from Hacker News

LearningJar- Learn Skills Informally

by americandesi333 on 7/3/12, 4:54 PM with 19 comments

• by wheelerwj on 7/3/12, 8:52 PM

  I am pretty excited about the possiblity of this. One thing that concerns me though, is that I am in no way interested in tying my facebook to anything I do professionally or really even personally. I hate that contraption and although I might be more convinced to link to my google plus, i really don't want much social media involved with my professional development. So i checked it out but didn't subscribe.

  Would gladly give you my email though.

• by eykanal on 7/3/12, 5:12 PM

  At first glance, the site seems to be nothing more than an aggregator of tutorials. If there's a differentiating factor, I'm not seeing it.

• by p_apps on 7/3/12, 5:23 PM

  Another site with facebook login required, no thanks. Why not openid, or other authentication options?

• by russelluresti on 7/3/12, 6:30 PM

  The idea of pulling existing video or interactive learning resources into one location is interesting, but there are definite improvements needed.

  First, people looking to learn things often do not know what is required of them, that's why they're learning. Taking a play from the Khan Academy or Treehouse playbook, offering a suggested order that the user should complete the videos in (from most basic to most advanced) eases the learning process. Otherwise, they won't know exactly where to start.

  The other issue is with content curation. Aggregating learning resources from different places adds the problem of an inconsistent instruction style, teaching method, and process. For example, different design resources may teach different design principles. Different development resources may teach different ways of solving a process. To advanced users, knowing multiple ways of doing something, or even alternate/conflicting methods or approaches isn't a bad thing--they can use their existing knowledge to decide which is the best in which situation. But for someone new, being presented with alternate/conflicting approaches will just confuse them.

• by frugalfirbolg on 7/4/12, 4:55 AM

  I found the About page very useful for understanding the use case. I recommend putting the search feature that's on the About page on your home page as well.

  Also, why is the ability to Add a role on the home page in the list of example roles? Perhaps if it was called Request it would make more sense.

  The Browse section is for individual skills versus roles. It seems that having it centered on Roles makes more sense. At least have the option to browse Roles without following them.

  Finally, I found a link to Vimeo for Product Launch Promotion wherein the Learning Jar panel initially appears but then disappears: "How to Earn Customers Without P..." http://vimeo.com/39473593

• by engtech on 7/3/12, 5:47 PM

  I need to have some demo of what is going to happen on a site before I use facebook connect or give you any login information in any way.

  Requiring a logged in user to use the site should not be the first step.

• by jdeseno on 7/3/12, 5:41 PM

  That's a pretty striking lack of diversity in the call to action on the main page. ^C^P^P.

• by iamkovacs on 7/3/12, 5:04 PM

  A refreshing new player in the education and skill-development field. I'm definitely keeping and eye on this one and it's my first stop for new skills I want to improve.