[dorkbotpdx-blabber] Re: [open tech space] Class/Seminar Proposal

[Thomas Lockney]

On Thu, May 7, 2009 at 9:34 AM, spacewrench <spacewrench at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> A friend and I were discussing all the great open lectures & courses
> available online from, e.g., MIT and Stanford, and speculating about
> the best way to use that information.  We came 'round to the view that
> you really need a mentor or something to bridge the gap between "I
> don't know anything about this" and "I can follow the lectures enough
> to learn the material."  Something like a TA (who, of course, will
> have to have at least enough knowledge to get over that initial "WTF
> is he talking about?" hump).  So...

Another approach is to do something similar to the Ghetto Institute of
Technology: http://ghettoinstituteoftechnology.org/

Basically, it was a small group of people who each committed to taking
one section of the course and attempting to lead a
discussion/tutorial/lecture on that subject. I've been wanting to do
this for a couple years since before I even heard about these guys
doing it, but my time and ability to commit has been rather limited.
And I similar believe that you have to have a committed group to make
this work. Beside the too few people on one side, you also need to
make sure the group isn't too large. I think there's a lot of peer
support needed for something like this to work and that depends on
being able to really interact and get involved with the other people
in the group.