YouTube & iTunes U: Learned Ilocano & earned my college degree there

Time will be when the snippets of educational videos in YouTube, such as the 95-second episode above, and the profound lectures and podcasts of experts at Apple’s iTunes University will achieve some convergence and become accredited as integral parts of various college curricula.  And well, one will then be able to earn his or her college degree in part from YouTube and iTunes University.  What a monumental savings that would be, especially for those who can ill afford to attend college or are severely impacted by the economic downturn, considering how expensive college tuition has become.

Of course, under this soon-to-be new educational paradigm shift (if I had my rathers…), there will be parts of the curricula that require the students to attend some classes in school, such as those requiring lab courses or internship.  But more than half of the curricula in most baccalaureate and post-baccalaureate degrees could probably be rendered in YouTube and iTunes University.  Maybe both discussion and assessment periods could then be scheduled in the classroom for only one-third the norm.  That provides the student-student and student-teacher interactions that seem to be missed in online learning.

We lament the dearth of good teachers. But that problem would probably recede because the best will naturally rise to the top as subject matter experts (SME) who’d develop the best YouTube educational videos and/or lectures/podcasts in iTunes University.  The mediocre creations will quickly be tossed out–something that doesn’t happen expeditiously with teachers poorly qualified to teach, especially if they are tenured.  All students will be the beneficiary of the best designed and most pedagogically effective YouTube educational videos and iTunes U lectures/podcasts–and you don’t have to count the benefits on your fingers to realize that this educational alternative beats the high cost of going to sit and participate in a school classroom.  Not only that, one could replay a YouTube video or listen to an iTunes U lecture/podcast any number of times until one absorbs the underlying concept–an option that would be severely limited in a classroom setting.

Oh, I’m kind of pushing for the day YouTube and iTunes U offer accredited courses in creative writing in Ilocano.  Because that day is certain to usher a quantum leap in the number of writers in Ilocano fiction, poetry and other literary forms, and more importantly, raise the quality of their output.  Based on the experiences of other languages that died, we need that to happen to prolong the life of Ilocano as a language and therefore to guarantee that its proud and enterprising ethnic group continue to survive with their mother tongue intact amid the shortsighted, hegemonic government push to railroad Tagalog, er, Filipino all over the entire populace at the expense of the other regional languages which are slowly but surely fading in the background.