It seems that, after static content, the lecture has now definitely made it into the realm of ‘what you share for free’ in stead of what you ‘sell for money’. We’ve had Teachertube for a while now, but this always struck me as being a tutor-to-tutor resource:
Bu in recent weeks we’ve had a launch of two really great resources that provide world class lectures directly to learners. A few weeks ago we saw the launch of Academic Earth which is aspiring to bring us ‘Thousands of video lectures from the world’s top scholars’ such as this lecture from Paul Bloom:
It seems from the embed-tag that Academic earth uses blip.tv, which is interesting. But what I really like about Academic Earth is that is often provides full transcripts and reading assignments, which makes these videos into a truly accessible and valuable independent learning resource.
And today I stumble on Youtube’s attempt to create an online iTunesU: Youtube EDU, which does not seem to have the high production value of Academic Earth, but will most likely develop very impressively in terms of sheer available content, such as this series on special relativity:
Other then being very grateful for these wonderful resources, I must also say that I am intrigued by the speed which with the traditional University is being dismantled. That information, content, and perhaps even knowledge have been commodotized is not really that surprising, but that, only a few years after that development, are already declaring the lecture dead in terms of marketable value, that does surprise me. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I disagree, I am just baffled by the speed of developments. Either way, I’m going to wrap up this post, as I have some lectures to watch.
The lecture is dead: Long live the lecture!
