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educational technology, eLearning & emerging technology

This just in. Via Kate Olson (kolson29 @ Twitter), Edublogs has recently launched a video endeavour known as Edublogs.tv, which is a forum for uploading and viewing of educational videos and audio clips.

There can be little doubt that the online video niche has exploded the last few years, so one might be tempted to ask how such a targeted site like Edublogs.TV will fare against mammoth industry giants like YouTube. Furthermore with other educationally-based video sites like TeacherTube already occupying the niche, Edublogs.TV does not reside in this space alone.

In saying this though the fact Edublogs.TV is targeted is most likely its primary asset. Sites like YouTube cater to a massive variety of content types and as such carries with it a mountain of educationally-inappropriate material. Niche sites like Edublogs.TV and TeacherTube cater to specific needs and as such enable educators and learners to cut the fat off the video experience and keep the content as relevant as possible.

Furthermore in tandem with YouTube et al’s entertainment focus and massive user base you also have a much different usage environment in which users are not always polite or respectful of one another. Comments and flame wars can occur seemingly at random and risk derailing any useful discussion that takes place on the content.

Having said that though, certainly educational material can - and is - being uploaded and viewed on sites like YouTube by learners, but once again by cutting out the fat you can arguable cut out the less desirable aspects of the crowd mentality.

I’ll be investigating this more fully when time permits; so watch this space. In the meantime if you can shed any additional light on the subject please leave a comment. I’ve created my account there under the name of mikebogle, so if you decide to create an account at Edublogs.TV perhaps you’ll consider adding me as a contact.

Discussion: Which is more useful?

Having said all that, the thought occurs that YouTube’s massive library is a significant advantage over niche players. With seemingly everything offering a learning opportunity in one form or another, one person’s pointless clip might be the seed from which a valuable learning experience occurs for someone else - and it’s not always clear when this will occur.

So the question I’d like to throw out for discussion is: Which environment is likely to be more useful to education: YouTube, or niche players like Edublogs.TV or TeacherTube? Feel free to leave a text comment or perhaps add to the following Seesmic thread.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 9th, 2008 at 10:58 pm and is filed under digital media, education. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.