Friday, April 15, 2011

More on YouTube University

As far back as September 27th, 2006, John Mayer wrote about the potential of a "YouTube University" in the CALIopolis blog. Remember that YouTube had been founded just over a year earlier in February 2005. One of the first questions Mayer asks is "What if the students did the recording themselves and posted them to YouTube?". The article is an interesting discussion on how students stay ahead of Faculty and IT Departments because they have their own equipment. 

Image from MyAupairBook.com.
Mayer predicted that in five years (from 2006) "video recording equipment will be in every cell phone" - how right he was! I have created video with my iPhone and uploaded it straight to YouTube - it would be easy for students to do the same. 

Mayer has given me the idea that a student could use screen capturing software to create a video of themselves completing a task - eg, writing a programme or doing a calculation in Excel. While it might not be an assessment method of choice for some educators (it would take too long to view videos for a large class), creation of short videos - say with a 10 minute limit, could be useful to show better understanding. Imagine checking how a student writes a piece of code, compiles it, examines error messages, debugs, and compiles again. This would be far better than examining the final version of the written code only handed up at the end of a test. Already I have seen some excellent student projects featuring their own video - this is especially popular in group projects. The day can't be far away when video and YouTube dominates education. It's already making inroads way beyond what John Mayer predicted back in 2006.


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