Learning with the YouTube kidz

Mark Surman posted a neat article about the rise of video tutorials and how they’re changing learning online. Today, educational videos aren’t just streams of professors droning at their chalkboards or science-y rap videos…(ok, well there are those). It’s also about a kid turning on a webcam and teaching herself, her friends, and/or a million strangers how to set up a WordPress blog or curl hair with a paper bag.

What can we learn not only from the videos’ content, but also this process of making and sharing knowledge? And can these methods be transported into other, perhaps more formal, spheres of learning?

If you look to the young people making these tutorials (like my son), web video isn’t just making learning easier. The web is creating a generation that takes it for granted that we can all be teachers. Teachers driven by the best aspects of the word ‘amateur’ — a love of a subject and a desire to share that knowledge.

Clearly, this is HUGE — and is truly giving us all more control over how we learn. The question is: what does this mean for the future of education? What does it mean for who we turn to when we want learn something? And how we all start to teach each other?

These are questions I want to sink my teeth into at Mozilla’s Learning, Freedom and the Web Festival in Barcelona. I’m not sure what this conversation looks like yet. If you’re making or thinking about video tutorials, I’d love your help figuring this out (and running sessions in Barcelona). Please get in touch.