Fred Wilson and Albert Wegner of Union Square Ventures brought a group of leading thinkers, educators, and entrepreneurs together this past Friday to discuss the future of eductation. On his blog, Fred shared eleven key takeaways from the event and many of them speak to the core of what we’re working on at (un)classes.
2) Alternative forms of education (home schooling, charter schools, online learning, adult education/lifelong learning) are on the rise and we are just at the start of that trend.
3) Students will increasingly find themselves teaching as well. Peer production will move from just producing content to producing learning as well.
10) Spaces for learning (schools and libraries) will be re-evaluated. It was suggested that Starbucks is the new library. I don’t think that will be the case but the value of dedicated physical spaces for learning will decline. It has already happened in the world of professional education.
11) Learning is bottom up and education is top down. We’ll have more learning and less education in the future
Hacking Education (continued)
Teachers don’t need to be experts; they simply need a love for the subject and an excitement about sharing it with others. We think all of us are hard wired to enjoy learning and have a desire to share our learning and passions with others. ‘Regular People,’ teaching each other in coffee shops and extra conference rooms, are going to play a big role in the upcoming revolution in learning. And unclasses.com hopes to connect them.
Learning isn’t a destination, it’s an ongoing part of a fulfilled life.
Class Name: How to Create The Greatest Rock Song of All Time
About the Class: Using some basics of music theory, and principals of rock lyricism, structure, volume and overcoming fear of shitty sentimentality, I will teach you how to create the greatest rock music single in the history of the world. You will write it, and you will put it on heavy rotation in your car.
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Teacher: Joel Moss Levinson
About the Teacher: I win online video contests, and make my living with small scale music comedy.
We’ve already had a couple requests to support locations outside the US & Canada. So, we decided to accidentally implement it. ;-)
It turns out the APIs we’re using to turn the value entered in the Zip field on the edit Class page into a metro area for our system to use as filters actually support post codes beyond the US & Canada. I’ve tested UK post codes, and they work perfectly. But, I haven’t tested other international post codes yet.
So, the bottom line is when you see the ‘Zip’ field, just project a ‘/Post Code’ on the end of that and (un)class to your heart’s content all over the world! :-)
[For those interested, the APIs in question are the Yahoo! Maps Geocoding API and the Upcoming API and you can check out a prototype version of the script we’re using here.]
*breathes* Wow! What an incredible ~100 hrs since Rahmin and I first started seriously talking about launching something for LaidOffCamp and 9:30am today when unclasses.com went live!
I’ll write a longer post later, but Rahmin and I just wanted to give a quick shout-out to the incredible team of passionate people who gave up their weekend (and Monday night) for nothing more than their excitement about this idea:
- Tim Rosenblatt, without whom this probably would still be no more than two guys who don’t know how to code talking bullshit at eachother — Tim’s willingness to just jump in and put together the first prototype is what really got the ball rolling.
- Michael Orr, who along with Corey hopped in to help take what Tim started across the finish line.
- Corey Reece, the quiet guy who just makes it happen (fwiw, that’s the highest compliment in my book).
- Marcus Harvey, our designer extraordinaire who gave up his dearly beloved Saturday night down the pub to turn my lifeless mock-ups into the vivid site you see today.
- Todd Sampson, a real-life CTO who rolled up his sleeves and dusted off his CSS to make Marcus’s vision real.
- John Sampson, another CTO who actually went as far as to slice up the PSDs to help Todd get the front-end done (because my attempts to do so were rife with fail ;-) )
FWIW, Tim, Michael, and Corey all work at Cloudspace when they’re not being roped into hair-brained side-projects by fast-talking city-slickers (enough hyphens for ya?), and will build you your very own kick-ass web app if you ask them nicely (with cash money, of course). I know, because I’m not just the Cloudspace fan club president, I’m also a client.
Ok, I’m gonna go back to work now. But, you should go learn something!
-jonathan
P.S. An honorary shout-out to Laurie for helping Rahmin and I with the DNS mess we created just in time for Russell to pimp us on his blog.
Learning seems to occur when kids have to figure things out for themselves (or better yet, explain them to others) and when there is a natural reason for doing so. Yet most schools today are organized around artificial problems and homework assignments and with everyone working on the same problems there is virtually no room for kids to learn from each other.
We haven’t even launched the site yet, and we’re already getting some incredible ideas for things people want to teach and learn! Our deepest thanks to everyone who has chipped in to get us off to a great start.
This is the first in our (most likely quasi-) daily series highlighting our favorite submissions from the community. Here it is, numero uno:
Class Name: how to be a digital nomad
About the Class: a loose intro on how i became a digital nomad. what kind gear i use, how to decide where to live, etc etc.
Location: Vancouver, BC
Teacher: kareem mayan
About the Teacher: been living and working on the road since december 2007. lived and worked in vancouver, los angeles, cape town, buenos aires, and visited london, various cities in india, new york, toronto, uruguay, antarctica, and parts of india.
We’ll include a link to this class as soon as we launch. In the meantime, getting involved is as easy as telling us something you want to learn and/or something you want to teach!
Open Space Principles and The Law of Mobility & Responsibility:
Principles:
- Whoever comes is the right person
- Whatever happens is the only thing that could have
- Whenever it starts is the right time
- When it’s over, it’s over
The Law of Mobility and Responsibility (aka The Law of Two Feet):
“If you are not learning or contributing where you are, find a place where you can learn or contribute.”
(via LaidOffCamp)
Rahmin Says: How might this apply to (un)classes?
