I’m really thrilled to introduce you to my new obsession, Skillshare, a wonderful community that offers online classes to help you learn new skills and dial up your creativity–or simply get it back.
If you’re like me, you often see all sorts of cool classes being offered around your town, but between work and kids and well, life, you’ve got little time to eat an entire meal, let alone learn a new skill or pursue a hobby. But for me, that’s all changed since I joined Skillshare.
I’m pretty impressed with the quality of the classes that are offered (over a thousand of them, by the way) which range from specific topics like Photoshop or web design basics to more just-for-fun topics like book-binding, sewing, cooking, photography, DIY, or the class I’m taking with my 10-year-old daughter right now about creating visual narratives.
Best of all, there’s no timeline–you can complete the hands-on projects and assignments on your own time. But it’s not all just you and the computer. If you’re feeling brave, you can also share your final results in the project gallery (which will not be me if I take the sewing class, I can assure you), and join in discussions with the instructor and other students.
And yes, big kids, tweens, and teens would probably enjoy lots of these classes too.
What surpassed my own expectations was that these are not schlocky, blurry videos with boring people blathering on. You can tell that Skillshare picks their expert instructors carefully and puts effort into presenting compelling content via well-produced videos that I think are worth the price.
While you can take some of the classes without becoming a paid member, honestly, the freebies are super limited. In fact, I had a hard time finding them on the site, so quite honestly, I’m not even sure that should be an option at all.
I will say though, that I do think it’s worth checking out the video intros to pick your course, then taking advantage of the free 14-day trial to see if a paid membership could be right for you. After that, the plans are pretty reasonable; the monthly plan ($10 a month) gets you access to all the classes, offline viewing on the iOS app — great when you’re sitting in a doctor’s waiting room or the carpool lane instead of playing Threes — and I like that it helps pay the teachers.
Or try the yearly plan which works out to be $8 a month (a 20% discount) and you’ll get all the same monthly plan perks , while also donating a yearly membership to a student in need.
I already feel like I’ve gotten my money’s worth from Skillshare after taking just one class and I’m only a month into my membership. And since they’re adding new classes every day, I’m excited to see what they’ll be offering in the coming months.
What a great resource for homeschool families, or busy parents like me who want to beef up their skill set for work, tweak skills they already have, or you know, just have a little fun. Remember that?
You can take a peek at all the Skillshare classes on their website.
