P2PU Lounge - Mar 2010

Betterfly - http://betterfly.com/ -  "Bettefly is the easy way to find the people -- not companies -- who help you learn, look and feel better."

Brooklyn Brainery - Brooklyn Brainery hosts cheap ($25!) collaborative classes on anything and everything. Think book clubs on steroids.Brainery classes don't have real teachers! Class leaders guide the learning process - you could say they know where you're heading (West!), but not that you need to take I-80 for a few thousand miles to get to Sutter's Mill.

Blinklearning
"From a social point of view we will provide quality courses to thousands of people who can not afford them now, provide a new source of income for many people (a teacher in India makes between 200 to 400 USD a month)."

DeCal (http://www.decal.org/)
"DeCal is a student-run democratic education program at the UC Berkeley - here, students create and facilitate their own classes on a variety of (often unorthodox) subjects."

eduFire "We have a simple (but not easy) mission: Revolutionize education. Our goal is to create a platform to allow live learning to take place over the Internet anytime from anywhere. Most importantly...for anyone. We're the first people (that we know of) to create something that's totally open and community-driven (rather than closed and transaction-driven)." 

Einztein (http://einztein.com/) "Connect your favorite courses to relevant learning resources. Exchange knowledge and information with other members whose academic interests match yours. Join peers and professors in exploring the newest academic frontier: free online courses."

Free Technology Academy  (http://www.ftacademy.eu/) Open Catalunia, Open NL, EU funded. Leads to masters level credits, which can be turned into a degree at the participating institutions. The Free Technology Academy consists of an advanced virtual campus with course modules that can be followed entirely on-line. The learning materials are Open Educational Resources that can be studied freely, but learners enrolled in the FTA will be guided by professional teaching staff from the participating universities. The full master programme can be concluded at one of the universities.

Grockit.com "Grockit was created to improve the learning outcomes of students by applying the power of social networks, adaptive algorithms, and gaming mechanics to the process of learning and education. Whether preparing for a standardized test such as the SAT, ACT, GMAT, GRE, LSAT, or MCAT or working toward mastering academic skills in Math, Reading, Science, or Social Science, Grockit students all over the world are choosing to study on Grockit. Grockit is a pretty simple idea – use social gaming technology and Web 2.0 infrastructure to create a fun learning environment for students.  However, the technology underpinning Grockit is extremely sophisticated and took years to develop."

Must University (http://www.mustuniversity.com)
"MUST University is a global online accredited university offering education in 16 different fields of studies through its specialized schools. These schools offer degree, diploma and certificate programs in 71 different majors. MUST University’s self-paced and self-study distance learning programs surpass both the traditional programs of world class universities globally and the on-line program offerings by other online institutions in terms of Ease & Flexibility, Low Cost, Quickness and Quality of Education.

Nixty (http://nixty.com/blog/about)
"NIXTY is a new company that takes a ground-breaking approach to learning. We provide powerful, free tools to help institutions, teachers, and learners reach their educational goals. NIXTY blends learner management system functionality, social networking, and file-sharing via a marketplace of commercial and user-generated content."

School of Everything
"Welcome to School of Everything - the website that helps you learn whatever, whenever and wherever you want. From Biology to Beekeeping, History to Hula hooping, we've got it all (well most of it). And you don't need to go to the end of the earth to learn what you want - we help you find teachers and lessons near you. That means you can make your brain bigger on your own doorstep."

Shared School (http://sharedschool.com/)
Early stages, US focused, sounds like Siyavula for US. "SharedSchool is a knowledge exchange and productivity tool for educators. Manage your lesson materials online. Keep them private, make them public or share them with a small team. Map your lesson materials to your own state curriculum standards. Our correlation engine will automatically map your materials to other states' relevant curriculum standards. Teachers helping teachers in a way that was not possible before."

Super Cool School
"Supercool School is an online school platform that empowers everyone to create customized education environments for live online learning."

The Public School (http://all.thepublicschool.org/) "THE PUBLIC SCHOOL is a school with no curriculum. At the moment, it operates as follows: first, classes are proposed by the public (I want to learn this or I want to teach this); then, people have the opportunity to sign up for the classes (I also want to learn that); finally, when enough people have expressed interest, the school finds a teacher and offers the class to those who signed up. The Public School is a project that was initiated by Telic Arts Exchange."

Toronto School of Creativity & Inquiry (http://www.tsci.ca/)
"TSCI designs education events inquiring into the new enclosures: enclosures on time, space, creativity, thought, ecology, love... We seek to understand how these enclosures work. But combating against cynicism, we also inquire into creative pathways within, against, and beyond the enclosures: pathways of thinking, collaboration, organization, experimentation... "

UDemy "Udemy is a website that enables anyone to create an online course. Our goal is to provide our teachers with everything they could possibly need to create a great learning experience over the internet. We've worked hard to build this site and we hope you like it. Everything is completely free, because we believe nobody should have to pay for Udemy unless they are making money themselves." udemy.com

UnClasses.org (http://UnClasses.org/)
"unclasses.org is a simple site that connects people who want to learn about a topic with those in their area who want to teach it. It’s basically a marketplace for matching interest with passion. The actual (un)classes can be whatever you want them to be. People in your area suggest things they want to learn, others join, and someone volunteers to teach. It’s that simple. (un)classes are meant to be lightweight, fun, and unconventional -- the kinds of things you can't easily learn elsewhere.

University of the People (http://www.uopeople.org/) "University of the People (UoPeople) is the world’s first tuition free online academic institution dedicated to the global advancement and democratization of higher education. The high-quality low-cost global educational model embraces the worldwide presence of the Internet and dropping technology costs to bring university level studies within reach of millions of people across the world. With the support of respected academics, humanitarians and other visionaries, the UoPeople student body represents a new wave in global education."

University of Openess (http://uo.twenteenthcentury.com/) "The uo is a framework in which individuals and organisations can persue their shared interest in emerging forms of cultural production and critical reflection such as unix, cartography, physical and collaborative research. Any member may start a faculty to socialise their research with the Uo."

Copenhagen Free University
(http://www.copenhagenfreeuniversity.dk/index.html)

Manoa Free University (http://manoafreeuniversity.org/)

Radical Education Collective (http://radical.temp.si/)

Free Slow University of Warsaw (http://www.wuw2009.pl/index.php?lang=eng)

University of Reddit - not officially endorsed by Reddit, but created by "redditors", using Reddit as well as many other Web 2.0 tools to launch an impressive amount of courses. Similar peer-learning strategy to us, but less focus on OER and open licenses, and less focus on a unified platform (also a more "techy" user group)

External lists:

• http://p2pfoundation.net/Category:Education#Key_P2P_Educational_Initiatives
• http://del.icio.us/mbauwens/P2P-Learning,