70 Signs of Intelligent Life at YouTube

in Google, Most Popular, Video - Arts & Culture, Video - Politics/Society, Video - Science, YouTube | July 11th, 2008

Smart video col­lec­tions keep appear­ing on YouTube. But rather anti­thet­i­cal to the ethos of its par­ent com­pa­ny (Google), YouTube unfor­tu­nate­ly makes these col­lec­tions dif­fi­cult to find. So we’ve decid­ed to do the job for them. These enriching/educational videos come from media out­lets, cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions, uni­ver­si­ties and non-prof­its. There are about 70 col­lec­tions in total, and the list will grow over time. If we’re miss­ing any­thing good, feel free to let us know, and we’ll hap­pi­ly add them. You can find the com­plete list below the jump.

Also, feel free to check out our YouTube playlist.

Gen­er­al

• @GoogleTalks
  • Google has lots of famous vis­i­tors speak­ing at its head­quar­ters, and they’re all record­ed and neat­ly pre­sent­ed here.
• Al Jazeera Eng­lish
  • The Mid­dle East­ern news ser­vice, which has gen­er­at­ed its share of con­tro­ver­sy, now airs broad­casts in Eng­lish and presents them here.
• Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al
  • The lead­ing human rights orga­ni­za­tion brings you var­i­ous videos out­lin­ing human rights con­cerns across the globe, and the work they’re doing to improve con­di­tions.
• BBC
  • A series of videos pro­mot­ing pro­grams com­ing out of Britain’s main media out­let. Unfor­tu­nate­ly many of these videos are short and not entire­ly sub­stan­tive. A missed oppor­tu­ni­ty.
• BBC World­wide
  • Dit­to.
• Big Think
  • This col­lec­tion brings you videos fea­tur­ing some of today’s lead­ing thinkers, movers and shak­ers.
• Boing­Bo­ingTV
  • These videos are brought to you by the mak­ers of the very pop­u­lar Boing­Bo­ing blog.
• Brook­lyn Muse­um
  • A fair­ly rich line­up of videos explor­ing the col­lec­tions at Brook­lyn’s main art muse­um.
• Char­lie Rose
  • PBS inter­view­er Char­lie Rose presents seg­ments of his night­ly inter­views.
• Cit­i­zen Tube
  • YouTube’s own chan­nel presents videos deal­ing with the Amer­i­can polit­i­cal process and the 2008 elec­tion.
• Com­put­er His­to­ry Muse­um
  • A good num­ber of videos that delve into com­put­ers, net­work­ing, and semi­con­duc­tors.
• Coun­cil on For­eign Rela­tions
  • A resource designed to pro­vide insight into the com­plex inter­na­tion­al issues chal­leng­ing pol­i­cy­mak­ers and cit­i­zens alike. (more…)

Steve Jobs: Wisdom for the New Graduate

in Uncategorized | May 12th, 2008

I like re-post­ing this from time to time, espe­cial­ly around com­mence­ment time: Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Com­put­er, deliv­ered this speech at Stan­ford’s com­mence­ment cer­e­mo­ny in June 2005, offer­ing some sim­ple guide­lines for liv­ing a mean­ing­ful life. Some­what iron­i­cal­ly, Jobs nev­er grad­u­at­ed from col­lege. But no mat­ter, there’s lots of good think­ing here, and the speech is well worth a lis­ten. We’ve post­ed the video below (and it’s added to our YouTube playlist), but you could also catch it on iTunes: video here, or audio here.

