18 months ago at 2am I finally gave up trying to find an Italian tutor. I wanted to learn the language, largely to impress a certain girl who spoke Italian. But I was only available late at night, and even then my schedule was sporadic. It seemed Italian was out, and I would have to rely on my charm. Italian would have been better...
That night sparked a year and a half long quest to understand why we learn the way we do (or don't). Why do the academies have a monopoly on knowledge? What happened to the lifelong student, the amateur scholar, and societies dedicated to shared interests, vigorous debate, and continuous discovery? Are people less excited about learning, or is it simply that we're less excited about the way we're taught? And most importantly, why can't technology help me find someone online that can teach Italian at midnight, or offer up some helpful tips for relating to a certain pretty Italian speaking girl? And for that matter, why can't I study art history? or cooking? or marathon training (a personal goal of mine)? People do these things all the time...surely somebody must be willing to teach them to the rest of us!
This month we're getting ready to launch a web site called Revoluminary (www.revoluminary.com) that I hope will address these questions and radically change the way that we share knowledge.
Revoluminary provides an easy and effective platform for people to explore, create, teach, and learn according to their own interests and abilities, while participating in a broader global community of friends and fellow enthusiasts. I hope it becomes a global knowledge potluck, where we can come together and learn from each other.
Many of you have already signed up to participate in our beta testing. If you haven't, I'd love to have you join us. We're running out of spaces, but as of this writing there were a little over 220 invitations to the beta left. In the meantime, watch this space, and please, share your thoughts. After all, we're building the site for you, the passionate learners and teachers of the world.
You may not have realized it, but YOU are Revoluminary!
1 comment:
Ran into a desperate need for a Revoluminary last night. I was invited to a dinner with a finance company in Russia that was recruiting at school. Now I speak Russian (at a 3rd grade level), and I know finance (more so than I'm willing to admit).. but business Russian??? I've got nothing! I can fluently say 'pass the vodka, comrade', or even 'why'd you take all my vodka, comrade??'.. but how do you say Sales? Stock market? I'm not even sure how to say "will you please exense my trip to Moscow?". Pete - if you run into a Business Russian instructor in your Beta, send them my way!
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