School Blog

We're very happy that the MLA has got very excited about the School of Everything, and is bringing all their libraries (that’s the ‘L’ bit in the name) on board as School of Everything venues. Over 3000 of their members signed the Learning Revolution pledge, which gives you some idea of the level of support out there – a lot.

Libraries love learning – it’s what they’re all about. The books, DVDs, free internet access and stuff are just more ways of getting us to grow our brains and widen our horizons.

In terms of the space they can offer: it really varies. There are libraries with rooms big enough to hold a large performing arts group, or a small elephant-swinging workshop (provided you clear up afterwards). There are libraries with fully equipped study rooms just crying out to be used (thanks to initiatives like The Challenge Fund). There are village libraries so small the staff have to synchronise movements just to get behind the counter, but even these have enough space and more than enough enthusiasm to accommodate learners and teachers. As you look round the site, you’ll see individual libraries beginning to add stuff to their venue entries so you can see exactly what’s on offer near you.

And you don’t just get the space. With library staff on hand to help research whatever you’re into, or track down and order up learning resources, you’ll find plenty of useful backup. Many libraries already host things like reading groups (all of whom we hope will come along and join the School of Everything too). So they bring experience and advice to the party, as well as bricks, mortar and comfy chairs.

We're big fans of Amnesty so when our friends down the road at Amnesty UK told us all about their new scheme to get people volunteering to raise a bit of money for human rights, we gladly offered to give them a bit of a plug.

Here's the deal:

"Everyone needs a little help now and again, whether it is with plumbing in a washing machine, babysitting or learning a new language. Many of us have skills and time to offer.

We provide the information sheets and simple paperwork to ask your friends to make a donation instead of paying you. All funds collected will help support Amnesty's human rights work. You won't just be helping us, and people whose human rights are at risk, but also your friend."

Why not volunteer to teach people a thing or two as part of your hours?

We’ve been adding lots of new fangled features to the website, you’re helping us test them out, and everything’s moving along brilliantly. Meanwhile, our new friends Becta and BIS have been out and about supporting us and spreading the word. One of the best things about having new friends is that you get to meet friends of theirs, and all sorts of useful things can start happening. We were really pleased when Becta invited us on a date with their friends Harrow Council - just in time for Valentine’s Day. We really clicked - it turns out we have a lot in common. We both like choice, whether it’s learning Tabla one-on-one, or getting together to work on cake decorating or improving language skills. Harrow is bringing over 1,000 different learning opportunities, and all the venues, teachers and resources that come with them, to the School of Everything. We’ve already started loading all this lovely new stuff onto the website. Harrow very kindly say they’ve been ‘slightly blown away’ (only slightly?) by just how quick and hassle-free this has turned out to be.

We asked Karen Bhamra, who looks after Adult, Community and Family Learning at Harrow Council, why they particularly wanted to be part of the School of Everything. She told us: ‘We love it that the Everything is so accessible to everyone, everywhere. We’re a London Borough, obviously, but we don’t want to have limits. We want anyone who’s interested be able to find teachers and join groups here in Harrow. By joining the School of Everything we have a massive new base of future learners, which is fantastic. We see so much potential in being part of the School of Everything. This could be the start of something big for us.’

There is no such thing as having too many friends - we hope that Harrow’s going to be the first of many. So if you’re a council with something to bring to the party, get in touch now. Move fast, and you can still be at the head of the queue. We look forward to hearing from you all: hello@schoolofeverything.com

VSO is an international development charity that works through volunteers to fight poverty and transform lives in the world’s poorest countries. Globally, 72 million children don’t receive an education at all. VSO's vision is that all children have access to good quality education and to help achieve this, education volunteers share and pass on their skills and help to build capacity with teachers who have received no training and little support.

VSO volunteers make a lasting difference by sharing their skills and helping to improve the quality of teaching and learning, improve schools and make education more inclusive for all disadvantaged and excluded children.

They are looking for teachers with at least three years’ experience including: Primary, Secondary, Special Education, Education managers/leaders and English Language.

Roles are from one to two years to make an impact, and you’ll receive full training and support. VSO also offer a comprehensive package including a living allowance, return flights and visas, accommodation and full medical insurance. When you return home, VSO help and support you to resettle, and many of their returned volunteers stay involved with us long after their placement ends. For more information and to see examples of education roles, go to www.vso.org.uk/educationjobs

When you have a tiny team putting together new features for a website it really helps to get other people testing out what you've built. So with that in mind we'd really like it if you could give us a helping hand. We'll be very grateful indeed.

Here are the new things that we've made live in the last couple of weeks:

Postcode Search
If you pop a UK postcode in the location search box on any of our pages you should now get results near that postcode. Give it a try and let us know if you have any problems.

Widgets
If you have your own website, you can add one of our widgets. You get a little bit of School of Everything to put on your own website or blog so your visitors can join the learning revolution. Then they can search easily for informal adult learning locally from your website. Let us know if there are widget-y type problems.

Resources
Every member of School of Everything has a Resources tab where you can record notes, links, videos, images, documents and other things that help you learn or teach a particular subject. Let us know if you have any problems adding any Resources and we'll sort them right out.

