LVMuslim.com

Educational Sites: MSA WEST Compendium of Muslim Texts

http://www.msawest.net/islam/

Originally University of Southern California (USC) MSA compiled a collection of some useful and important texts on their website. Eventually, the database has been taken over by MSA West zone website. There is ample information available on this site but I recommend concentrating on the Compendium of Muslim Texts

Some of the useful topics you can find useful text on are as follows:

Educational Sites: Islamic Finder

http://www.islamicfinder.org/

IslamicFinder.org is a good resource for Muslims to determine prayer times when traveling and finding the nearest mosques. There are many other resources available on the site as well. 

Download the most popular Athan Software on the internet for free here.

When traveling, a good way to determine prayer times by clicking here.

Here is a nice tutorial about prayer I found on the site: The right way to pray

Educational Sites: IslamiCity

http://www.islamicity.com/

IslamiCity.com was launched in 1995. It has since become one of the leading Muslim e-communities, offering a wide range of information and services. IslamiCity’s mission is to share with the world an understanding of Islam and Muslims and promote peace, justice and harmony for all people.

Click here to view a popular Quran text search feature on the site.

Educational Sites: altmuslim

http://altmuslim.com/

altmuslim.com began in 2001 as a natural progression of a Usenet newsgroup from the early days of the Internet. The site provides a global perspective on Muslim life, politics and culture. I usually find interesting discussions on altmuslim.com pertaining to current social issues in the Muslim world.

Here is an interesting article by Ali Eteraz:
An imam who can
The founder of the Cambridge Muslim College, Sheikh Abdul Hakim Murad, looks likely to create a positive, British culture among young followers of Islam. Too bad so few people know about him.

Educational Sites: Islamic Institute of Orange County

Islamic Institute of Orange County

http://masjidomar.com/media/video?task=allvideoslist

Islamic Institute of Orange County (IIOC) also known as Masjid Omar AlFarouk is located in Orange County, CA has a good website. IIOC records most of their lectures and khutbahs delivered by prominent scholars and speakers. The site adds new lectures often and so far they have over 90 videos available for viewing. If you would like to view the videos in HD quality, click here.

Continue below to view a khutba delivered by Nouman Ali Khan titled: "Who Are the People of Taqwa (Muttaqin)?"

Educational Sites: Wikipedia

http://www.wikipedia.org

Wikipedia is a multilingual, Web-based, free-content encyclopedia project. The name "Wikipedia" is a portmanteau (a combination of portions of two words and their meanings) of the words wiki (a type of collaborative Web site) and encyclopedia. Wikipedia's articles provide links to guide the user to related pages with additional information.

Wikipedia is written collaboratively by volunteers from all around the world; anyone can edit it. Since its creation in 2001, Wikipedia has grown rapidly into one of the largest reference Web sites, attracting at least 684 million visitors yearly by 2008. There are more than 75,000 active contributors working on more than 10,000,000 articles in more than 260 languages. As of today, there are 2,810,823 articles in English. Every day, hundreds of thousands of visitors from around the world collectively make tens of thousands of edits and create thousands of new articles to augment the knowledge held by the Wikipedia encyclopedia.

If you have performed a simple Google search lately, then you most likely have seen a Wikipedia link among the top few search results. Currently it is the 7th most popular website on the web. You can learn more about Wikipedia by clicking here.

Example Wikipedia entry: Islam

Continue below to watch a TED talk given by the Wikipedia creator Jimmy Wales. Keep in mind this talk is 4 years old, about half the life of Wikipedia so almost all numbers and statistics mentioned about Wikipedia are now exponentially larger.

Educational Sites: W3Schools

http://www.w3schools.com

W3Schools claims to be the largest web developer site on the net. It offers full web building tutorials. And its ALL FREE!

This is a great learning site for beginners and advanced users. The tutorials also assist in test preparation and acquiring certifications in different web related fields.

How Does It Work?

    * Prepare for your exam by studying - free of charge - online at W3Schools
    * Study at your own speed, at any time, from your own computer
    * Test your skills - free of charge - with W3Schools online quizzes
    * Apply for your exam online by paying an exam fee
    * Take your exam online, at any time, and from any location

Continue below to view a list of the offered tutorials:

Educational Sites: Open Culture

http://www.oculture.com/

Open Culture is a blog that attempts to track the best free cultural & educational media on the web. It is a good resource for those interested in following the type of websites I have been sharing for the last month. This site has a ton of Audio/Pod-casts that are not available on YouTube EDU or Academic Earth, like Business, Medical and Law School lectures plus many more.

Continue below to view a list of Audio & Podcasts the blog tracks:

Educational Sites: Academic Earth

http://academicearth.org

Academic Earth is similar to YouTube EDU, but I find its interface much more user friendly. It has less content than YouTube but you can find complete course lectures in well defined categories. You can search by subject, school or the name of the professor.

Continue below to view a popular Introduction to Psychology lecture by a Yale University professor:

Educational Sites: YouTube EDU

http://www.youtube.com/edu

YouTube has released a new sub-site called YouTube EDU, aggregating thousands of free lectures from over a hundred universities across the country, including MIT, Yale, Harvard, Stanford, and many more. YouTube EDU currently has over 200 full courses, so you're bound to find something that interests you.

Continue below to view a lecture given by a Stanford professor on Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, Lecture 1: