Can you imagine a school that teaches everything? You might think it would be difficult to find enough people to teach… everything. But surely, somewhere out there, there’s a person who knows something you want to know and would gladly teach you, no matter what it was you wanted to learn. Okay, you can stop imagining now. Some clever people are trying to provide the means for everyday people to teach and learn anything and everything from each other. They’re calling it (surprise): The School of Everything.
It’s free of charge. There are no restrictions to what you can teach (other than the law…). All you need to do is sign up, build a profile, and search through a large range of things people around the world want to teach you. When you find someone in your area (or elsewhere, I suppose), you can contact them and organize a meeting. I think of it as having the potential to be an anti-Facebook. Whereas Facebook seems to digitize social interaction, the School of Everything could use the digital medium to facilitate the creation of physical (real) social encounters with actual physical people.
This idea sounded a lot like something Clifford at Asymptotia blogged about doing a little while ago. He went on a “physics blind date” and organized a meeting with some complete strangers to talk over dinner about physics! I loved this idea and commented about the School of Everything being a potentially perfect means to organize such meetings. (The only downside was the lack of a “Science” category.)
I mean, what could be better than spreading interesting scientific knowledge outside a classroom setting… over say, coffee? Sounds like loads of fun to me… so I promptly signed up for it, myself. Within a few days, I got a surprise in my inbox:
Hi Jasper –
I just wanted to say thanks for mentioning School of Everything in your comment on Clifford Johnson’s blog the other day. His post and the comments were an inspiring reminder of the potential of what we’re trying to do with the site – and prompted a post from me on the SoE blog this afternoon: http://schoolofeverything.com/blog/browsinghumanlibrary. Also, you’re absolutely right that we need to add a Science category. We’ll do that soon!Thanks again,
Dougald Hine
Co-founder, School of Everything
At the moment, the majority of teachers at the School of Everything are based in the United Kingdom, but hopefully we can change that. I’m encouraging anyone (especially those with a scientific background) to sign up to teach something, even if it’s just a setup for a “physics blind date”. There are no strings attached. You make the rules. What have you got to loose?
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