We want to help people learn what they really really want - when, where and how they want. But up to now, we've been more focussed on supporting teachers than learners. In fact, if you didn't want to teach something, no-one could even find you on the site.
Well, fear not. After much technical huffing and puffing, today we're launching personal profiles for everyone. And we want to know what you really want to learn.
Here's how it works:
We've been nominated for the UK Catalyst Awards, in the Self-Help category. Hurray!
And as if that weren't enough, we're also finalists for the New Statesman New Media Awards, in the Inform and Educate category.
More news as soon as we have it...
We're very pleased to welcome Sangeet Gyawali to Team Everything. He'll be working on design and usability, and has already kicked off with some great ideas.
He tried to hide when we pointed a camera at him, so here's a picture of the very, very large Mac he'll be working at instead.
We've been looking around for inspiration about how to make School of Everything an amazing place to work. One fantastic story is that of Semco in Brazil. When Ricardo Semler inherited the company in the early 1980s he began to wonder why democracy was something that was talked about in relation to government but never to companies.
Everything HQ had a surprise visit this afternoon - all the way from Lithuania.
Darius Damalakas, a programmer and School of Everything teacher, flew over for a tech conference - or so he thought.
"I turned up at the venue," he explained, "but when I sat down in what I thought was the first session I suddenly realised I'd gatecrashed an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting".
The Science Department will be at Minibar tomorrow night.
Andy and Russ during the infamous Recorder Incident at Interesting 2008
They're being very cagey about what they're presenting. I can't promise recorders or lab coats. But it's more likely to include barbershop harmony than Powerpoint slides, which can only be a good thing.
If you're there, come and say hello!
Team Everything is much looking forward to next week's 2gether08 conference. Two days of talks, workshops, experiments and great people, plus the New Statesman New Media Awards" (which we've been nominated for), and a launch event for 4IP, Channel 4's new social technology fund - it's going to be busy, exciting and fun.
Last Saturday a lot of interesting people descended on Conway Hall for the day of joy that was Interesting 2008.
We were invited by Interesting organiser Russell Davies to do something interesting in the lobby. So, using materials close to hand (such as lab coats and ancient modems) we made an Interesting Machine.
We made some antique-looking punchcard type things:
We're heading to Interesting 2008 tomorrow. We're taking some vintage tech.
That's all I can tell you right now. But if you're there, come and say hello!
We've seen several orchestras' worth of music teachers joining the site this month – but if piano lessons aren't your thing, there are some more unusual instruments on offer. To give you inspiration, I put together a School of Everything hit parade. Hold onto your hats for a musical rollercoaster…
When I was doing a talk at a conference last week, a number of people thought it was strange that School of Everything was set up as a company. So I thought it might be worth setting out why we chose this structure and some of the things we've built into the model that make us a bit different.
Legally speaking School of Everything is a company limited by shares registered in England and Wales. It's the most common form for any company in the UK and the form that almost any internet start-up here takes.
It's not the most Edupunk of musical reference points (more on that later), but I woke up this morning thinking about the video to REM's 'Everybody Hurts'. You remember the one: gridlocked traffic on the interstate, the camera panning across silent faces stuck in cars, subtitles captioning their unspoken grievances...
I've been having a bit of a think recently about Free Schools. I always learn a lot, every time I host a Free School - so I always get something out of it. For the others who come it feels like it's good as
- a chance to do something random with interesting people
- a space to talk about open learning and DIY culture
- a chance to find others in the area who have skills that might be handy.
It's not so good as
- a way of finding a teacher for a specific subject (who turns up is too random for that to be reliable)
- a space to do sustained learning.
When starting a school, it helps if you can find some teachers. Over the last few weeks, Claire and I have been contacting people who are already advertising their teaching online, to invite them to join School of Everything. The response has been encouraging - a big increase in the number of new teachers joining the site and some lovely emails from people who really get what we're trying to do.
We've been nominated for the 2008 New Statesman New Media awards.
If you want to add your voice to that, click here.
Go on - choose Everything!
Years ago, in my first job, I spent a lot of time skiving off my 'proper' work and playing with those early social media platforms. These days, social media is no longer what I stop working to do - it's my job.
A day at Everything HQ takes me across
- our Facebook page
- our Twitter feed
- our Get Satisfaction account
Tomorrow, at the Free School meetup, Dougald's going to teach how to fly the Everything HQ miniature helicopters. And there'll be the usual freeschooling, idea-swapping, tea and cake and loveliness.
If you're in the area, come down! But if you like the idea, but can't make it, then you can always start your own.
Here is a picture of Dougald starting a school. You can see how easy* it is.
We've got copies of Accepted (the story of Everything, in teen movie form) to give to the best photos we get of signs in unexpected places that say 'THIS IS A SCHOOL'.
Send photos to accepted [at] school of everything dot com .
*Now keeping a school going, that's a different story...
The idea for School of Everything came out of our own experiments with open learning, and out of our thoughts about others who've tried it. What happens when a group of people with different skills and interests gets together in a friendly context and looks for ways to exchange what we know?
I went swimming this morning, and realised I had room to improve. It has been many years since I have done a a decent number of lengths, but, after a few mornings, the flow is coming back to me. Keep your body aligned, create the minimum disturbance of the water, trim and adjust. I grew up in South Africa and I got a lot of swimming training, many people in the UK were not quite so lucky. We could probably all use a bit of help.
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.
