A few months ago, we featured a startup focused on helping people find classes taught by local teachers through an online marketplace. TeachStreet got off to a flying start in Seattle, where it won praise from both learners and teachers. Chris Lewis, a Seattle-area tennis coach: "TeachStreet drives my business. Last week I had 12 new students e-mail me asking to take lessons. I don't even do anything else to advertise my business anymore, yet my schedule is always full."

Time to roll out in a second city: TeachStreet launched in Portland, Oregon yesterday. The site now features more than 55,000 teachers, trainers, tutors, instructors, coaches and classes in the Pacific Northwest, 25,000 of which are in the Portland area. Besides offering existing instructors an alternative to advertising on Craigslist and bulletin boards, TeachStreet aims to unearth hidden teaching talent. Convinced that everyone is an expert in something--"You have a hidden talent for beer-brewing, pie-baking or parenting and wouldn't mind showing off your mad skills by inviting folks out to your backyard, your kitchen, or local coffee shop"--TeachStreet encourages everyday experts to list a class, either as a jumping off point for a new career or side business, or as a way to meet new friends with shared interests.

Which reminds us of status skills, a trend defined by our sister-site trendwatching.com, which explains how a growing number of consumers are gleaning status from mastering skills. TeachStreet is prompting them to transfer those skills to others in a semi-professional manner. Sounds like an instant boost in status! ;-)

Website: www.teachstreet.com
Contact: www.teachstreet.com/contact-us

Earlier this summer we wrote about Now Play It, a UK-based site that uses artist-led video instruction to teach music fans to play their favourite pop and rock songs. Now, focusing on a different niche, a similar site based in New York targets professional classical and jazz musicians with a wide range of expert-taught lessons.

Mucony offers video music lessons taught by some of the world’s finest classical and jazz artists. All the major instruments are represented, along with lessons in voice, history and theory, and teaching faculty hail from such prestigious institutions as the New York Philharmonic and Metropolitan Opera orchestras. A lesson for pianists on Schumann's Canaval op .9, for example, spans 30 minutes, while baritones can learn about pronouncing vowels through a 27-minute lesson; pricing for each is USD 5. In the next few weeks Mucony plans to relaunch with a new format that adds a raft of community features as well, the site says. Included among them will be job listings, master classes, live performances, a forum, downloadable music for sale and lessons for beginners.

Making top-level instruction more widely accessible can only please musicians, and the upcoming addition of community elements promises to complete the picture. One to replicate in the other arts as well, or any place practitioners can benefit from the guidance of experts.

Website: www.mucony.com
Contact: cs@mucony.com

Spotted by: Steve Andreacchi

There are plenty of schools out there with green practices among their goals, but a new school opening this fall in Bali will be entrepreneurially green from top to bottom.

The Green School, which will offer preschool through year eight, aims to provide a place where students can become more curious and more passionate about their education and the planet. The school's eight-hectare campus in Sibang Kaja is divided by the Ayung River, on whose western bank are the school's classrooms, libraries, laboratories and kitchens. Aquaculture ponds, organic vegetable gardens, edible mazes and permacultural gardens are interspersed throughout the vast campus, which is built entirely of low-impact and environmentally conscious materials such as bamboo, alang-alang grass and traditional Balinese mud walls. For energy supplies, the school is experimenting with micro-hydro power generation as well as producing methane from cow manure to fuel stoves and developing a gasification unit that will use rice husks and other organic materials to produce electricity. A working organic chocolate factory, large sports fields, gymnasium, high ropes course and a network of bicycle paths are also part of the campus.

The Green School's curriculum, meanwhile, combines demanding academic content taught through a holistic approach that aims to inspire and enhance all of a child’s capacities. The school's Learning Village, for example, gives students a chance to apply lessons to specific disciplines and real business situations, making abstract ideas come to practical life. Students are involved in everything from manufacturing their own chocolate to helping manage the organic fields, bamboo plantations and rice paddies that are integral to the campus. The Green School is open to children from all over the world, with boarding available starting next year for those in seventh grade and up. Villas are available for international families whose children attend the school. Tuition ranges from roughly USD 4,000 to USD 9,000 per year, depending on grade.

