[LAF] Free Skool Idea

[Volodya]

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On 05/30/2012 12:33 AM, Artik Cah wrote:
> I 'm reaching out to Free Skool, Skill-Share, and Alternative University 
> practitioners and organizers, parents who homeschool, artists who work
> with digital media and most importantly web developers and designers with
> an inclination towards radical educational models.
> 
> I want to propose an idea that I think would align with many of the values
> of this list serve and would help in creating and promoting alternative
> frameworks for organizing and spreading non-hierachical and free learning
> in urban environments.
> 
> I would like to gather a group to develop an easy to use website which
> would allow people within a city to connect and learn skills and knowledge
> from each-other. The website would allow people to easily connect and offer
> to teach a class, lecture or skill, request a class, sign up for a class or
> offer a location for others to use.  The website would make it easy for
> someone seeking a specific skill to find someone else in their city who
> would be able to share that skill. This would essentially be a site akin to
> craigslist or couch surfing with a sole emphasis on creating networks of
> learning within cities.
> 
> It's a pretty simple idea, but I think this would be a powerful tool for 
> students of all kinds (especially those involved in the current tuition
> hike strikes in Canada), parents interested in creating homeschool co-ops
> for the education of their children and the general public sympathetic to
> causes which moves our society beyond its current hierarchical
> infrastructure. While the explosion of free classes online is exciting, I
> still think we need to develop infrastructure which brings people together
> to learn from each-other in the same physical location. The model allows
> for all types of knowledge, be it technical, philosophical, artistic,
> tactical, practical etc. to be shared freely throughout our communities. In
> this model everyone is seen as both a teacher and a student.
> 
> I'm baffled as to why this alternative educational model exists on such a
> modest level and it seems only within radical communities, when ideally
> entire cities could be structured with full on educational
> systems/skill-sharing where learning together was a norm. I think a website
> like this would empower all kinds of people to see themselves as possessing
> knowledge to be shared with others. In New Orleans the free skool is not
> located in any one place but can take place across the city wherever space
> is available (in parks, at community centers, in homes)- because free
> skools can operate in such a decentralized fashion, it seems ideal to
> organize them online.
> 
> I imagine such a website supporting other free skools and educational 
> initiatives already in existence within communities: -
> http://tradeschool.coop/ - http://corvidcollege.wikidot.com/ -
> http://santacruz.freeskool.org/ - http://freeschool.redemmas.org/ -
> http://platformed.org/ - (There's http://www.skillshare.com/ and
> http://hourschool.com/ but they are both based on money-making principles)
> 
> Looking for your thoughts on the matter; pitfalls, objections, interest,
> other ideas, friends who may be interested , alternative educational models
> , feasibility etc. I am in the process of organizing an online group of
> developers and consultants who would work on this project together online.
> Please let me know if you would like to be involved in whatever capacity.
> 
> 
> Blessings,
> 
> Kitra Cahana
> 
> www.kitracahana.com <http://www.kitracahana.com> (Photojournalist)

A kick-ass idea. I'm horribly busy right now, so i don't know of how much
development help i could be right now.

Here're some things that i would suggest, however.

1. Currently, thanks to social networks, people have almost no privacy. Search
engines and search on the social network can reveal a lot of private info.
Adding to this problem should be something to avoid.
1.1 One way of avoiding this issue is to have an ability to only see who is
offering a class after they ok you for the visit. This will have a added
benefit of fighting against cyber-stalking. The way i would envision it is: 1)
Alice posts an offer to share a specific skill 2) Bob sees the skill that is
being offered and responds to it 3) Alice sees Bob and Bob's profile and
approves one to see the full profile
1.2 Of course, you can say that somebody can actually make up a profile and
start searching for a person knowing their interests, but that is
significantly more work than just typing their known screen name into a search
engine.
1.3 Hidden racism, homophobia, etc. may become a problem with such a system,
but i believe that in this case people do have a freedom to chose their
association, even if they are idiots. A person can provide a skill and only
approve a people with the specific range of the skin shades... but at this
time it is a result of the problem, not its cause.

2. People should be encouraged to meet for real, so some ideas from meetup.com
can be employed.
2.1 You can have "groups", but the primary information about them should be
what they did in the real world, rather than their posts made online.
2.2 Geographical location should be the key in the search.

3. We are living in the world with many cultures and many languages. The
portal should be designed right away with that in mind.

4. People have different abilities and needs. If somebody advertises a place,
it should be possible to search for it by the criteria other than geographical
location (can you bring children there, is it wheel-chair accessible, etc)

                - Volodya

- -- 
http://freedom.libsyn.com/     Echo of Freedom, Radical Podcast

 "None of us are free until all of us are free."    ~ Mihail Bakunin
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