Learning from YouTube

Janet ponders
Today, DrJ and I were thinking through some of the issues around YouTube and formal education. We concluded that there’s plenty of potential for textual study and critical reading (the media studies bit), but there are difficulties when it comes to using it as a learning tool. One of the difficult issues is the rather chaotic nature of YouTube -for instance, there seems to be absolutely no logic governing the related videos section. It might as well be random. You’re as likely to stumble on dodgy humour, soft porn or parody - it encourages garden-path connections. Here’s a report on a YouTube course. I liked the six binaries (bottom of the page) but was uncertain about how these are construed as limitations. This is another report on the same course and here’s Henry Jenkins interviewing Alex Juhasz (who taught the course). Part One and then Part Two.