It doesn't get much more eco-iconic than a thoroughly green school, and eco-minded consumers with the means to afford it will surely find the Green School compelling. Of course, the concept seems like one that could also work in other parts of the world. One to watch!

Website: www.greenschool.org
Contact: info@greenschool.org

Spotted by: Caramel

There's nothing like a great song to inspire music fans to want to learn to play it themselves, but doing it right is rarely easy. Enter Now Play It, a UK-based site that offers video instruction taught by the artists themselves.

Launched last year, Now Play It aims to get people as close to the artists and songs they love as possible. To do that, it offers downloadable video tutorials on the art and craft of playing hundreds of different songs on guitar, bass, piano or drums, many of them led by the artists who wrote or perform them. Paul McCartney, Blur and KT Tunstall are among the artists currently offering instruction on the site, and users can search for tutorials by artist, song, instrument, difficulty level or tutor. Now Play It's full tutorials, priced at GBP 3.99, are typically split into three parts—lesson, recap and play-through—and are at least 15 minutes long. In-house tutorials follow the same format but with instruction by a Now Play It tutor instead. 'Lite' tutorials, meanwhile, are just two parts—play-through and recap—and are generally between three and six minutes long; pricing is GBP 1.99. Downloads are available in MP4 or Windows Media Video formats.

With Generation C's penchant for content production, Now Play It is sure to find an enthusiastic audience among the many consumers out there seeking to create, to express themselves and to make the music they love their own. Being taught by a well-known artist, meanwhile—even if by video—is sure to give them a heaping helping of status skills and stories to share about the experience. Now Play It currently offers a forum for community discussion, but a logical next step, it seems to us, would be to give consumers a place to show off the results of their instruction with video and recordings of them playing the music they learned—along with opportunities to critique and discuss. If there's anything better than content, it's content plus community! (Related: Music school for generation YouTube.)

Website: www.nowplayit.com
Contact: enquiries@nowplayit.com

Spotted by: Lloyd Salmons

Lifelong learners are always in search of new classes to take, but finding them isn't always easy. TeachStreet is a new website dedicated to helping teachers and students connect.

Seattle-based TeachStreet launched into beta a few weeks ago with more than 25,000 Seattle-area teachers, trainers, tutors, instructors, coaches and classes. Students can search for teachers across more than 500 subjects and filter the results according to map-based location, ratings from other students, teacher availability, promotional pricing and more. The free site can be searched by keyword, or visitors can scroll by subject through TeachStreet’s extensive directory of classes. Classes and teachers currently available on TeachStreet cover popular subjects like tennis, piano and cooking, as well as less common ones like break dancing, surfing and Texas Hold ‘em Poker. For teachers, TeachStreet provides a simple yet powerful way to promote themselves online and manage their learning business. Free online tools for teachers include an online profile builder, search engine optimization, and scheduling and management tools.

“We have heard time and again from adult learners and parents how difficult it is to find relevant and up-to-date information to evaluate teachers," explains TeachStreet founder and CEO Dave Schappell. "At the same time, teachers are craving easy-to-use tools to help market themselves on the Internet, manage their student rosters, and find more prospective students in their neighbourhoods. One of our goals with TeachStreet is to use the latest online technologies to facilitate real-world connections and provide anyone who wants to either learn or teach a new skill with a rich, geographically targeted website that features a city’s best teaching resources.”

TeachStreet is currently ad-supported, but ultimately it plans to roll out premium, fee-based services for teachers as well. It also aims to expand to other US cities in the coming months. One to partner with in a city near you...?

Website: www.teachstreet.com
Contact: www.teachstreet.com/contact-us

Spotted by: Cecilia Biemann