EAST SIDE INSTITUTE | ALLIANCES

Let’s Learn!

The World as Classroom

A global community-engaged educational project of Lloyd International Honors College of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in collaboration with the East Side Institute

For this semester’s class schedule, class descriptions and registration links, please click here

“Play, Experiment, Perform!

Everyone has something to teach; everyone has something to learn. This is what we do as human beings: teach-learn. Come one, come all. In this spirit, Let’s Learn! The World as Classroom is designed for people from all walks of life all over the world to share and create knowledge and culture together. A free and volunteer-based community of teacher-learners, Let’s Learn! is organized and self-generated through the goodwill of artists-scientists-poets-gardeners-cooks-musicians-doctors-nurses, counselors. All of us. No grades, just growin’.

Let’s Learn!—through Zoom, What’s App, and other online platforms, along with in-person events when appropriate—organizes classes, seminars, conversations, story-telling gatherings, poetry and song sharing events, performances and playful participatory workshops. These offerings vary in content, length, and form. Some are one-time events, others resemble courses, still others may expand in different directions for various lengths of time and develop into new structures. Whatever the form and content of its learning experiences, Let’s Learn! crosses academic, national, and cultural borders, blurring disciplinary boundaries and the distinctions between experts and non-experts. It brings world-class scholars, teachers, and researchers in the natural and social sciences, the arts and humanities, elders, healers, and specialists of all kinds together with all interested persons to share their local and global knowledges, cultures, histories, and emotions.

Let’s Learn! breaks new ground in a number of ways: 1) all its offerings are free and open to all who want to attend anywhere in the world where there is access to the internet; 2) teachers share their knowledge, skills, and experience for the joy of sharing; 3) there are no grades; people participate in courses, workshops and other events out of curiosity and a desire to have fun and expand their horizons; and, 4) the sharing of knowledge, skills, and experiences is dialogic and participatory. Its fluid faculty includes internationally renowned academics and professional artists, along with teachers with non-academic cultural skills and historic knowledges to share—a mix that expands the learning experience and deepens its impact.

Let’s Learn! — a project of Lloyd International Honors College, under the leadership Dean and ESI Associate Dr. Omar H. Ali, is primarily dependent on its teacher-learners for its existence, development, and growth. Even as we welcome other established educational and training institutions that may wish to collaborate, affiliate, or support the growth of Let’s Learn!, the bottom-up, self-organizing aspect of its activity is an important part of what makes Let’s Learn! innovative, creative, democratic, and developmental for all who engage in co-creating it.

View the Let’s Learn! playlist to watch recordings of previous workshops and classes!

For this semester’s class schedule, class descriptions and registration links, please click here.  
Contact:

Dan Friedman, Ph.D., danfriedmannyc@gmail.com