2001 - The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) launches its OpenCourseWare (OCW) Web site, which today offers free online access to educational materials from all of its courses to any user anywhere in the world. Hundreds of institutions around the world follow MIT’s lead. Shown here is MIT mathematics professor Gilbert Strang, whose Math 18.06 course is among the most popular, with visitors downloading his lectures more than 1.3 million times in the last six months of 2007. (© AP Images)