YouTube

October 11, 2013

YouTube: It’s All In There

YouTube (www.youtube.com) is a free video-sharing Internet web site visited by more than one billion unique viewers each month, watching more than six billion hours of video, with almost 100 hours of new videos added each month.

Why so popular? Well, for one, you can find a video to show you how to do almost any task, learn a skill, and a lot more. 

And entertainment videos let you see videos of every music genre, movie clips, exercise instruction, and more. Children’s songs are a big hit: a video of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” had more than 250,000,000 views. Luciano Pavarotti’s last performance of “Nesum Dorma” garnered eight million views, Tina Turner’s 2009 performing “Proud Mary” had 5 million views—you get the picture.

Historic events on are also a big hit: Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” speech, the 9/11 terrorist attack, and a lot more.

                

Video content is totally user generated, so quality ranges from decidedly amateur to slick and professional.

Uploading a video is easy, and viewing can be either for those you select or for anyone.

Caution here: YouTube depends on user-generated content and does very little censoring, so some videos are not suitable for youngsters. The search Safety Filter is not perfect, so you need to carefully monitor children’s use.

But there’s a lot on YouTube that’s useful, educational and entertaining. Check it out!

More on our web site: www.norma-tony.com

MOOCs

September 14, 2013

 

MOOCs

MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) offer terrific Internet educational opportunities: use them to take courses from Stanford, Harvard, Yale, and UCLA, and many others, all from the comfort of your home, office or any place where you have an Internet connection.

Many MOOCs are free, although college credit may be available for some for a fee. More than a thousand courses are available; topics range from quantum physics to music of the Beatles, sustainable agriculture, Roman architecture, Smart Growth for Private Businesses, and many others.

Need proof? Introduction to Artificial Intelligence (AI) from Stanford attracted 160,000 people from 209 countries for the first class; it’s still popular for teaching modern Artificial Intelligence, techniques of machine learning, robotics, and more. The course is free and given by Peter Norvig, now director of Research at Google, and Sebastian Thrun, Research Professor of Computer Science at Stanford.

Yes! There are other less technical courses, such as:

Online Games: Literature, New Media and Narrative, a seven-week course given by Jay Clayton, Professor of English at Vanderbilt University. This course explores what happens to traditional stories and films, such as Lord of the Rings, when they become the focus of an online game. You get a certificate of completion when you finish the course.

Learning materials for MOOCs are available via video, books, lectures, demonstrations, Internet searches, blogs, tweets or Facebook, and most importantly, interaction with other students.

Course listings and more at www.coursera.org. Don’t miss out!

More on our web site: www.norma-tony.com

Why Skype or Oovoo?

August 16, 2013

Why Skype or Oovoo?

Skype and Oovoo let you use the Internet for making voice or video calls anywhere in the world. Use either program to show off the new baby, talk face-to-face with someone you can’t visit in person, read a bedtime story to a child at home, and to “be there” to share projects and ideas and the like.

Educational options abound: “sit in” on a lecture and interact with the instructors, take courses not offered at your school, watch a ballet class from an instructor in London or Paris, take piano or art lessons, practice speaking foreign languages with students from other countries, hold debates, do presentations, collaborate on projects—the list is endless.

Business uses include holding conferences or training sessions, demonstrating products or services, and extending customer services, among many others.

Oovoo (www.oovoo.com) and Skype (www.skype.com) are free for the basic services, but a plus for Oovoo is that you can hold free video chat sessions for up to 12 people, each displayed in his or her own window.

The downside: these calls and videos use the Internet, so there’s no guarantee of privacy—you’ll need to use common sense and care in what you say and what you video.

More on our web site: www.norma-tony.com