MIKE RUGNETTA: Here's an idea, YouTube
is making everyone smarter.
[THEME MUSIC]
I probably don't need to tell you that YouTube
is an amazing resource.
It's like a horn of plenty of cat videos.
72 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute,
and over 4 billion hours are watched by 800 million people
every month-- that's you guys.
More important than the numbers though is the content.
You can see a dog riding a turtle, an acoustic cover
of pretty much every song, this, and you
can learn-- well, actually, you can
learn pretty much everything.
On YouTube you can learn how to throat
sing, make a foxhole radio, you can learn some sweet banjo
riffs.
[BANJO PLAYING]
I learned that on the internet.
A lot of people think if you're going to be learning something
on YouTube, it will probably be about Minecraft or makeup,
both of which are awesome, but there's
a lot more than lipstick and creepers out there.
Like, maybe you'll recognize the voice and handwriting
of arguably YouTube's most famous educator.
Three oxygens here.
Is that right?
MIKE RUGNETTA: Salman Khan is the founder of Khan Academy.
It and other organizations like it
are solving a long-standing problem in education-- access.
Historically, much knowledge, like,
the properties of cyclohexane, for instance,
were behind walls, both metaphorical and physical,
though, not always for malicious reasons.
It has been that way for a very long time for many, very
complex reasons involving governments, and geography,
and resources.
The internet doesn't by any means solve this problem.
It is just another kind of wall.
But for many people around the world, it is a much lower one.
Much lower than say, getting accepted into MIT or Stanford.
Both of which, along with other universities,
are making their classes available via OpenCourseWare,
EdX, Coursera, and you guessed it, YouTube.
Will online learning replace brick and mortar colleges,
or high schools, or certificate programs, or clown college?
No.
I don't think so.
Not soon anyway.
But how amazing and exciting is it
that even if you're in Lithuania,
you can learn electrical engineering from one
of the top dudes in the world.
Now I know what you're thinking, because I'm
a telepathic sharpshooter, this sounds (EMPHATICALLY) boring.
Attending pre-recorded lectures via a computer screen?
Ugh.
[SNORING]
I mean, the stakes are lower, I guess.
Because if you fall asleep during a pre-recorded lecture,
you're not in the middle of an entire class of people
going to get woken up and asked, what
was the inanimate object Sartre used
to demonstrate the idea of essence?
[SNORING]
Um, stapler.
It was a paper cutter.
If the problem is that lectures containing necessary facts
for a whole host of important career topics are dry--
Chlorophyll?
More like "bore-ophyll."
MIKE RUGNETTA: Well, then putting
those lectures online isn't suddenly
going to make something you find dull as dishwater
the most mind-blowingly interesting thing in the world.
This doesn't change the fact that the availability
of expert-level information is an asset.
You can't really argue that.
But this is another classic problem
in education-- engagement.
One which may be the set a camera up in the back
of the classroom and hit record tactic
isn't the best at solving.
Luckily, this is not the only possible YouTube-for-learning
scenario.
There is a whole cabal of YouTubers
whose videos, let alone their ideas about education,
are downright inspiring.
Brady's amazing chemistry, astronomy, and mathematics
videos, Dustin's mind-blowing demonstrations
of Newtonian physics, Vi Hart's hands-- no, but really,
if there's one person you could describe as totally math,
it's Vi.
AsapScience, C.G.P Grey, Crash Course, MinutePhysics, SciShow,
Veritasium, Vsauce's 1, 2, and 3--
they all make YouTube videos.
Not videos which end up on YouTube.
And this is an important distinction.
They're being viewed by millions of people, many of whom
are students who are watching them even though they're not
assigned as homework.
Even though, sometimes they are.
Because of these videos, people are genuinely excited about
and engaged with physics, chemistry, math,
history, and even critical theory, whatever that means.
Author, education expert, and all-around cool guy Sir Ken
Robinson said that, "Current forms of public education
were never designed to develop everyone's talents."
