digg

Join DiggAbout

The Digg Crew wants to hear your thoughts!
Please take our short survey about Digg and potential feature ideas.

Thanks to YouTube, Professors Are Finding New Audiences

chronicle.com — Forget Lonelygirl15, YouTube's 2006 online video phenom. Professors are the latest YouTube stars. The popularity of their appearances on YouTube and other video-sharing sites may end up opening up the classroom and making teaching —which once took place behind closed doors—a more public art.

show profanity settings
expand all
  • geekchic, on 01/14/2008, -2/+9In the UK, we had Open University on late night TV showing professors in long hair and 70's kipper ties - long before You Tube came along.

    Several professors became famous - if more for their presentation style as opposed to what they were teaching :)
    • MindTrigger, on 01/14/2008, -0/+2The great thing about having a unique and entertaining delivery style is that people are more likely to listen and learn because they aren't border to death. My favorite teacher in High School would walk around the room and get into character while giving history lectures. He would yell, growl, weep and pound on things with his fists for sound affects. I loved that class.
    • Duncan3, on 01/14/2008, -0/+1Here in the US it's the research channel, been around for years.
    • p3ngwin, on 01/14/2008, -0/+2the christmas lectures were great. always looked forward to them, ***** the queens speech.
  • rabidmonkey1, on 01/14/2008, -1/+4Michael Badnarik lectures are great.
  • eminiguy, on 01/14/2008, -0/+18Leave the professors alone! You are lucky they want to share their knowledge with you!
  • Linua, on 01/14/2008, -0/+46This is what society needs, more education available to the masses for free. What a good idea.
    • MindTrigger, on 01/14/2008, -0/+7I couldn't agree more. I believe there is a whole movement of people that are primarily internet users instead of TV watchers, who crave learning. I can't get enough. Kill your television. For those of you who haven't noticed, itunes has a nice little free university lecture section these days. It's limited, but still pretty cool. Too bad it's on itunes.
    • BruceBogtrotter, on 01/14/2008, -0/+5Although I agree, when I read your comment it sounded very sarcastic.
  • NightVortez, on 01/14/2008, -1/+4That is honestly awesome, I wouldn't mind learning a few things using youtube, or if I was a student of the class to study for a test or something.

    Could go too far though and totally eliminate classes, with email tests, speeches and assignments.
  • judicar, on 01/14/2008, -6/+6â€Fix ur scriptâ€
  • carbbomb, on 01/14/2008, -1/+5Here is an old Professor of mine. He did this with a couple hundred histopathology slides. Good info on a lot of diseased and abnormal cells in different tissues and organs.

    http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=WashingtonDece ...
    • monospaced, on 01/14/2008, -0/+3I don't know how I survived without this!
  • EugineMW, on 01/14/2008, -0/+3NASA needs a YouTube channel also!
    • subterfuge, on 01/14/2008, -4/+2nasa's technology is outdated, inefficient, and expensive. nasa is SO wasteful. private industry could do in one year what nasa does in 10, and it would spend less money doing it.
  • MindTrigger, on 01/14/2008, -0/+11Someone needs to put together a website that tracks and categorizes these videos so we can all watch the ones that interest us. I'm sure there's a huge number of autodidacts like myself online who would frequent such a site regularly.
    • romistrub, on 01/14/2008, -0/+2Doesn't MIT have something like this?
    • gbarberi, on 01/14/2008, -0/+1The article does mention several alternatives to Youtube (like http://www.bigthink.com ).
      Unless you mean a site that organizes the ones already on Youtube. I believe that would fall under their responsibility. They would need to organize their site better.
      • jayb1rd, on 01/14/2008, -0/+2I really hate the way YouTube is organized...it's sometimes way too hard to find things because it only searches the "tags".
        • gbarberi, on 01/14/2008, -0/+1yeh, as noted in the article that when searching the education channel, both women in lingerie and professors lecturing show up in the search results.
  • huxleyan, on 01/14/2008, -1/+3This reminds me of that scene in Good Will Hunting where Matt Damon is in the Harvard bar and he says to a Harvard student:

    You wasted $150,000 on an education you coulda got for a buck fifty in late charges at the public library

    (and listening to podcasts of lectures for free on the internet).

    • itsthebrod, on 01/14/2008, -0/+3Books can never (and will never) replace the instant question-answer feedback or interactivity and understandability professors can provide.
      • SpykerSpeed, on 01/14/2008, -0/+3Professors often answer questions over the internet and I'm sure many of them would be flattered that you're interested in the subject even though you're not a student.
  • cjmart, on 01/14/2008, -0/+1This is awesome. Educational videos available for free which is great. I find myself searching all the time for educational videos on the Discovery channel so this will be interesting.
  • invinciblechunk, on 01/14/2008, -1/+3Character set encoding—when ignored in a cut-and-paste—can have embarrassing consequences.
  • sbgskl, on 01/14/2008, -0/+3We need more professors arm-wrestling students: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QiNIfwTmkm4
  • Ratteler, on 01/14/2008, -0/+3Wow!!! You tube being used for education. It's like the promise of TV has come full circle and the dark ages of Whore TV controlled by Gatekeepers is coming to an end.
  • J-roc, on 01/14/2008, -0/+2Integrating this with MIT's OCW would be stellar
  • tybris, on 01/14/2008, -0/+2You see, change isn't so bad.
  • eaglescout5, on 01/14/2008, -0/+1Definitely great to see education opening up to the world. I usually use google to find these (site:edu) but also recently found this site. http://learnwithin.iclics.com/ . Do you diggers know of any other resources?
  • sjohnson0881, on 01/15/2008, -0/+1Teachers on Youtube? Whoa. never would have guessed that would happen
  •  

    Login or register to add a comment

    Create a new account or login to join in the conversation on Digg. You'll also be able to Digg stories to help promote things you like.


© Digg Inc. 2008 — Content posted by Digg users is dedicated to the public domain.
DIGG, DIGG IT, DUGG, DIGG THIS, Digg graphics, logos, designs, page headers, button icons, scripts, and other service names are the trademarks of Digg Inc.