Comments on: Where are all the YouTube educators?

By: Eduserv Symposium 2008 « The Ancient Geeks

Eduserv Symposium 2008 « The Ancient Geeks — Mon, 19 May 2008 10:09:04 +0000

[...] Where are all the YouTube educators? [...]

By: MP:me

MP:me — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 15:45:08 +0000

I actually taught a course about and ON YouTube last Fall, hoping that by using the site to actually do the academic work of teaching, researching and learning my students would see how the architecture of the site facilitates practices, forms, and experiences goo at some things (entertainment, wasting time) but not at others we might demand of the world’s largest archive of moving images. Debates about entertainment (what they think they want all the time) and education were fascinating, as was their need for discipline. You can see the work they did (all assignments had to be videos or comments on the site) at:
http://www.youtube.com/mediapraxisme

and I’ve been blogging about it this spring, trying to make better sense of the experiment. I’d love feedback. It’s a work in progress (teaching the course again this fall, but this time, using BOOKS and LIBRARY).

By: Using embeddable video services « The Ancient Geeks

Using embeddable video services « The Ancient Geeks — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 16:04:33 +0000

[...] Where are all the YouTube educators? [...]

By: Paul Ayres

Paul Ayres — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 12:39:28 +0000

And if you are interested in the attitudes of those who may be coming out way in five years time, I recently went to a seminar on Web 2.0 practice in schools, which I have written up on the Intute: Social Sciences blog

http://www.intute.ac.uk/socialsciences/blog/2008/02/28/web-20-in-education/

… perhaps a reality check for us all

By: Martin Poulter

Martin Poulter — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 11:03:12 +0000

Thanks for the comments, John/Silversprite. I trust you and Andy at least to research SL and write about it thoughtfully.

By: Paul Ayres

Paul Ayres — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 21:58:42 +0000

Interesting that a post about YouTube generates more comments from mentioning Second Life in passing, than its original subject – perhaps this reaffirms your original point about hype versus reality re: Second Life.

As for YouTube, well why not have a go yourself Martin? While you may not be a practicing academic, you know more about philosophy, psychology and economics than most of us and we all know you can make an interesting video

It would be interesting to know about your experiences after you had “had a go” yourself and perhaps you’ll be able to answer the interesting issues you raise above.

You are right that there is plenty of brainy content on YouTube, but it could be easier to find. The Education category is not very educational and I tend to rely on third parties to point to good stuff that’s on there.

I used to subscribe to the Economics tag for new videos but the signal to noise ratio got ridiculous. We have tried to add some of the more educational channels to Intute.

By: silversprite

silversprite — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 16:52:25 +0000

Damn; forgot to point to an entry on my blog:

http://www.silversprite.com/?p=307

…where have wittered on about, sort-of, the SL part of Martin’s comments.

By: silversprite

silversprite — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 16:49:57 +0000

> I expect that some sort of virtual world will be seriously
> mainstream in the future, maybe even a killer app for
> education, but I’m sure that it will be very different from
> SL, which we’ll remember the way we now look back at
> crushed velvet curtains and lava lamps.

Hmmm, sort of. Though it’s not perhaps a binary case of “no killer app” or “killer app”. More of different online game-oriented environments being each useful and usable to education in some ways, but not in others. Not sure I believe in the concept of the “killer app” anyway. Radio was a killer app, itself largely (but not wholly) killed by “killer app” TV, itself killed by DVD, itself being gradually killed by net downloads.

The **general direction** of SL and similar things tends towards an increasing number of uses in education. In 100 words:

Virtual environments aren’t going to go away. They’re going to keep getting “better”: look better, be more adaptable, be easier to use. This progress is enabled by the ongoing take-up of broadband, and continuous increases in broadband speed and hardware capabilities. At the same time, teachers comfortable with digital technologies are constantly entering the education sector, replacing the “fossil generation” of teachers who don’t use, or want to use, such technologies. Some of these newer teachers, usually through their own initiative, are finding more ways of delivering teaching and learning through virtual environments. Therefore, we’re in for the long haul.

By: Martin Poulter

Martin Poulter — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 14:31:24 +0000

Fair point Andy, and you’ve managed to find a way to measure level of interest in the respective technologies – wish I’d thought of that rather than going on a vague subjective feeling. The interest in educational vodcasting does blunt my point a bit, but since my point was negative I find that reassuring.

By: andypowe11

andypowe11 — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 13:53:13 +0000

I don’t disagree with the general thrust of this. My only comment would be that the level of noise around SL (and other virtual worlds) probably outweighs the amount of funding that is being put into the area.

At ALT-C last year, for example, there were very few SL-related papers – possibly none?? On the other hand, there were quite a number of papers about podcasting (of both the video and audio varieties).

Oddly, as far as I recall, none touched on the use of YouTube. So on that count in particular, I definitely concur with what you say above.