UC Berkeley Puts Courses On YouTube

Certainly not a first - MIT has not only audio/video, but notes and exams on their OpenCourseWare site: http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/home/home/index.htm

Yeah, I remember learning all about what MIT was doing in those Revenge of the Nerd films. They are very cutting edge.

Berkeley has also webcast a lot of classes internally before, and along with a host of other schools list courses on itunes U.

Unfortunately Youtube isn’t the best site for long form media like this. I think a player that supports deep tagging makes more sense for an information rich video. However, YouTube’s distribution seems to trump that problem.

Man, makes me wonder why I wasted all that time going to class and paying tuition.

I think this is a great idea, but I wonder if it will become an excuse for students not to show up to class?

Geez, couldn’t they even correct the audio levels on the videos before posting them? It’s like being at the back of a very large lecture hall.

informational vidz. But liek the pretty lady above I sure hope the audio isn’t this bad in all of them.

I like to watch Shakira parody on youtube

Baby I was born so far away so
I speak English as a second language
I don’t understand a word I say
There’s no word that rhymes with language.

LOL

If you want up-to-date videos of the search engines class you can go here:

http://webcast.berkeley.edu/co.....1906978492

Hal Varian’s lecture about online ads is interesting-check it out. Its awesome getting 2 units on my transcript to learn about search engines.

The advantage of Transit is the distribution and integration into what is now the #1 mapping app on the web. I don’t really want to go to Hopstop to get this info, it’s really nice to be able to get it right in Google.

This is sort of a classic place where reach and exposure is going to matter 100x more than the incremental usefulness of the product — SMSing directions, getting real time updates, etc. are all great and there are limited geographies where small companies have this working but I don’t particularly care about that as a user because chances are that in my local area I already know the schedules for the routes I take regularly.
What IS useful though is to know this information the first time you’re in a new place, and in that context being able to get it on Google rocks. I have no idea what the local agency is in Seattle or NYC or who runs the trains in Japan. Tourists and visitors are the people who need this information the most and so distribution and brand awareness trumps incremental features like SMS.

There is no real killer app here; it’s all about data being locked up and getting access to it, and then distributed in a way that’s easy for users to find.

PS, the version in Japan is available via mobile phones since the other competitive services (like Yahoo’s) offer it via mobile phone as well. I’ve used it, it’s pretty cool. I really want them to integrate this into Google Maps for Mobile so I can use it on my Blackberry when I travel.
Sent at 7:30 PM on Wednesday

Avichal is busy. You may be interrupting.

Old news…anyways might help ppl who are unaware and don’t visit youtube often
http://vidsonly.blogspot.com

Eh, Berkeley sucks. MIT > CMU > Stanford > Berkeley.

off topic,

and i’m not gay(or bi) - but sergey has got to be one of the, if not the most, sexiest tech company founders alive - he can sure strike a pose

Good god. This is awesome. Though why didn’t they produce podcasts?

I need this on my ipod

If they’ve been on Google Video and now they are on Google’s Youtube, how the hell is this even a story?

Mitch

FYI, as Nick mentioned above, UC Berkeley has been webcasting courses internally for quite a while (and of course, other universities have been doing the same). I’m a fourth year student at Berkeley, and a large handful of my classes have been webcast over the years (including Operating Systems this semester). At http://webcast.berkeley.edu/courses.php, you can watch courses going back to 2001.

#4: I try to go to class because I like asking questions, but it’s true that in webcast courses there is less attendance. It’s a very handy tool when I accidentally sleep in or have more important things to do, though.

gees..i wish this was available when i was in school. i couldve slept in more often vs sitting in an auditorium w/300+ students.

btw, that Sergey is looking sort of buff in that tight t-shirt…sorry did that sound gay.

Course titles:

“Being a good communist”
“Capitalism, just plain wrong”
“Male, female, other - no difference”
“Why Mao was right”
“Al Gore, inventor of the internet”
“Jews, hate ‘em, bait ‘em”
“Global Warming personal lube”
“Girls: how to pass this course every time!”

gimme’ a break!

I have tried watching the lectures but they really makes me want to go on exchange…

They should all get them - so you could choose your university from the quality of the lectures

Hopefully they post the live lectures on a platform that makes you able to discuss with your fellow students/make assignments and pose questions to the professors

There is a good search engine for free university lectures: http://www.lecturefox.com

“Non Violence”?! You gotta be kidding.

Here’s a way of searching this videos in a widget:

http://grazr.com/gzpanel.html?.....earch.opml

what about

http://www.researchchannel.org ?

#6 oh, you’re so sweet.

#20 We study all about war from every angle. Makes sense to study about non-violent conflict resolution. World peace.

Universities really offer courses in building FB apps? I could get a PhD after all. LOL!

Lots of free and interesting university lectures:

http://www.auditoriumA.com

MIT’s OCW vs others.

Most of OCW courses from MIT are designed to be broad casted.The professior knows it is being broadcasted and they make sure the lecture is broad cast’able (like if a student asks a question, professor repeats the question so the person watching can hear the question etc.). it also has course notes,quiz,assignments everything that the class has.

I tried to watch couple of Berkley courses a year ago, but I found they are not designed to be broadcasted and many a times I felt there was something missing.

This is nothing new. The UC Berkeley thing has been mentioned all over the web for months now. MIT also has lectures available online to anyone for free. Information wants to be free…and it now is in many places.

Podclass.com is a website that is designed specifically for online learning. Unlike YouTube, Podclass offers instructors a private area where they can post their content, including videos, audio, PDF, assignments, etc. And students who are enrolled in a course at Podclass can interact and collaborate within a course forum, and wiki. It becomes a virtual community of students enrolled in the course.

Here’s the link: http://www.podclass.com

I’m holding out until they offer UCB degrees on YouTube…

Back in March The Education Services Minister Jacinta Allan (for the Australian State of Victoria) announced that the government had banned and blocked YouTube in schools. Which really begs the question: if the kids have already hacked around the firewalls to get to the *bad* content, why not show the *good* content anyway? Clearly smarter minds than mine are at work here.

Here’s a Facebook app that let’s you search and view the UC Berkeley lectures in Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/apps/a.....6118334781

It builds on this earlier Grazr search widget: http://blogs.open.ac.uk/Maths/ajh59/010633.html

Sorry for taking so long to respond to this one — loved that TechCrunch took some space to cover it, since it was a little outside the realm of normal startup coverage. I actually spent some time watching some of the videos today, and while they were a little dry (reminded me of the good, and bad, of undergrad!), I really enjoyed the ‘Physics for Future Presidents’ lecture(s) — I recommend the first one… even if you just watch the first 5-10 minutes (he relates how the meteor in in the Tacoma Truck ad relates to what would really happen if that occurred…):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ysbZ_j2xi0