TeachStreet.com - Connecting Teachers & Adult Students

TeachStreet.com is a recently-launched service that aims to help interested students connect with quality teachers in their area. The site focuses on community education, such as adult ed or continuing education classes. Whether you’d like to take a course on surfing, cooking, dog obedience, yoga, Spanish, or anything else, there is a good chance that you can find it on TeachStreet, which already lists over 25,000 classes for it’s Beta launch focused on the Seattle, Washington area. Users can write reviews of a course or instructor, and teachers can post information about the classes they teach. Classes are listed among eight main categories (with over 50 subcategories), and teachers can tag their course to help potential students to find the class more easily by doing a keyword search.

"We know inspirational teachers are out there in the world; sometimes they’re just hard to find. Our goal is to encourage life-long learning by connecting inquiring minds with quality instructors. We built TeachStreet to be a headache-free place for insatiable learners to quickly find great local instructors - whether they want to learn photography or square dancing. And, of course, TeachStreet is for teachers, too. Here on TeachStreet, teachers, instructors, coaches and schools can show the world what they've got to offer."

TeachStreet offers a lot to both instructors and their potential students. For teachers, the site is a free way to attract students and publicize information on your course. As long as you’re a good teacher, the public reviewing system should work to your advantage. For students, TeachStreet provides a centralized spot to browse or search for interesting local classes being offered, with detailed information like course description, teacher biography, price, skill level, etc. provided.

Are many courses or teachers getting enough reviews on TeachStreet to provide an accurate depiction of them? It may be hard to judge based on only one or two reviews, as one disgruntled (or elated) student could skew a teacher’s reviews if there aren’t many other reviews written. Also, will the site stay free after it’s Beta release, or will it start charging instructors?