Introducing YouTube EDU!

in Google, YouTube | March 26th, 2009

Here’s a lit­tle break­ing news: Today, Google has launched YouTube EDU, which cen­tral­izes the con­tent from over 100 uni­ver­si­ties and col­leges (get list here).  This robust col­lec­tion gives you access to lec­tures by pro­fes­sors and world-renowned thought lead­ers, new research and cam­pus tours. At the moment, you can access over 200 full cours­es from lead­ing uni­ver­si­ties, includ­ing MIT, Stan­ford, UC Berke­ley, UCLA, Yale and  IIT/IISc.  And it’s all search­able with­in YouTube EDU.

I plan to fol­low up with a more exten­sive piece soon. But I just want­ed to get the word out and let you start check­ing it out. If you have any first impres­sions, please let us know what you think in the com­ments. Nice work Youtube!

Last­ly, if you want to down­load hun­dreds of free uni­ver­si­ty cours­es (most­ly in audio) to your com­put­er or mp3 play­er, check out our col­lec­tion of Free Uni­ver­si­ty Cours­es here.

Fol­low us on Twit­ter at @openculture or sign up for our rss feed here.

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Learn Acoustic Guitar with YouTube

in Music, YouTube | March 8th, 2009

It was time to do some­thing new. So I bought an acoustic gui­tar and decid­ed to see what I could learn on my own. And this, then, led me to look for free resources on the web. Not shock­ing­ly, YouTube has a fair amount to offer. A num­ber of dif­fer­ent video providers have post­ed lessons that can get you going. How to buy an acoustic gui­tar, how to tune it by ear, how to strum, how to fin­ger pick (a video viewed close to 1 mil­lion times), how to play var­i­ous chord pro­gres­sions (above), etc. It’s all there — although it’s also kind of jum­bled togeth­er, and you’ll need to do some sift­ing to find what you need. Some of the major YouTube chan­nels fea­tur­ing free gui­tar lessons can be found here, here, and here. 

As a last note, you’ll notice that these videos are gen­er­al­ly pro­duced by ven­dors look­ing to upsell more com­plete video pack­ages. This means that you’ll have to suf­fer through a lit­tle bit of mar­ket­ing. But, it’s hard­ly unbear­able and the lessons are oth­er­wise quite help­ful.

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Watch Educational Videos Offline with YouTube

in Google, YouTube | February 12th, 2009

It’s anoth­er good day for the open edu­ca­tion move­ment. As part of an exper­i­ment, YouTube has part­nered with a select num­ber of uni­ver­si­ties (Stan­ford, UC Berke­ley, Duke, and UCLA) to make lec­tures, cours­es and oth­er videos avail­able for free down­load. This gives edu­ca­tors and life­long learn­ers the free­dom to watch edu­ca­tion­al videos offline, when­ev­er and wher­ev­er they want, includ­ing air­planes or class­rooms with lim­it­ed con­nec­tiv­i­ty. The videos (all high-res­o­lu­tion mp4s) can be watched on any com­put­er loaded with Quick­Time and also on many portable devices, includ­ing new­er iPods. When I spoke with the YouTube team today, they flagged anoth­er perk: the videos are being dis­trib­uted under a Cre­ative Com­mons license, which means that you can reuse them under cer­tain non-com­mer­cial con­di­tions.

For some­one who has helped devel­op cours­es appear­ing in Stan­ford’s YouTube col­lec­tion, today’s news was cer­tain­ly wel­come. These cours­es are not cheap to devel­op, and we do it as a pub­lic ser­vice. So we’re always hap­py when we encounter new ways of get­ting the edu­ca­tion­al con­tent to a broad­er audi­ence. This new down­load capa­bil­i­ty does just that. It extends our reach just a lit­tle more, and it’s hard to quib­ble with that.

As a prac­ti­cal note, if you’re won­der­ing how to down­load the YouTube videos men­tioned above, here’s what to do. Find a video from Stan­ford, UC Berke­ley, Duke, or UCLA, look at the low­er left-hand cor­ner of the video, click the “Down­load this video” link, and you should be good to go.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

  • To quick­ly find intel­li­gent video col­lec­tions appear­ing on YouTube, vis­it this page.

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Can YouTube Save the Nuns?

in Religion, YouTube | February 4th, 2009

Giv­en that we were talk­ing about the his­tor­i­cal Jesus yes­ter­day, this piece in the Utne Read­er caught my eye …

What hap­pens when you’re run­ning a 14th cen­tu­ry con­vent in South­ern Spain that’s near­ly broke? You could call up Jake and Elwood. Or, if you’re Moth­er Isabel and you run the show, you put a video on YouTube enti­tled “Why not be a bare­foot Carmelite?” And then you let every­one see the nuns doing their thing — nuns read­ing, nuns pray­ing, nuns bak­ing and nuns sewing. So far the video has about 30,000 views, which is not huge by YouTube stan­dards and it may not be enough to save the nuns. But the way I fig­ure it, if we can bail out the Wall Street bun­glers, then why not the nuns?

