I’d like to second the idea of a system for matching people who are willing to teach a particular skill with those who are interested in learning it. To throw out some ideas:
Reputation tracking ala eBay so that people who are good learners or good teachers will be recognized and easily distinguishable from people who make trouble.
One-on-one training, rather than one-to-many. The former is much easier for teachers who have domain experience but no education experience, and also allows the project to move more towards attempting novel things that haven’t yet been done in standard classroom & online training sessions.
Reciporical training: i.e. Alice teaches Bob how to program Ruby at the same time as Bob teaches Alice how to do integral calculus. I think this might help prevent a status difference from forming, and also create a motivation for people who prefer the teaching side over the learning side (or vice versa) to engage in both.
Training-related conversations (over IRC and the like) to be recorded on the website and accessible indefinitely to the people involved. Optionally the trainer and student could jointly choose to make those conversations publically accessible, along with any supplemental documentation that was created or used (homework assignments or the like).
I’d like to second the idea of a system for matching people who are willing to teach a particular skill with those who are interested in learning it. To throw out some ideas:
Reputation tracking ala eBay so that people who are good learners or good teachers will be recognized and easily distinguishable from people who make trouble.
One-on-one training, rather than one-to-many. The former is much easier for teachers who have domain experience but no education experience, and also allows the project to move more towards attempting novel things that haven’t yet been done in standard classroom & online training sessions.
Reciporical training: i.e. Alice teaches Bob how to program Ruby at the same time as Bob teaches Alice how to do integral calculus. I think this might help prevent a status difference from forming, and also create a motivation for people who prefer the teaching side over the learning side (or vice versa) to engage in both.
Training-related conversations (over IRC and the like) to be recorded on the website and accessible indefinitely to the people involved. Optionally the trainer and student could jointly choose to make those conversations publically accessible, along with any supplemental documentation that was created or used (homework assignments or the like).