UC Berkley launches YouTube channel
This is really interesting news. Yesterday the University of California at Berkeley launched a YouTube “channel” offering full courses on video to the public at no charge. I am interested in checking out the “Physics 10 – Physics for Future Presidents” playlist to see what the content is like. If these work out it would be a nice option for any adult wanting to learn more about a topic or a student that wanted to compliment what they were studying (or study something not available to them otherwise).
I know online video and webcasts have been available for a while in other formats. But this being on YouTube is a big deal just because so many people use YouTube and you can get their video just about anywhere (i.e. web, media center, iPhone, even download to iPod) – now wouldn’t it be cool to have video Podcasts with the lectures and notes/handouts all together in one place (kind of like Make magazine does with their weekend projects).
If you remember last year MIT was promoting their “MIT Open Courseware” initiative (http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/home/home/index.htm) where they put hundreds of classes online.
To have technical and educational leaders really getting into this is a good sign. I hope this leads to a wider variety of content and perspectives to be brought online.
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2007/10/03_YouTube.shtml
