Don't worry about what anybody else is going to do. The best way to predict the future is to invent it.Alan Kay
Cambrian House began as a crowdsourcing community using a wisdom of crowds based approach to discover new business and technology ideas. These pages are being kept online as a technology demo to showcase Chaordix™.
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Ideas
LocalClasses.com - Live, learn, have fun!
The Elevator Pitch
For lifelong learners, learning enthusiasts, hobbyists, teachers, professional organizations who need an outlet to market their classes/workshops in an organized online setting the LocalClasses.com is a online portal/marketing site for teachers and teaching organizations that organizes and simplifies finding local classes in your city or community. Unlike TeachStreet.com, Craigslist.com and generic search engines our product will allow to pay for classes online (increasing participation), online control panel for teachers to manage classes, and allow distance learning by allowing video/audio posts of some classes and live interaction between students and teachers.
The Idea
Ever search for a personal/professional class/workshop or seminar offered in your area? Sure, you can search Yellowpages, Google, CitySearch, Craigslist, etc., but the information is scattered and very unorganized. It is inefficient and you often can't gauge the quality of the class or teacher. Enter LocalClasses.com - an online portal for professionals, teachers, professors, hobbyists, local organizations, community colleges, and other trade schools and adult education centers to post classes for students to find and attend. Will allow students to comment on, rate/recommend the classes and the teachers. Students will be able to search by location, time of day, type of class, class difficulty, etc. and will be able to pay for the class directly through the site and more!
Also allow teachers to manage classes and students from an online control panel, and give them flexibility to market their services to existing students reach out to other prospective students. Read on!
I thought of this idea when I was...
I thought of this idea over a year ago when I was searching for a local class in finance and when my girlfriend was getting frustrated trying to find some evening dance classes for us.
A new site just launched in April, called TeachStreet.com which is doing this same thing (i'm not sure about the teacher's online control panel and has NO online interactivity) and there is no payment method. Untapped market, HUGE potential. My domain name is a PERFECT match for this! will save TONS on marketing!
Teachstreet.com is being funded by people like Jeff Bezos, if we can create competition for them with such a generic, easy-to-remember name like LocalClasses.com, we might be able to get Bezos and Co. to buy us out for millions!
I'm an entrepreneur with good project management skills. I need the funds, right team of programmers and marketing gurus to help me take this idea to the next level and make it succeed.
Come on people, WHO'S WITH ME?!?!?
Comments Posted
I'm a teacher, and to me the idea sounds like it could be viable. :)
I like the idea. A way to take it even farther is to offer online classes and webinars in similar subject you would find at your local community college.
I would personally find this very useful.
Have you drafted a business plan or sketched out phases/scope for user functionality? How would you initially aggregate all the local class information (incorporate providers)? Would the site incorporate "official" ratings of program/instructor quality, or just user feedback?
I suggest buying the TeachStreet domain. This also reminds me of the opencourse ware project; perhaps you could incorporate the already existing content somehow?
Good idea. It would be useful to provide locations, times, maps, fees etc. This would be good for me, for example, as I am looking for adult swim instruction. A review section (ala ebay or tripadvisor or even ratemyprofessor) would be useful too, come to think about it.
You might want to sketch out a variety of diverse users and how they would find it and use it. I could also see this as a facebook app.
Sorry, have to say that this is largely done. My universities and college offer an on-line portal where you can search for course by date and time and topic. No one offers the ability to rate the teacher and I doubt whether teachers would really want to be involved in something like that.
I think this would have a great shot at taking off if you plan to make it a free service for now. Good idea.
Hi your idea is really similar to mine but I planned on doing this nationally for the k-12 and using laptops that would be issued for the duration of the child's school term. Good Idea and good luck to you
I like the idea and see a number of different ways that money could be made here. You want to drive as much traffic as possible to the site, so keeping at least part of it free is a good idea. Perhaps have the 'student view' free, with a tie to google maps pinpointing their location and the location of classes they might be interested in taking, (by filling out a profile, they can indicate what they might like to learn about....sort of a LinkedIn for students!) Schools/teachers might be charged a graduated fee....individual teachers with classes might be able to list them at a nominal fee, schools etc. might be charged a slightly larger per-listing fee, but get volume discounts. If advertising were brought into the mix, it may be able to pay for everything else....
I see a lot of potential with this concept....but you have to figure out where they money is going to come from. In other words, who are your customers? They don't have to necessarily be the users of the service...that could just build an audience that your 'real' customers want to address.
How will this be different from some on line schools?
HOw will the user know that the teacher is not a con-artist?
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