Learn or Die RSS

Learn or Die is a collaboration between two people committed to the future of learning and technology.

Because once you stop learning, you start dying. Not literally, of course. Unless you're learning how to stop death. Then we mean it literally.

Archive

Mar
29th
Sun
permalink

YouTube EDU

YouTube EDU launched last week - the consequences of this launch are tremendous.

Some schools already had YouTube channels for releasing lectures, but YouTube gets millions and millions of visitors - more than even a tech-savvy school like Berkeley or MIT could hope to attract to its own free courseware/video site.

What are some of the consequences of this new lecture video aggregator?

  1. Free education. This is the most obvious one: can’t afford to go to Dartmouth? Listen to the lectures in the privacy of your own home.
  2. Supplemental education. Maybe you can afford to go to Dartmouth, but you just can’t stand that CS professor. No problem, try a programming methodology course at Stanford.
  3. Comparison shopping. In Blink, Malcolm Gladwell wrote something to the effect that students can evaluate a professor’s performance in a matter of seconds - without even necessarily hearing them speak. With YouTube EDU, students can preview professors in their discipline of choice and evaluate them before they decide to commit to a university, or even to the costly application process.
  4. “Capturing tribal knowledge.” B.J. of eLearning Weekly points out a tool like this would be very useful in a corporate environment, for “capturing tribal knowledge.” This is true both in an inward- and outward-facing way. Companies can use a local YouTube channel for sharing knowledge within their walls, while using another to showcase though leadership, like some already do on their own sites.

Got further ideas on what YouTube EDU will evolve into? Let us know in the comments.