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…)

Encyclopedia Britannica Now Free For Web Publishers

in Media | April 21st, 2008

Thanks to a new pro­gram called Bri­tan­ni­ca Web­share, web pub­lish­ers — be they blog­gers, web­mas­ters, or writ­ers who post fre­quent­ly on the web — can now get free online access to Bri­tan­ni­ca and its 65,000 arti­cles. Nor­mal­ly, this ser­vice runs $70 per year. For more info, read TechCrunch’s scoop on the new ini­tia­tive. To sign up, click here.

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Water Balloon Exploding at 2,000 Frames per Second

in Science | April 18th, 2008

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Global Geopolitics: A New Stanford Course on iTunes

in Online Courses, Stanford | April 17th, 2008

Today we’re high­light­ing for you a new course post­ed on Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty’s iTunes site. Orig­i­nal­ly pre­sent­ed by Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies (where I hap­pi­ly spend my days), Glob­al Geopol­i­tics is taught by geog­ra­phy expert Mar­tin Lewis, and “exam­ines the glob­al polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion from a geo­graph­i­cal per­spec­tive. Top­ics include: how the coun­tries of the world were formed and came to occu­py their present ter­ri­to­r­i­al con­fig­u­ra­tions; bor­der con­flicts and oth­er spa­tial­ly based inter­na­tion­al issues; strug­gles for seces­sion from estab­lished states and move­ments for ter­ri­to­ri­al­ly based auton­o­my; and the devel­op­ment and enlarge­ment of supra­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tions such as the Euro­pean Union (EU) and the Asso­ci­a­tion of South­east Asian Nations (ASEAN). While the course is glob­al­ly com­pre­hen­sive, spe­cial atten­tion will be giv­en to cur­rent sites of geo-polit­i­cal ten­sion. Maps will be used exten­sive­ly for both descrip­tive and ana­lyt­i­cal pur­pos­es.”

[NOTE: This is an enchanced pod­cast that allows you to see images and maps ref­er­enced in the lec­tures. To view them, click on View, then Show Art­work, in iTunes. This will let you see them on your com­put­er.]

You can now down­load the first lec­ture. Addi­tion­al lec­tures will be released in week­ly install­ments. The course is also list­ed in our col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es from top uni­ver­si­ties.

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Free Digital Fiction from Penguin

in Books | April 17th, 2008

Pen­guin is pre­sent­ing six sto­ries, by six authors, over six weeks, in a series called We Tell Sto­ries. And they’re using the web to tell these sto­ries in orig­i­nal ways. One sto­ry, The 21 Steps, gets told over Google Maps — an approach that scores points for cre­ativ­i­ty, but also tires a lit­tle quick­ly. You can access all six sto­ries here. Also check out our exten­sive col­lec­tion of free audio­books here.

via Boing­Bo­ing

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Learn Moviemaking From a Master (Courtesy of Apple)

in Apple, Film | April 16th, 2008

The folks at Apple have rolled out an intrigu­ing new pod­cast that takes you inside the world of moviemak­ing. The Set to Screen Series (get it on iTunes here) fol­lows Baz Luhrmann, the Oscar-nom­i­nat­ed direc­tor (Moulin Rouge! and William Shakespeare’s Romeo+Juliet) as he works on a new film. And every three weeks, from now through Octo­ber, a new video pod­cast will be released that shows you how films get made. On-set still pho­tog­ra­phy, cos­tume design, cin­e­matog­ra­phy, scor­ing — it all gets cov­ered here. And yes, of course, this pod­cast is all in video. You can get more info on this project here.

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Edgar Allan Poe’s Raven Read by 18 YouTubers (or Christopher Walken)

in Literature | April 15th, 2008

Can you bear it? If not, here’s a ver­sion by Christo­pher Walken.

(This video has not been added to our YouTube playlist.)

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MIT’s (Free) Introduction to Physics

in Physics, Science | April 13th, 2008

Wel­come to MIT. Here’s your intro­duc­tion to Physics.

Today, we present Physics I: Clas­si­cal Mechan­ics, a fresh­man course taught by Wal­ter Lewin, the pop­u­lar physics pro­fes­sor who was recent­ly writ­ten up in The New York Times. The course cov­ers the foun­da­tions of mod­ern physics, which takes you from Isaac New­ton’s ground­break­ing work to super­novas, and which cov­ers such oth­er top­ics as Flu­id Mechan­ics, Kinet­ic Gas The­o­ry, Bina­ry Stars, Neu­tron Stars, Black Holes, Res­o­nance Phe­nom­e­na, Musi­cal Instru­ments, and Stel­lar Col­lapse.

You can down­load the course lec­tures in video via iTunes or in var­i­ous for­mats here. (The course is also list­ed in our col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es from Great Uni­ver­si­ties, which now con­tains over 200 free cours­es.) For more lec­ture series by Wal­ter Lewin, look here (Elec­tric­i­ty and Mag­net­ism) and here (Vibra­tions and Waves).

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The Perfect Library

in Books | April 12th, 2008

Get the “ulti­mate read­ing list,” accord­ing to the Tele­graph. The book­list (access here) ranges from “clas­sics and sci-fi to poet­ry, biogra­phies and books that changed the world.” And while you’re at it, check out this list of life-chang­ing books cre­at­ed by our very own read­ers.

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The New York Literary Canon

in Books | April 10th, 2008

As a New York­er liv­ing rather per­ma­nent­ly in sun­ny Cal­i­for­nia, I feel some­what oblig­ed to men­tion this: New York Mag­a­zine has pulled togeth­er a list of “26 works of lap­idary New York­i­tude” — that is, high­ly lit­er­ary books that obsess over the great city. On the list, you’ll find works by Nor­man Mail­er, Bernard Mala­mud, Don Delil­lo, Woody Allen, and beyond. You can snag the full list here.

via Kottke.org

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