Note: Everything I write below about pedagogy is anecdotal, and I don't have much experience outside of being a student.
This is a really cool idea! I think it's a good way of bringing people in the community closer together!
That being said, I'm worried the classes might not turn out to be very good because good teaching seems generally pretty hard. (Which isn't to say that I don't think LWers can't rise to the challenge, just that this means my priors on "Video tutoring will turn out well" are low.) (Or perhaps I just didn't have many good teachers).
I think personalization could be a very important niche role we could exploit here to make things better. So rather than the Teacher spending time going over the subject, they could chat individually with Learners to assess where they are at, suggest materials, and then follow up after each iteration. (Think something like the flipped classroom model where we're counting on people to be self-motivated learners, and these video sessions would be more for supplementing self-studying.)
Everything I write below about pedagogy is anecdotal, and I don't have much experience outside of being a student.
As a former teacher I complete agree with your approach. One critical component of teaching is determining your students' next inferential step. Which is easier in a "one to one" setting, and almost impossible in a "one to many" setting.
Various online lessons are an exercise in frustration because always someone complains they are too easy (that they cover only the "obvious" and "well-known" facts), an...
Update 7/9/17: I propose that Learners individually reach out to Teachers, and set up meetings. It seems like the most practical way of getting started, but I am not sure and am definitely open to other ideas. Other notes:
Update 6/28/17: With 14 people currently interested, it does seem that there's enough to get started. However, I'd like to give it a bit more time and see how much overall interest we get.
Idea: we coordinate to teach each other things via video chat.
So, this seems like something that would be mutually beneficial. To get started, we'd need:
Personally, I'm not sure how much I can offer as far as doing the teaching. I worked as a web developer for 1.5 years and have been teaching myself computer science. I could be helpful to those unfamiliar with those fields, but probably not too much help for those already in the field and looking to grow. But I'm interested in learning about lots of things!
Perhaps a good place to start would be to record in some spreadsheet, a) people who want to teach, b) what topics, and c) who is interested in being a Learner. Getting more specific about who wants to learn what may be overkill, as we all seem to have roughly similar interests. Or maybe it isn't.
If you're interested in being a Learner or a Teacher, please add yourself to this spreadsheet.