Great idea but trust is paramount
IF you’ve ever wanted to learn how to play the flute, do yoga or become a horticultural master, you could be in luck.
Launched by a team of just six people in Bethnal Green earlier this year, the School of Everything is a UK dotcom start-up that’s positioning itself to be the eBay of learning.
And having secured £350,000 seed funding from some seriously impressive business types in Esther Dyson, JP Rangswami and Rocco Pellegrinelli, what started out as an experiment in philanthropy in October 2007 could end up being one of the big web hits of next year.
The website – which you can find at www.schoolofeverything.com – basically acts as a broker, and puts you in touch with teachers near you if you want to learn something, and vice versa if you want to teach something.
You can learn practically anything on the website – from photography and creative writing to business skills, life skills, software packages, languages, etc. And what’s more, since it finds the nearest teachers to you, you can learn from someone who’s able to show you exactly what to do.
It’s a great idea, and well executed. The whole thing is simple to use and comes complete with a host of useful web tools, such as a map to show your nearest teachers, reviews, and an email service that alerts you if an instructor signs up in your vicinity teaching something in which you’ve expressed an interest.
As I said earlier, this site has the potential to be a real big hit. It could be a boon for home educators, as well as anyone who wants to learn something new but doesn’t know where to start.
First, though, the site will have to overcome two tricky challenges if the affable team behind it are going to achieve an A-grade.
First off, will people want to learn via the site? Trust is an important issue on the internet, so School
of Everything will need to make sure its learners can trust their instructors’ abilities. Perhaps some form of accreditation will be
needed.
And second, will School of Everything reach critical mass? If School of Everything is to do well, it will need a sufficient stream of learners and teachers using it regularly.
There’s a fine line between success and failure, and the founders of School of Everything will find out where that lies pretty soon. Unfortunately for them, it’s one of the few things their own site cannot teach them.
Herb Kim is chief executive of Codeworks.
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