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YouTube Gets a Little More Intelligent

in Music, YouTube | December 1st, 2008

YouTube has had the mass mar­ket locked up for some time. But, dur­ing the past year, it has been giv­ing a lit­tle nod to more “high­brow” view­ers. We’ve seen chan­nels sprout­ing up on YouTube that fea­ture con­tent pro­duced by uni­ver­si­ties and oth­er high-val­ue con­tent providers. (See our col­lec­tion Intel­li­gent Life at YouTube: 80 Video Col­lec­tions.) We’ve also watched the launch of The YouTube Screen­ing Room, which brings short inde­pen­dent films to the view­ing pub­lic. Now we have The YouTube Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra. 

This project brings clas­si­cal music into the world of Web 2.0. As The New York Times explains it, the ini­tia­tive will pro­duce a mashup of orches­tral pieces con­tributed by users. And, it will also fea­ture a con­test in which musi­cians can upload sam­ples of their work, and, à la Amer­i­can Idol, win­ners will be cho­sen by a pan­el of judges and brought to per­form at Carnegie Hall under the direc­tion of Michael Tilson Thomas, music direc­tor of the San Fran­cis­co Sym­pho­ny. (Get more from the video below.)  Some purists will find this high­ly gim­micky, no doubt. Oth­ers may see it as a good way to keep clas­si­cal music rel­e­vant. Have an opin­ion? Let us know in the com­ments.

 

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The YouTube Presidency

in Current Affairs, Web/Tech, YouTube | November 16th, 2008

We’re about to wit­ness the begin­ning of the YouTube Pres­i­den­cy, as The Wash­ing­ton Post has dubbed it. When Barack Oba­ma takes office in late Jan­u­ary, he plans to give a new twist to a long­stand­ing tra­di­tion. The week­ly pres­i­den­tial radio address will now “air” on YouTube, mean­ing that you’ll be able to access the pres­i­den­t’s mes­sages in video, when­ev­er you want, on one of Amer­i­ca’s most traf­ficked web sites. The upshot? Some­one may actu­al­ly lis­ten to these week­ly mes­sages.

This move is part of Oba­ma’s effort to use tech­nol­o­gy to com­mu­ni­cate more direct­ly with the Amer­i­can pub­lic. It’s a way of bring­ing FDR’s fire­side chats into the 21st cen­tu­ry. In addi­tion to har­ness­ing the pow­er of Web 2.0, you can expect to find a lap­top on his Oval Office desk, a first for any pres­i­dent. And, if Oba­ma has his way, he might get to hang on to his Black­ber­ry as well. (See this piece in the NY Times.)

In the mean­time, here’s first of the YouTube videos that Oba­ma has launched dur­ing the tran­si­tion. Watch it below:

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UCLA on YouTube

in YouTube | October 2nd, 2008

Add anoth­er one to our col­lec­tion: Intel­li­gent Life at YouTube: 75 Edu­ca­tion­al Video Col­lec­tions

UCLA has brought their videos to YouTube, join­ing a grow­ing num­ber of oth­er well-respect­ed cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tions. Com­pared to oth­er new­com­ers, the ini­tial set of videos (see the UCLA col­lec­tion here) is rea­son­ably strong, and I sus­pect that it will get more sub­stan­tive over time. Straight off the bat, I’d point you to a longer course that you can watch online. It’s called Life, Con­cepts & Issues, and the first video appears below.

While on the top­ic of YouTube, I want to men­tion that I’ve been work­ing at Stan­ford on a fun (and also free) media project that we’ll be rolling out next week. Stay tuned for more details.

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Learning Chemistry on YouTube

in Science, Video - Science, YouTube | September 10th, 2008

This is per­haps a first: A uni­ver­si­ty-spon­sored video col­lec­tion on YouTube that hangs togeth­er and con­tributes to devel­op­ing a larg­er body of knowl­edge. The Uni­ver­si­ty of Not­ting­ham has launched a chan­nel called The Peri­od­ic Table of Videos, which offers a video for each ele­ment on the peri­od­ic table. In total, you will find 118 videos, includ­ing the one below that gives you a clos­er look at Ura­ni­um. And, for the record, we’ve added this video set to our com­pi­la­tion: Intel­li­gent Life at YouTube: 70 Edu­ca­tion­al Video Col­lec­tions. Here it goes:

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.