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Teaching on YouTube

in Most Popular, YouTube | April 22nd, 2008

Today, we have a guest fea­ture by Alexan­dra Juhasz, Pro­fes­sor of Media Stud­ies at Pitzer Col­lege, in Clare­mont, CA. This piece con­sol­i­dates length­i­er blog entries about a course she ran on YouTube, called “Learn­ing from YouTube,” in Fall 2007. The whole goal was to bet­ter under­stand this new media/cultural phe­nom­e­non, and how it can be used in the class­room. How did she set up this class? And what did she learn? Find out below. Take it away Alexan­dra (and feel free to check out our YouTube playlist as well as our piece, 60 Smart Video Col­lec­tions on YouTube) .…

I decid­ed to teach a course about YouTube to bet­ter under­stand this recent and mas­sive media/cultural phe­nom­e­non, giv­en that I had been stu­dious­ly ignor­ing it (even as I rec­og­nized its sig­nif­i­cance) because every time I went there, I was seri­ous­ly under­whelmed by what I saw: inter­change­able, bite-sized, for­mu­la­ic videos refer­ring either to pop­u­lar cul­ture or per­son­al pain/pleasure. I called them video slo­gans: pithy, pre­cise, rous­ing calls to action or con­sump­tion, or action as con­sump­tion. I was cer­tain, how­ev­er, that there must be video, in this vast sea, that would sat­is­fy even my lofty stan­dards, and fig­ured my stu­dents (giv­en their greater facil­i­ty with a life-on-line) prob­a­bly knew bet­ter than I how to nav­i­gate the site.

Learn­ing From YouTube was my first tru­ly “stu­dent led” course: we would deter­mine the impor­tant themes and rel­e­vant meth­ods togeth­er. I had decid­ed that I want­ed the course to pri­mar­i­ly con­sid­er how web 2.0 (in this case, specif­i­cal­ly YouTube) is rad­i­cal­ly alter­ing the con­di­tions of learn­ing (what, where, when, how we have access to infor­ma­tion). Giv­en that col­lege stu­dents are rarely asked to con­sid­er the meta-ques­tions of how they learn, on top of what they are learn­ing, I thought it would be ped­a­gog­i­cal­ly use­ful for the form of the course to mir­ror YouTube’s struc­tures for learn­ing, like its ama­teur-led ped­a­gogy. Yes, on YouTube there is a great deal of user con­trol, but this is with­in a lim­it­ed and also high­ly lim­it­ing set of tools. So, I did set forth the rule that all the learn­ing for the course had to be on and about YouTube. While this con­straint was clear­ly arti­fi­cial, and per­haps mis­lead­ing about how YouTube is used in con­nec­tion with a host of oth­er media plat­forms which com­ple­ment its func­tion­al­i­ty, it did allow us to become crit­i­cal­ly aware of the con­straints of its archi­tec­ture for our atyp­i­cal goals of high­er edu­ca­tion. Thus, all assign­ments had to be pro­duced as YouTube com­ments or videos, all research had to be con­duct­ed with­in its pages, and all class­es were taped and put on to YouTube. This gim­mick, plus a press release, made the course sexy enough to catch the eye of the media, main­stream and oth­er­wise, allow­ing for an exhaust­ing, but self-reflex­ive les­son in the role and val­ue of media atten­tion with­in social net­work­ing. Beyond this, stu­dents quick­ly real­ized how well trained they actu­al­ly are to do aca­d­e­m­ic work with the word—their expertise—and how poor is their media-pro­duc­tion lit­er­a­cy (there were no media pro­duc­tion skills required for the course as there are not on YouTube). (more…)

Philosophy Makes a Comeback

in Philosophy | April 7th, 2008

As I write, the most emailed arti­cle from today’s New York Times is this piece, which talks about the revival of phi­los­o­phy on Amer­i­can col­lege cam­pus­es. The rea­sons for this revival are var­ied — Some see phi­los­o­phy offer­ing “good train­ing for look­ing at larg­er soci­etal ques­tions, like glob­al­iza­tion and tech­nol­o­gy.” Oth­ers see it build­ing skills val­ued by law schools (argu­men­ta­tion and rea­son­ing). Still oth­ers believe that phi­los­o­phy and exis­ten­tial angst can be good for “good for get­ting girl­friends.” Mean­while, all seem to agree that philo­soph­i­cal think­ing is not sim­ply for “frou-frou” intel­lec­tu­als. The net result: the num­ber of phi­los­o­phy majors is up, with some schools see­ing increas­es of 50–100% over the past 5–6 years.

