Kokul’s World

Youtube recently launched a subsite called Youtube Edu. The purpose of the site is to list, index and make easily accessible the hundreds of lecture videos that are offered for free by many universities throught their respective channels. Basically anyone can go onto the site, and start viewing lectures from universities such as University of Minnesota, MIT, etc.

Check it out, it’s really cool and even if you don’t get a grade, credit or degree from it, it definetely helps to just have some general knowledge of a wide variety of topics.

So what does this mean for the future of learning? I think it is the start of a new trend where increasing numbers of people start taking distance education courses and earn their degrees this way. It also means that education is now more accessible and being free, it will definetely benefit those in poorer nations with access to internet connections. Overall, this just might be one of the best ways to raise the average level of education that humans worldwide receive.

The future of education is definetely looking brighter with the launch of Youtube Edu and similar sites like it. However I also do wonder whether this is just going to compound the current social problem of people preferring to hide behind the barrier of communication devices and having less actual person-to-person human contact that is gained from face-to-face lectures, conversations, etc.