The Internet has made learning absolutely anything possible for everyone.
There are many great, free, low cost platforms that enable education like +Acumen, Udemy, and Coursera; today I stumbled upon Skillshare and was blown away by the platform for what it offers as a resource to learn, and how it empowers anyone to teach.
Skillshare is a global community for anyone who wants to learn, share, collaborate or teach. Launched in 2011, today the platform has 1.7 million students, over 6100 classes, and thousands of teachers.
There are courses on everything you can imagine – typography; business; how to run an effective Kickstarter campaign; motion graphic design; business modeling; photograph composition; baby food making (!); recipe design; garment production; music theory – the list is so creative and endless; and some courses have over 20,000 students enrolled in them.
The platform costs $10 a month for unlimited access, and $96 annually. For every annual membership purchased, they give a scholarship to another student.
If you are keen to teach, you can create your own course. Once you have more than 25 students, you can even start making money via their partner programme. Some teachers make $1500 a month and the top teachers make as much as $40,000 a year. The platform has helped many work on what they are passionate about, and has enabled them to make a side career from it.
Skillshare recently raised $12 million in venture capital funding to extend its offerings, taking the total capital it has raised to $22 million. The story behind the idea for the platform is inspiring; you can listen to it here.
“Follow your curiosity, you will be surprised where it takes you”- said Elizabeth Gilbert in a recent course I did on creative living. Curiosity triggers the desire to learn, learning fuels passion, passion can change the world.
If you have always wanted to learn something, you have no good excuse not to learn it. Complacency leads to stagnation, and – without wanting to sound dramatic – stagnation leads to the death of your soul.
Reignite your curiosity. Do a course. Start with something.