Resources for Everything

It's good to hear a government minister in Britain talking about adult learning as something which has value in itself, as well as being a route back to work. It's even better when the minister in question, after invoking the rich history of the mutual improvement societies and the Workers' Education Association, mentions School of Everything as part of the future of that tradition.

Self-organised learning is something we're passionate about here at School of Everything - so it was great to get along to this afternoon's first meeting of the Tower Hamlets' University of the Third Age. The U3A is a huge learning network, made up largely of retired people who get together regularly to learn about things which interest them.

School of Everything is getting together with CityMined, a collective interested in city life, to spend an evening looking at the things people do for love and the things people do for money. Especially on the pretty frequent occasions where these two don't match up.

The idea is that guests talk about something they can do, for as long as it takes to cook a Belgian waffle. Then they get the waffle. School of Everything will be down there looking for London's hidden teachers.

The Science Department hard at work

While School of Everything's Arts Department has been running around being excitable, the Science Department has been busy building us a shiny new site so we've actually got something to be excited about.

And as of about ten minutes ago, they pressed the button and it's live. Woohoo! Nice one guys.

Let us know what you think of it by sending us feedback.

It feels like only yesterday that we were wishing everyone happy Christmas last year. And now here we are again. And what a year it's been! Thanks to everyone who's believed in us, given us advice, signed up for the site, sent us their feedback, and helped us out in all the other millions of ways.

We'll be back in a few days' time, rested and full of mince pies, and ready to kick off some big and exciting changes in 2008. Meanwhile, for your holiday enjoyment, here's a picture of our CTO, Pete, at Santacon 2007.

Happy Christmas!

Teachers have spoken out again over the pressure placed on school teachers to meet government targets in national curriculum tests, saying it drives some to cheat the results.

Five primary schools were stripped of results this year after it was revealed that they had cheated on the national curriculum tests known as SATs, yesterday's Education Guardian reports.

Ho Ho Ho! Knitting maestro Aneeta Patel is running a Christmas special where you can learn to knit your own Christmas decorations.

Date: Sunday 9 December 4-7pm
Cost: £25 for three hours plus mince pies
Where: Stepney

Booking essential. For contact details visit Aneeta's profile.

A cute animation from the folks at Personalised Education Now: an alien talks to an Earthling boy about Earth schools.

Link

We're small, and growing. So even though we're called School of Everything, we don't quite have Everything yet.

We do get lots of requests though. In the last few days, we've been asked if we can find people

- A bagpipe teacher in London
- A Chinese teacher in London
- A how to build basic websites using a Mac when you haven't got much time teacher in London
- A ballroom dancing teacher in Manchester.

At Weblogg-Ed, I just found this fantastic story of one 11-year-old kid using Skype to teach two other kids how to use Scratch, from Scotland to Stockton. The father of Andrew, the kid doing the teaching, summed it up nicely:

Ian Oszvald gets in touch to tell us about his video tutorial site called ShowMeDo which focuses on online tutorials for programming and technology stuff. It's not just geek stuff though. Here's Ian demonstrating how to make the perfect cup of coffee.

Get the Flash Player to see this movie.