sMary and Andy from School of Everything talked about free schools and peer learning, as part of the Open for Business series of events organised by Saul at The People Speak.
They were joined by Ben from the Institute for the Future of the Book, who talked about several of the Institute's projects including Commentpress, a Wordpress hack that allows paragraph-by-paragraph commenting alongside the main text.
I'll be at Web 2.0 Expo in Berlin next week as part of the Seedcamp panel (1.30-3,30pm Monday 5th November). If you're going to be there come and say hello!
All the best people are using Drupal to build their sites these days. As well as School of Everything, Britney Spears has just joined the open source club. Now I wonder what she could teach in the School of Everything...
[via Dries]
Michael Wesch is developing quite a reputation for creating thought-provoking Youtube videos (check out this and this if you haven't seen any of his work before). This one is related more closely to the ideas behind School of Everything.
The London Games Festival and Fringe runs from October 22nd until early November. As part of the festival, Skillset and the LDA are running Skills Week, a series of free workshops offering a chance to learn about existing and emerging skills in this fast-changing industry.
There's more information on the LGFF website.
Having built their own low-impact home in a forest in Wales, uber-green parents Simon and Jasmine are now making preparations to create a whole village with a group of like-minded people.
They need people to come and help them build over summer 2008. It's a great chance to learn hands-on, for free (well, in exchange for your efforts) how to do this stuff.
Some people teach; some think about it; everyone has something to teach. That's the point of the School of Everything. Another take on the idea, less face-to-face oriented than Project Everything but no less intriguing, is Instructables.
Some of you probably know it already. But for those who don't, take a look - it's a site where you can create videos showing people how to do something, and upload them for others to enjoy. There's all sorts there, from Lego fractals to domestic safety via science projects and cooking. It's good browsing stuff.
Education guru Sir Ken Robinson makes a funny and passionate case for building an education system that nurtures creativity.
So Andy was clearing out his wardrobe and found a couple of inflatable chairs that he's donated to the Team Everything furniture pool. I think they'll look rather fetching on our astroturf balcony but it's going to take me weeks to blow them up. Anybody got a pump I can borrow?
There was another piece in the FT today about Seedcamp, with a discussion of the differences between UK and US startups. Despite not having made the final list of six we got a mention because, as Jonathan Moules writes, 'One characteristic that seems to differentiate the Seedcamp startups from their US counterparts is the importance of social causes over the desire to make money.'
He gave as an example the fact that Pete, our very own head of tech, missed the Seedcamp pitch day because he was giving a press conference about the tank he's just driven to the DSEi arms fair.
So yesterday Emily signed up to the School of Everything with a view to teaching. And the first thing that happened was that she found Toby's teacher profile and wanted to learn from him.
We've been banging on for ages about how everyone's got something to teach, and everyone's got something to learn. And we built this thing at least partly to prove that. Aaaaand...
It works! It works!
We had our first team meeting post-Seedcamp this afternoon - on the balcony, in the sunshine. Best way to have a team meeting, officially, EVAH.
We took turns going over what each of us personally learned from the week, and spent a bit of time figuring out how best to use that to kick the next few weeks off.
I don't know if it was the sunshine, the prospects, the energy we've all got for getting going - but I'm feeling pretty excited about the future here at the School of Everything.
Every member of School of Everything can add notes, links, videos, images, documents and other things to the site that help people learn or teach a particular subject. If you're learning, you can use it to keep track of your progress in your subjects and all the things that help you learn like useful websites or how-to videos.
If you're teaching, you can share useful resources and advice that you think will help people learn you subjects. You can tag each resource post with one or more subjects, and your posts will appear to other people looking for those subjects.
Don't be shy, say hello. We'd love to hear from you.
