How any group can become a Freeschool

The School of Everything is a simple and cleverly executed idea by a web start-up company who say, only slightly tongue in cheek, that they hate the Internet.

The idea is that we all have something to learn ... and may well have something we can teach, informally if not formally. Why not use an online matching system to help learners and teachers get together? But instead of thinking that can all be done online, help people to meet up and get to know and learn from each other as fully as possible. The comic strip tells it all.

The "hate the Internet" line comes in because the School folk feel we should spend less, not more time in front of the screen. Let's use it to do smart stuff, not become eyeballs for the admen. Even so TechCrunch was impressed.
I knew most of this before going along to a workshop today on Designing for the 21st Century, organised by my friends at PRaDSA (Practical Design for Social Action).

 

What I didn't know was that Andy Gibson and chums at the School have now come up with a very neat little hack which shows how any group can become a school.

 

Andy invited us all do something really simple: stick post-it notes on a board with corners labeled social, action, free, and (I think I remember) paid for. It very quickly started us talking about what we were looking for, and what we could offer - which is a good-enough way of starting any sort of workshop. The neat hack is that Andy has now invited us to carry on the matching on a little Freeschool micro-site within the main School site.
I met Andy through the RSA Networks site, which he and Saul Albert have developed, and will no doubt see more of him at the Social Innovation Camp where I'm really interested in his Partner Up proposal ... but that's another story. There's only so much Internet-assisted learning I can take before bed-time.

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Comments

[Ed]

*Very* interesting indeed.

The future is clearly about knowledge networking, not just social networking for it's own sake. The social networking hype cycle is moving on... thank goodness for that!

Well found!

[Josien Kapma]

I agree with the freeschool people that f2f contact is vital.

There is another reason to “upgrade” the importance of location online. Coming from a (rural) development/natural resource management background, in my thinking, many issues that need our attention are tied to the land, are localized and need /local/ actors to get involved and undertake collective action.
The tools are developing: postal coded search, google maps will have a role to play, portals, many local initiatives, postal coded E-bay, this freeschool. But starting from /what/ instead of /where/, will organise people thematically again, not geographically.
Instead, what we need is geographical initiatives, with “plug-ins” for ebay, freeschool, etc.
Would you agree, and does anyone know of such applications?

[David Wilcox]

... hmm I think my friend Kevin who has done time online as well as off, might have some ideas on that. I'll try and tempt him over.