David Dean, founder of Yamisee, gave a great talk about this new, e-learning tool at a EdLab today:
Yamisee is a live online learning platform that creates an entirely new marketplace for teachers and subject matter experts to share their knowledge. Much in the way eBay connects buyers with sellers, Yamisee connects independent experts with paying students. Providing everything an instructor needs to conduct classes and earn money through live online learning events is why Yamisee was selected as a 2009 Company to Watch by the Connecticut Technology Council. (from the event description)
David discussed how they are striving to make Yamisee a marketplace of learning opportunities, and it seems like he has the basic structure to make it a vibrant one.
Why it might catch on:
- The focus: live classes (and probably recordings of them).
- Slick adoption of existing web-conferencing tools.
- Variable pricing, with pretty good incentive for instructors to try out their best stuff.
Why it might not:
- The marketplace is ultimately built on trust – bad options and high standards could hurt the business model.
- People may not care as much about social interaction as we might think (they may prefer to crawl the web instead).
But both of these are more business-related worries than technical or conceptual problems. Overall, I’d be excited to see a social network like Yamisee be successful, because that would mean people are excited to learn new things from experts. (And that’s not always the way things seem to go these days…) It will also be interesting to see if this kind of e-learning tool is able to distinguish itself from the growing list of options.
Thanks David!