Comments on: A new way to make six figures on the Web: teaching

By: backpack.tv

backpack.tv — Mon, 21 May 2012 19:37:11 +0000

Backpack TV pays some of its teachers a licensing fee to stream videos for it new education video library. Other teachers, like Sal Khan of Khan Academy, are not compensated as their videos are available free through a Creative Commons license. Either way, students benefit from a growing catalog of education videos covering math, science, and other academic subjects.

By: steve f

steve f — Thu, 17 May 2012 19:30:49 +0000

Nice. Askowls.com has a nice online classroom too.

By: Mary

Mary — Thu, 17 May 2012 18:00:46 +0000

This sounds intriguing. Being a natural born teacher, teaching skills from basic computer knowledge to self-improvement through the arts, I will definitely check this out.

By: Eliza

Eliza — Thu, 17 May 2012 17:45:17 +0000

Free courses from Stanford, Harvard are awesome, but the problem is they are generally too academic. Videos are long, contains a lot of information that you don’t need. Plus, Stanford and Harvard are not the best information resource out there. There are so many other awesome people that can share their knowledge and experience that no other Harvard prof. can. So you are basically paying for high-quality, specialized content, which I believe %100 worths.

By: Easter

Easter — Thu, 17 May 2012 16:19:50 +0000

So Udemy allows “anyone?” to teach a course? That seems a far cry from the “democratization” of education, and more like a random gathering of the unqualified. You know the old saying, if you can’t do – teach. What about online education like http://www.artistworks.com who ONLY feature the best educators in the world in their respective musical genres. Plus, you can interact with the teachers personally, not just download and watch videos. If I can get a music education from a Julliard teacher, that is the democratization of music education. Not a lesson from someone who puts their opinions online with no vetting.

By: Jeremy Olson

Jeremy Olson — Thu, 17 May 2012 16:13:37 +0000

Great post. iTunes U is great but there are some specialized, especially entrepreneurial, skills that aren’t necessarily taught at places like Stanford, Harvard and other iTunes U schools. For entrepreneurs, this stuff is well worth paying for. We are paying big bucks going to conferences and seminars for this stuff all the time.

“Explanatory videos for startups” is a great example. Another example: I recently did a “play” for a site called Startup Plays (http://www.startupplays.com/) on mobile app marketing. This is specialized information and it sells for over a hundred dollars. I’m not making six figures on it but it does very well.

By: Mike McGee

Mike McGee — Thu, 17 May 2012 14:24:46 +0000

Supportive of the initiative, but their name is Codecademy (minus the A) and not CodeAcademy. I am a co-founder of CodeAcademy (http://codeacademy.org) in Chicago, and we have created a physical program that teaches beginners how to build web applications. If you could correct your post that would be great. Thanks!

By: A guy

A guy — Thu, 17 May 2012 13:40:20 +0000

The thing that I don’t understand is, how have these people who are paying for these corses never heard of itunesU. Free courses from Stanford, Harvard and more on all these topics.