This article from the Chronicle of Higher Education contextualizes the project:
http://chronicle.com/article/Free-Video-Book-From/126427/
"When Alexandra Juhasz began teaching a class about YouTube in 2007, journalists poked fun at the Pitzer College professor. Academic credit to watch goofy kitten videos? TechCrunch, a popular blog, said it might be the most ridiculous class any college had ever offered." (Parry)
Professor Juhasz and her class created a website combing video and text revealing the result of their inquiry into the educational uses of YouTube. Their results are here:
http://vectors.usc.edu/projects/learningfromyoutube/index.php
The parts I wanted to show in class have more to do with the discourse community formed by the class and the result of their inquiry. This page describes what happened when Professor Juhasz offered an A on the midterm to students who created the most popular entry to YouTube:
http://vectors.usc.edu/projects/learningfromyoutube/texteo.php?composite=104
I showed the first few minutes of this video in which students attempt to decode why certain videos are popular on YouTube.
In the next video, a student reveals the results of his inquiry into comments on popular political videos
In both these examples, students are looking into how discourse communities interact through YouTube.
This next example shows one student's response to the class inquiry. Watch her video on the right and then watch the professor's response on the left. I was interested by this student's rejection of video as a substitute for the written word and the professor's description of her video as "bad." What does she mean here?
http://vectors.usc.edu/projects/learningfromyoutube/texteo.php?composite=95&tag=10
It seems like these videos have different audiences in mind. The student wants to demonstrate her ideas through text.She thinks text is the best way to explain her ideas. But the professor is looking to the video to "compete" in a way with other videos and show interesting images. This is an excellent example of how different genres (text versus video) reach out to separate discourse communities.
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