Venues
School of Everything now lists venues that host (or could host) lessons, classes and all other learning events. You can browse venues until you find one suitable for your learning and teaching requirements. Venue listings are created by you, for you and anyone is able to edit the information so it's all kept as up to date as possible. You know the drill - let us know if there are any problems with Venue Listings too.

In each case, were looking for your feedback on what works and what doesn't as well as suggestions as to how we can improve the site - not just functionality, but also how we explain things and well, any suggestions you have at all really. Email feedback@schoolofeverything.com Thank you. Please. You are very kind and helpful.

We've got some very good news. Over the next few months we're going to be working with Becta and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (which usually gets shortened to BIS) to improve School of Everything and make it available to lots more people.

Back in November, Becta and BIS put out a call to help them build an 'Informal Adult Learning Web Portal' (which even they admit is a bit of a mouthful). This comes from a government white paper that was published last year called The Learning Revolution all about how the Government could support informal adult learning. Informal learning covers all sorts of things like learning a language, singing lessons, car maintenance, a guided walk, learning to dance or researching a subject on-line.

Here's why they think it's important:

"Informal learning can at its best transform people’s lives. Whether it’s personal fulfilment, keeping active and independent into old age, gaining increased confidence or opening a door to further opportunities, informal learning contributes hugely to the health and well-being of individuals and wider society."

That's what we think too.

So we wrote a proposal, sent it off (registered mail don't you know), popped on a train to Coventry for an interview and waited to find out. It didn't take very long. We got the phone call saying that we'd got the contract just before our Christmas party. That was nice.

We're a bit bashful so here's what Christine Lewis from Becta told us about why they awarded us the contract:

"School of Everything has already proved itself as a platform so we don't need to start from scratch. It already has hundreds of thousands of unique visitors a month and this is now set to get much bigger. It uses web 2.0 social tools, has access to the open source development community and will bring a simple, easy to use solution for everyone which is what The Learning Revolution is all about. At Becta we talk about Next Generation Learning - this is an excellent example of what you can do with technology to make a really big impact for learners. I haven’t been this excited for ages!"

The main changes you'll notice to School of Everything will be:

• You'll be able to find free or low-cost venues to run classes or meet up with other people to learn stuff
• You'll be able to upload and find more resources related to the subjects you're interested in (videos, documents, images... all that kind of thing)
• You'll be able to find courses near you as well as individual lessons and teachers for particular subjects
• You'll also be able to embed School of Everything search widgets on other websites

For us, it means we can do some things we'd always wanted to do a bit faster and that we get to work with lots of great people from the Learning Revolution community that's built up. Hopefully it will also mean that lots more people will be able to teach and learn new things in all kinds of different subjects across the UK.

Anyway, we've promised we'll get all the above done by the end of March so we'd better get back to work!

If you live in London and get the tube, you may have read about us on your way to work this morning. If not here's a little peek at the The Ridiculant feature in today's Metro (our favourite bit): '...you should really look at the rather excellent School of Everything... sort of like a dating website, but for knowledge instead of sex. And they've recently introduced a new gift feature that allows you to buy lessons for someone else.' I'm now a big fan of Tom Phillips (the man who wrote the article) mainly because of the picture caption multi-pun and the memory lesson joke - they make me happy.

Stop the press! School of Everything Bread Making teacher Tom Baker (Yep, that's his real name) made the front cover of the Birmingham Post Magazine last week. Tom is a busy man because he is also one of the first teachers to have signed up to our new gift scheme. You can now buy a Bread Making lesson with Tom for one of your friends or family - the perfect Christmas present. It's so much better than socks. Take a look at our other lovely gifts and write to Santa quick. The gifts are growing so keep checking back for new ones and let us know if there’s a lesson you’d like and we’ll see what we can do to track down a teacher for you! Learning's not just for Christmas.

After the overwhelming response to our last competition we thought we'd run another! As you may have noticed we now have subject images on School of Everything but there aren't quite enough, and that's where you come in. All you need to do is send us a photograph to use on the site. You can pick any subject and send us as many photographs as you like but we'll only be picking one winner! The prize this time is a brilliant little Lego Digital Camera. Good isn't it? Send your entry to picturesmeanprizes@schoolofeverything.com by 30 September 2009.

Oh and congratulations to David Brown as the winner of the paragraphs competition. Well done you! Here is what he said about his subject, it will be up on the site soon:

'Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Jet Li - which one are you? Hopefully none of the above. You may aspire to imitate - admirable, but to be them - questionable! You're unique, individual, so why not just be yourself. Give jujitsu a try. Train hard, have fun and get fit. Meet interesting people and get to punch, kick and throw them. Of course you’ll learn some basic self-defense skills as well, they may lack the flash of the silver screen but then life’s a bit like that, if only there was someone always there to shout: cut, let’s try that again.'

Last week's School of Everything: Unplugged! was a lot of fun - and we're going to be back at the Royal Festival Hall foyer, from 10.30 to 12.30 this Wednesday.

This time we'll be joined by Sofia Bustamante, who's going to share her work-in-progress on London Creative Labs. This is a really exciting project, inspired by time she's spent with Mohammed Yunus's Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. It's still at an early stage, but it reminds me a lot of the meetups out of which School of Everything emerged in 2006.

There's more information here. The format will be similar to last week - come with or without your laptop, get some work done, drink lots of coffee, have interesting conversations and meet new people...