IT'S TIME TO BUILD; How We Can Take Action!

From "IT'S TIME TO BUILD":

We know one-to-one tutoring can reliably increase education outcomes by two standard deviations (the Bloom two-sigma effect); we have the internet; why haven’t we built systems to match every young learner with an older tutor to dramatically improve student success? —Marc Andreessen

I just built such a system. I've created Tutorbook to connect every student with an expert mentor and (as needed) qualified, volunteer tutors.

We're connecting 9-12 students with experts (like you) to collaborate on cool, meaningful (summer) projects (e.g. a web app or research paper) that you're both passionate about.

Lots of student summer plans have been dashed due to COVID-19. This'll be an amazing opportunity for them to work with an expert (e.g. you) on something they're interested in (e.g. a cool startup idea).

I'm calling it "project oriented mentorship." Both the student and their mentor are passionate about some field (e.g. computer science or marketing) but the student doesn't have the experience, connections, knowledge, or resources that the mentor has.

From Paul Graham's "What You'll Wish You Had Known":

If you'd asked me in high school what the difference was between high school kids and adults, I'd have said it was that adults had to earn a living. Wrong. It's that adults take responsibility for themselves. Making a living is only a small part of it. Far more important is to take intellectual responsibility for oneself.

If I had to go through high school again, I'd treat it like a day job. I don't mean that I'd slack in school. Working at something as a day job doesn't mean doing it badly. It means not being defined by it. I mean I wouldn't think of myself as a high school student, just as a musician with a day job as a waiter doesn't think of himself as a waiter. [3] And when I wasn't working at my day job I'd start trying to do real work. —Paul Graham

I agree with PG completely!

But most students don't have other cool projects to work on/learn about. Most students would be thrilled to work on some of the startup ideas I've seen pop up around here. But they don't know about them.

And they won't know about them unless we do something about it.

Here's how it will work:

1. The expert mentor (e.g. an awesome Indie Hacker like you) signs up and posts about a project they'd love to collaborate on with a student (e.g. an app or startup idea).
2. The student searches (e.g. "I'm interested in CS" or "I want to work on marketing") and requests an expert mentor.
3. The mentor then chats with the student, their parents, and points the student towards resources to get started (e.g. tutorials, documentation, GitHub repositories, etc).
4. The student and the mentor work closely together to reach their goals for their project (e.g. successfully launching that app or startup idea).

I'd love any feedback you guys have on my ideas or the existing website.

And OFC I'd love for you to sign-up haha; this community is pretty much as expert as it gets IMHO!