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Einstein’s Theory of Relativity Explained

in Physics, Science | April 1st, 2008

Ein­stein’s The­o­ry of Rel­a­tiv­i­ty needs no intro­duc­tion. Actu­al­ly maybe it does since we’re not deal­ing with light con­cepts here.

Rel­a­tiv­i­ty in a Nut­shell (MP3) offers a free, 30-minute intro­duc­tion to Ein­stein’s the­o­ret­i­cal work. The lec­ture was pre­sent­ed by Richard Wolf­son of Mid­dle­bury Col­lege. And it’s cou­pled with a sec­ond free lec­ture called Ein­stein’s Mirac­u­lous Year. Both lec­tures were pro­duced by The Teach­ing Com­pa­ny to com­mem­o­rate the 100th anniver­sary of Ein­stein’s work on rel­a­tiv­i­ty (1905), and they tie into a larg­er com­mer­cial course taught by Wolf­son: Ein­stein’s Rel­a­tiv­i­ty and the Quan­tum Rev­o­lu­tion: Mod­ern Physics for Non-Sci­en­tists. The Teach­ing Com­pa­ny cours­es are not free, but they’re well done. And if you buy the mp3 ver­sions when they’re on sale, you can often get the cours­es at a good price. Also, you can fre­quent­ly find DVD ver­sions dis­count­ed on Ama­zon (see, for exam­ple, here). And, even bet­ter, you can some­times rent them for free from your local library.

In the mean­time, if you’re look­ing for a good selec­tion of free uni­ver­si­ty cours­es, vis­it our meta list of Free Online Cours­es from Great Uni­ver­si­ties. Also see our Sci­ence Pod­cast Col­lec­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

• Ein­stein and the Mind of God
• Einstein’s E = mc2 Explained
• How Ein­stein Became Ein­stein

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The Dearth of Conservative Professors Explained

in Politics | February 20th, 2008

Lib­er­als out­num­ber con­ser­v­a­tives in the acad­e­my. That’s a known fact. What explains this diver­gence? Some have attrib­uted it to lib­er­als cre­at­ing a hos­tile envi­ron­ment for con­ser­v­a­tives. But new research calls that view into ques­tion and offers an intrigu­ing alter­na­tive expla­na­tion.

As described in The Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion, Matthew Woess­ner (a con­ser­v­a­tive aca­d­e­m­ic) and April Kel­ly-Woess­ner (a lib­er­al aca­d­e­m­ic) looked at sur­veys com­plet­ed by 15,569 col­lege seniors, and what an analy­sis of the data sug­gests is that “the per­son­al pri­or­i­ties of those on the left are more com­pat­i­ble with pur­su­ing a Ph.D.” “Lib­er­al­ism is more close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with a desire for excite­ment, an inter­est in cre­ative out­lets, and an aver­sion to a struc­tured work envi­ron­ment. Con­ser­v­a­tives express greater inter­est in finan­cial suc­cess and stronger desires to raise fam­i­lies. From this per­spec­tive, the ide­o­log­i­cal imbal­ance that per­me­ates much of acad­e­mia may be some­what intractable.” Or, put dif­fer­ent­ly, this imbal­ance may not be going away any time soon.

To delve fur­ther into their research, you can read their report online here.

