Learning with YouTube

I had never really considered using YouTube to learn anything until my professor handed out this assignment.  Up to this point I had always considered the medium to be something strictly for entertainment—that is all I had ever used it for in the past.  What I found in searching for a learning video was a massive collection of how-to’s on everything from how to clean out your dryer vent to introducing a speaker.  I chose the latter topic and found 13 videos with the quoted search terms, “how to introduce a speaker.”  Without the quotes, there were 1,260 results—way too many to weed through.

After having watched a few minutes of a hyped-up version, which was more about making sales pitches and marketing, I decided that it did not exactly fit my intent.  Instead, I selected a series of ten videos from the eHow channel, mainly for their brevity and concision.  However, there were a few other reasons why I liked it.  The quality of the audio and video were great, which I could not say about some of the other videos, and it made a huge difference for me.  Although the eHow series was done completely in front of a white board without much else to look at besides the speaker, this is precisely why I thought it was effective.  Additionally, the sub-topics within the main topic were well organized and used a consistent formula throughout.  The speaker kept a tight focus on the subjects and in some of the videos included a few short points on the board to point out as she spoke—and, thankfully, she spoke clearly and confidently using a tone of authenticity, as well as a good measure of humor.  Overall, I thought the series did a good job of offering the material and helping a specific audience get prepared for the task of introducing a speaker.  One could argue that it was boring, but the focus was on speaking, so it made sense to just do that in the videos.  To see for yourself, follow this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grePRQ8zonA&p=542FB8B95D325398&feature=list_related&playnext=1

I have learned that it can take a fair amount of planning and execution to put together a great learning video, and I appreciate all of the learning opportunities that so many people have made available on YouTube. Now that I have discovered this resource, I will surely use it in the future, and perhaps add a few learning videos of my own.