An Ars Technica article titled “YouTube University gets failing grade from prof, students” provides an interesting account of Pitzer College professor Alex Juhasz’s media studies course she decided to hold entirely within YouTube. Juhasz’s experience is no doubt very ‘meta’, in the sense that she’s teaching media studies, and the course in question was called ‘Learning from YouTube’. She addresses this in her analysis of the course (note, I added the bold emphasis, not her):

“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.”

Juhasz then continues with some observations about the overall outcome of the course:

“…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). It is hard to get a paper into 500 characters, and translating it into 10 minutes of video demands real skills in creative translation, or artful summary, within word, image, sound, and their layering.“

Juhasz also writes about the imperative of YouTube videos to be quick and entertaining, and thus, force her as a teacher to uncomfortably try to be entertaining as well:

“While I have always been aware that I am a performer, entertaining my students while sneaking in critical theory, avant-garde forms, and radical politics, much of what I perform is the delight and beauty of the complex: the life of the mind, the work of the artist, the experience of the counter-culture. I am not interested teaching as a re-performing of the dumbing-down of our culture. “

Many of Juhasz’s reservations and criticisms certainly have merit, though looking at her course’s page also reveals that many of her students began to produce slightly more rich media presentations over time -some of them actually quite fascinating.

Link to the course/group space on YouTube

Link to Alex Juhasz’s YouTube space

CIT is no stranger toYouTube - we’ve posted pages about it and even used it (and Flickr) to document our annual Showcase. We’ll continue to be available to help faculty think about uses of digital video and yes, even YouTube, for teaching, as digital video continues to factor more heavily into higher education (see, for example the upcoming DDI programs for 2008-2009).

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A recent newsletter from the MIT OpenCourseWare project includes this information.

As a permanent part of the MIT academic program, OCW continues to publish about 200 courses per year –– dozens of new courses that are introduced at MIT each semester, as well as updates to courses already on OCW. Here are some examples of what is happening in 2008:

• More than 50 new courses, including brand new courses from Health Sciences and Technology, Sloan School of Management, Literature, and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

• About 150 redesigned and refreshed courses from departments like Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Chemistry, and Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences

• New video lectures for courses in Mathematics, Biological Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, and the Engineering Systems Division –– Note: MIT is in the process of adding video subtitles and transcripts to improve access for hearing impaired users.

• OCW audio and video on distribution channels such as YouTube and iTunes U

• Expanded content in the new Highlights for High School section of OCW

• New pages that link OCW courses to key MIT initiatives in energy and the environment.

To see these items or learn more about OCW, visit their website (http://ocw.mit.edu).

I’d be interested in knowing whether faculty and students at Duke would be interested in having course content openly available in ways similar to the MIT project. What would be the pro’s and cons’ of distributing course material publicly?

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This is a link to a 5 minute video on MathCasts http://ti-tfb.net/ti_web/profesori/lindas/trud/etpe2006_uom/mc_prez_short/mc_prez_short.html

MathCasts are ScreenCasts (videos) that focus on math from both an instructor and learner perspective. An instructor can produce a video that shows step-by-step the process for solving math problems. Even more interesting to me, is using MathCasts to capture the learner solving a math problem step-by-step. The equipment requirements can be as much as $300, but with headphones and mics becoming ubiquitous and cheaper, open source software for screen capture maturing; and other hardware going down in price, perhaps this can scale.

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Courses, events and campus life activities at the University of California at Berkeley are now featured on YouTube. Much of the content is similar to U.C. Berkeley’s channel on iTunes U.

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Podcast People is a new podcasting site not just for finding podcasts to listen to, but for recording, managing, and promoting your own podcasts. Not only can you upload video and audio to the site, but with a microphone or web cam, you can record directly into your Podcast People account. There’s also the ability to add widgets to your podcasting site, including Flickr streams (or your photos) and other information. They currently have free and pay accounts, with various options to choose from.

Speaking of podcasting, Mashable also has a very, very lengthy (but informative) post with links to an overwhelming amount of podcasting info currently online.

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There are podcasts out there for just about everything - even geeks who take up farm living. Among the several discipline-based podcasts floating around the educational podosphere, there are also a few that focus more specifically on academic technology. A short list culled from a post on the POD (Professional and Organizational Development Network) listerv follows after the jump (click below for more).

(more…)

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A useful tutorial to introduce a variety of Web 2.0 technologies contains a very useful list of 23 tasks to introduce blogs, rss feeds, etc. The aim of the tutorial is not to produce experts, but to familiarize the users with each technology and is designed to accommodate people who are not completely tech savvy. This tutorial was originally designed for staff at public libraries so that they may better assist the general public. There are several Discovery Exercises I’ll be using to catch up on technologies I’m not familiar with.

As a bonus, the tutorial designer lists her best practices for learning, which are well worth reading.

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