# Open Learning Community - an Open Collective

An Open Collective to help support the online learning environments around p2p organizing, programming and coordination.

## Alpha project:
### MailBoox - your distributed library

#### Why?
Books are long for non-screen-based thought collections and streams that help us live in new worlds and better make sense of this one.

Books are great basis for conversations, great ways to converse and cohere with each other. They go real well with coffee.

Sharing a book is like sharing a story, we learn about each other and relate to each other through these stories. They knit us together.

Books are also trapped in our homes, some of them we like so much that we don't want to part with them, but we'll lend them out, trusting we can find them again when we are looking for them. Others we can probably let go of and simply gift to the next reader.

Peer to peer lending has been happening always I guess. But we are now so many, and we have so much stuff that we can't even keep track of where it is and where it is needed.

Books are a wonderful start, many other things like tools or vihicles are also just around the corner, ready for action!

#### What?
We've started creating software for this [here](https://github.com/zaunders/MailBoox-SymCode).

This is a project that was collaboratly started at a hackathon in Copenhagen almost 2 years ago. It is now being brought forward and getting ready to run on a much more mature Holochain engine.

##### Some of the app design:
Basic functionality would include people entering the books that are in their bookshelf in order to make them visible to a community.

People can request to borrow books from each other or give them away if they are not worried about them making their way back to the bookshelf.

A possible mode of distribution could be that the owner can put the book in his/her Mailbox in order to make it easily available for the borrower to pick-up.

**Possible coming steps as of 23 October 2019**:
1. Getting tests working in Try-o-Rama
2. Get the Books zome working
3. Get the Borrowing zome working
4. Connect the UI
5. Integratate into Holoscape (Electron UI and debugging)
6. DeepKey, Personas (and maybe Chat) integration
7. Design and scaffold a tools zome?

**Possible initial interfaces:**
*Possible user interfaces: Library & Lending, Collection Pages and Book Circle Sessions*

**Liberary and Lending** would include inputing, listing books and collections *(arranged around locality, interest, project group, community, etc.)*, requesting to borrow and accepting borrow request.

A **Collections** page could showcase a book collection, have reviews of the books in there by others and contain a live conversation about the collection.

**Book Circle Sessions** could be started to read a book together, offline or online, keeping notes about the process and organizing scheduling and chat.

#### How?
A collaborative process that attempts to **work-outloud**. Collaborative coding sessions may be streamed and recorded in order to allow others to follow the learning path to get to where the project is now and to learn for other projects.

One possible exploration of how those sessions might look is described here:
https://hackmd.io/@zaunders/Hk_FdeiIB

We hope to get support for hosting learning sessions through the [Open Learning Collective](https://opencollective.com/open-learning-community#section-about)

First attempts of collaboration can be found here for now:
https://forum.holochain.org/t/coding-together-online-on-october-9th/1066/15