SkillShare.com

“A Platform to Learn Anything, from Anyone.” – SkillShare Slogan

 The Website: SkillShare.com

Came About: 2011

Founder: This guy and this guy.  Michael Karnjanaprakorn and Malcom Ong

How it works: Go to the site, register for free and immediately you have access to classes taught in person, in your neighborhood, by your neighbor.  The classes usually cost $10 to $15.  Read a brief description about the class and the teacher online, and if you’re interested, you sign up for the class and pay your tiny tuition via PayPal.  If you’d rather teach or also teach, you create a profile for a class, encourage people to sign up, and receive tuition via pal.  

Why it works: The way we’re used to it: If you’re enrolled in school, you’re a student.  You stop learning once you graduate.  At SkillShare, everyone is a student, and better yet, everyone can be a teacher.  The teaching and learning is all a bit of a mish-mash, which is the way it should be.

Another sell point for SkillShare is that  you actually get to meet people.  A lot of the criticism for online learning is that you ‘miss the human element.’  SkillShare utilizes the web to help students and teachers find one another, but the lessons happen face to face.  So long as you’re going to classes that interest you, you’ll likely meet and befriend people who interest you.

The Good Stuff:

• You connect online, but you learn/teach face to face
• Cheap classes
• You can learn by teaching
• You can learn stuff that you wish you knew by people who know