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A Nation of Dunces?

in Current Affairs | February 18th, 2008

There is a lot of pub­lic­i­ty this week around Susan Jacoby’s new book, The Age of Amer­i­can Unrea­son. The new work fits into the tra­di­tion of Richard Hof­s­tadter’s 1963 clas­sic, Anti-Intel­lec­tu­al­ism in Amer­i­can Life. And it seem­ing­ly moves in the same orbit as Al Gore’s The Assault on Rea­son (2007). The upshot of Jacoby’s argu­ment is that “Amer­i­cans are in seri­ous intel­lec­tu­al trou­ble — in dan­ger of los­ing our hard-won cul­tur­al cap­i­tal to a vir­u­lent mix­ture of anti-intel­lec­tu­al­ism, anti-ratio­nal­ism and low expec­ta­tions.” As she goes on to say in this op-ed appear­ing in The Wash­ing­ton Post, we’re now liv­ing in a moment when Amer­i­cans are read­ing few­er books than ever, and they know stag­ger­ing­ly lit­tle about the world: Only 23 per­cent of Amer­i­cans with some col­lege edu­ca­tion can iden­ti­fy Iraq, Iran, Sau­di Ara­bia and Israel on a map, even though the US has a tremen­dous amount at stake there. (Source: NY Times book review.) And one fifth of Amer­i­can adults think that the sun revolves around the Earth. This is all pret­ty bad. But what makes mat­ters worse is the “alarm­ing num­ber of Amer­i­cans who have smug­ly con­clud­ed that they do not need to know such things in the first place.” Igno­rance has some­how strange­ly gone from vice to virtue.

What are the solu­tions? I guess you’ll have to get the book, or get mil­lions of your friends to read Open Cul­ture (wink).

UPDATE: You can catch Bill Moy­ers’ inter­view with Susan Jaco­by here: video — mp3 — iTunes — feed. This will let you take a clos­er look at Jacoby’s argu­ment. Thanks Muriel for the tip!

Relat­ed Piece:

Amer­i­ca’s Philoso­pher Pres­i­dent

Ideas & Cul­ture Pod­cast Col­lec­tion

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Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out

in Science, Video - Science | February 10th, 2008

Speak­ing of psy­che­delics, we’ve post­ed a doc­u­men­tary below (yet anoth­er BBC pro­duc­tion) that takes a not entire­ly flat­ter­ing look at the life of Tim­o­thy Leary, the Har­vard psy­chol­o­gy pro­fes­sor who went coun­ter­cul­ture in 1960s and advo­cat­ed the ther­a­peu­tic and spir­i­tu­al ben­e­fits of LSD. I remem­ber see­ing him years lat­er when I was in col­lege. My mem­o­ry of the man: Spunky and about as non­lin­ear as you could get.

Steve Jobs on Life

in Uncategorized | November 15th, 2007

I like re-post­ing this from time to time.

Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Com­put­er, deliv­ered this speech at Stan­ford’s com­mence­ment cer­e­mo­ny in June 2005. I some­how doubt that the grad­u­at­ing class could have tru­ly appre­ci­at­ed what Jobs is say­ing here. (At that age, I could­n’t have.) But if you’re a lit­tle fur­ther down the road, you’ll under­stand that Jobs (who iron­i­cal­ly nev­er grad­u­at­ed from col­lege) points to a sim­ple set of guide­lines that can make the dif­fer­ence between liv­ing a fas­ci­nat­ing and so-so life. Sad­ly, these prin­ci­ples get lost all too often in the noise, iner­tia and blur of every­day life.

By the way, the pod­cast ver­sion of this speech con­sis­tent­ly remains the num­ber #1 pod­cast on Stan­ford’s iTunes site. You can down­load it in video here, or audio here.

A Blogging Scholarship

in Uncategorized | September 9th, 2007

An orga­ni­za­tion called Col­lege Schol­ar­ships is offer­ing a $10,000 schol­ar­ship this year for a col­lege stu­dent who blogs about “unique and inter­est­ing infor­ma­tion about you and/or things you are pas­sion­ate about.” We’re not shilling for a nom­i­na­tion here, but per­haps you know an aspir­ing blog­ger some­where who could use the extra cash.

This con­test rais­es an inter­est­ing ques­tion: are there any col­lege stu­dents out there who sup­port their edu­ca­tion through blog­ging? It’s not a far stretch from work­ing part-time (or full-time) to help pay the bills, but blog­ging seems like an unlike­ly way to earn enough mon­ey to buy books, let alone pay tuition.