-minute lessons each day that cover topics you choose ahead of time.

These topics form your own personal CQ Wheel—CQ for Curious Quotient—and come from eight high-level categories such as music, humanities, work, and relationships.

Content is plucked from more than 25,000 lessons, with subscriptions running $70 a year or $10 a month.

See also: Highbrow

edX

Free college courses? Free college courses!

Built from a partnership of more than 160 universities—including Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Princeton, and plenty of other big-name schools—edX offers more than 3,500 free online courses covering just about every academic subject imaginable.

Each course is offered as a no-cost “audit” track, which means limited access to course materials and no graded assignments or tests. Or opt for the “verified” track, which generally runs a couple hundred bucks or so per class and features graded work and a shareable certificate once the class is over.

If you’re feeling especially ambitious, the site also offers multi-class program tracks featuring a mix of live and self-paced courses starting at $99, all the way up to instructor-led master’s degrees running in the tens of thousands.

See also: Coursera, FutureLearn

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Doug Aamoth is a 20-year veteran of the tech industry and has written extensively about trends in Big Tech; innovative, new products; and personal-productivity tips.You can connect with him on Twitter/X and LinkedIn. More


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