Earlier this year, in a post called Two Side of Teaching, I talked about a student who wanted to know what I could teach her that she couldn’t learn from a video. I responded “not much” and then went on to explain my answer.
Now, though, it seems that modern technology may have caught up with me. In this article from Wired Magazine, How YouTube Became the World’s Best Film School, they talk about how “a growing corner of YouTube seeks to teach people about screenwriting, directing, and cinematography—tuition free.” This is pretty amazing stuff.
And it’s not just film school. You can’t even dismiss it as merely pop culture (although that’s a fair bit of it). It’s nice to find well researched pieces about the minutia of comic books or whether the Earth is really flat. Heck, pretty much anything is available online.
While I still belive in the teacher student interaction, at the same time, I think this idea of crowd sourced education is a new direction to explore. Academia needs to figure out a way to engage with young learners if we hope to keep them interested and want education to keep sparking inquisitive minds.
Getting the Hang of Thursdays 