unschoold.com a place for unschoolers

A few years ago, I was looking for the perfect bead necklace. Everywhere I went, I looked to see if there was something I liked, and every time, I'd find something that was *almost* good enough, but not good enough for me. I finally decided that I needed to make my own and signed up for a beading class.

I feel the same way about the social aspects of the internet. 'Social networking' has been a big buzzword for a couple of years, with sites like Friendster, MySpace and Facebook as the most recognizable names. They're variants of the same theme - anyone can join, create a profile, create a group and keep up with and make new friends.

Once upon a time these seemed like really interesting ideas. I had aspirations of being a DJ, and Myspace took off because it was musician-friendly (that's relative - check their terms of service on what they can do with music posted...). So I joined, mainly to claim my one decent musician name (arphaus) and ended up getting lots of friend requests from people I'd never heard of. After checking out their profiles, I realized that the vast majority were people I never wanted to hear from in the first place.

So what do you really have in common with someone based on musical tastes? Or living in the same area? Or even being fellow alumni? That's the basis for the meager 'friendships' in these huge, million strong networks. Maybe there's some common ground but it's brittle. Start discussing parenting and then see what happens. The conversations tend to sputter or get argumentative.

But frankly, I like discussing parenting. And I'd like to share my experiences and learn from other parents who believe in some of the same things I do. So I decided to build my own social network. Or, to be precise, a 'social networking website,' since the social network already exists in the real (non-virtual) world.

So this is it - a place for unschoolers to meet, share and inspire. A place where the vision is guided by the community. And I'm very curious to see how a community of free thinkers evolves.

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