Teaching in Second Life

As a postscript to my past posting, I also wanted to direct your attention to Second Life 'island' created for virtual teaching, an MSNBC article on the educational future of SecondLife.

YouTube: An eLearning Environment?

Back in September, I blogged about a course entitled "Learning From YouTube.” Taught by Andrea Jurhasz, a media studies professor, this class is still drawing a fair amount of attention from her colleagues in both media studies and ILT. Initially some thought that she was crazy to open herself up to possible mocking from her students, other YouTube patrons and educational community.

However, she’s attracted quite a bit of attention, including a notice in the New York Times:

September 15, 2007 – Here's a dream come true for Web addicts: college credit for watching YouTube. Pitzer College in Claremont, Calif., this fall began offering what may be the first course about the video-sharing site. About 35 students meet in a classroom but work mostly online, where they view YouTube content and post their comments.

While there still has not been much posted about the effectiveness of YouTube as a learning environment, I would be quite interested in hearing what you have to say (after you check out this course, of course). What do you think: Is this just a way to generate hype? Does the YouTube environment have any validity as a learning space?