He compares many standardized test-based
and memorization-heavy education techniques
to an industrial assembly line meant to thwart
passion and creativity.
In a way, and sadly, this kind of makes sense.
Encouraging individual learning styles
and particular passions can be terrifying
if you're teaching 200 kids a day for 45 minutes each.
The problem is systemic.
This is what the educational resources on YouTube
have a chance to undo, maybe not by themselves,
but as part of an educational dream team of sorts paired up
with easy access, experts willing to share their world
class of "skillz" with a z, and a growing
number of extremely passionate and talented creators.
In the trenches hardworking teachers
can encourage individuality and provide
unexpected attention-getting material
which reaches beyond the dreaded teacher's edition.
Some teachers are even making YouTube videos of their own
that kids can watch at home and in school.
As long as the school has computers, and internet access,
and YouTube isn't blocked, and they
don't get distracted by the dog and the turtle.
Clearly, there are problems.
But hey, it's new and exciting.
So whatever the problems are, there's
that one very important thing to consider.
If you learn differently or just want
to learn something that's not taught anywhere nearby,
chances are there's a person making videos just for you.
And if there isn't, well, then there
is a whole world of people waiting for you
to make your first video.
What do you guys think?
Is YouTube a useful educational tool?
And if you're a teacher that uses it, we'd love to know how.
Let us know in the comments and subscribe.
[BANJO PLAYING]
And if you guys want to check out any of the awesome people
that we featured in this episode,
we'll put some clickable things right here,
some little icons to click, and then we'll hold on for a second
so that you can make up your mind about clicking them
and then click them, which you just did.
And they're also in the descriptions,
so you can find them there too.
Congratulations to (ROBOTICALLY) Barack Obama.
Let's see what you guys had to say about animated gifs
and politics.
So a bunch of people asked who else
helps to make Idea Channel?
And I will introduce you to them right now.
So this is Andrew Kornhaber.
He is Idea Channel's producer and director.
And this is Morgan Crossley.
He is Idea Channel's editor and the source
of all of the Arrested Development jokes.
There is also Ben who lives in Seattle,
so he can't be on camera.
But he makes all the motion graphics.
So we will put up his likeness in some form or another.
So this is the Idea Channel team.
So a bunch of people were really disappointed
that the other video we made didn't actually
explain why both pronunciations of gif are correct.
Here is why they are both correct.
One, the people who made it, they
said that it should be pronounced,
"jif," but it stands for graphics interchange format.
"Grr graphics-- gif."
They're both right.
Everybody's right.
Please stop arguing.
IreOfSilverpine makes a point that animated gifs are just
contributing to the trivialization
of American politics, which is depressing because it
might actually be true.
Truearebetter, and Xcard100, and a bunch of other people
actually compared animated gifs to political cartoons,
saying that they could actually deliver a similar amount
or quality of information, which is really interesting
and a thing that we didn't even consider,
so thanks for writings those comments.
Anyone planning on managing a campaign
in the next four years, voters of Ohio have spoken.
Gifs are important.
Thomas Canalicchio makes a point that animated gifs
are a part of a whole that could represent the whole,
and are therefore effective because
of their distillation of these larger points,
which is interesting.
They can be influential, but you've
got to wonder whether or not that's
the thing that they aim to do, or if we're just giving them
that power.
I don't know. (LOWER VOICE) I don't know.
NinjaApe says that regardless of their effect, animated gifs
actually just provide entertainment,
which is very welcome in a sort of heated political climate,
and says that they could even be a kind
of counter political piece of media, which I don't know.
That's a little complicated, because you
can read into a lot of these things, but interesting
nonetheless.
DaThings1 points out a really interesting comparison
between the debates and a music performance.
And while I think that there is not
necessarily the universal acceptance that
seems to be suggested, there's also
not a universal condemnation, which
contributes to maybe the sort of shallow understanding
of a lot of American politics.
[INAUDIBLE], I'm sorry.
But also, you're welcome.
[THEME MUSIC]