ONLINE self-education sounds like a cheap and time-efficient way to better your IT knowledge. And it is, unless you can’t read English.

However, Myanmar internet users can now overcome this problem because a group of IT professionals – Mystery Zillion – have launched an online Myanmar-language education website.

The site – http://edu.mysteryzillion.org – allows users to study IT-related subjects online for free, said Ko Sithu Aung, one of the site’s administrators.
The website offers courses on Windows system admin 101, web basics, blogging on Wordpress, programming languages, simple program designing, advanced programming and advanced web programming.

“We set up this website to help people get information and find ways to study on their own,” said Ko Sithu Aung.

He explained that users must set up their own account to access and complete the courses.

“If a user does not access their account within 120 days, it will be deleted. But we don’t set any time limits on when the course must be finished,” he said.

The courses are run by either weekly lesson or topics, with a mix of multiple-choice and longer question assignments. The site also features a private messaging system, which lets students post questions to their teachers or a forum.

The teachers are all Mystery Zillion members and are working for free at the moment, he said.

Ko Sithu Aung said there are plans to expand the list of courses to include an English-language proficiency courses and lessons, history and geography.

He added that anyone interested in helping out and becoming a teacher could visit the website or ring 098 022 939.

The site, which started in late July, already has about 470 registered users.