Comment by Chathamization | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Chathamization | Hacker News Reader

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> University is a place where teachers and students who are interested in a field meet to learn and research together.

It would be nice to have places like this open to the general public and not gated off like universities are. There are a lot of people who become interested in these things after university, people who didn't attend university that are interested in them, who were interested and involved in these things while they were in university but then drifted away from them, etc.

It seems like we'd be better off trying to encourage the public at large to continually improve (and also connect more with their community and improve civil society) than acting like all of this should only exist in a 4 year window that many people aren't even a part of.

Our University has a Makerspace that is frequent by a lot of people outside of University. The trainers for the machines and such are also not from University, but have gone through vocational training are experienced metal workers, wood workers, textile workers and so on. These interactions are definitely awesome for the students, to learn about their perspective, and the other people also gain insights in uni work, i.e. supporting students with prototypes for their thesis projects and so on.

I definitely think University should be open for all people and there is a lot of cool things you could do if you attracted morn people from different backgrounds.

When I ever move back to the countryside where I grew up, I definitely plan to start a Makerspace that combines an open workshop, a youth center (with tutoring), some low level research work.

Actually, this conversation has me excited to go do that :)

When you work on your project, please consider including a "library" component with selected materials and resources on various topics. I know you can get all the info on the internet, but sometimes a smaller, local selection of books/resources can go a long way to solve the information overload problem.

If you get in touch with me by email, I can send you some links (math book recommendations and Kolibri Learning Platform which is like the best thing ever - works totally offline on localhost).

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