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YouTube Is Investing $20 Million In Educational Content, Creators (theverge.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the throwing-money-against-the-wall-and-seeing-if-it-sticks dept.

YouTube is creating a new Learning Fund program where it will invest $20 million toward education content. The announcement was made today by Malik Ducard, global head of learning. The Verge reports: Channels like TED-Ed, dedicated to educational Ted Talks, and Hank and John Green's Crash Course have already secured additional funding, according to YouTube's blog post. The company plans to invest in content from independent creators, like the Green brothers, as well as traditional news sources and educational organizations to broaden its content offering.

YouTube's Learning Fund has a nice ring to it, but it isn't a philanthropic charity. An FAQ about the program states that "successful applicants must enter into a written agreement with YouTube. This agreement will contain more details about required deliverables, payment timelines, and other terms and conditions." Creators must maintain a minimum of 25,000 subscribers. Those applying to the program also don't need to have a degree or proper certification in their field, "but successful applicants will be required to demonstrate that they have expertise and/or that the content they produce is verified by an expert in the field."

21 of 115 comments (clear)

  1. Already done by 110010001000 · · Score: 2, Informative

    They have already been funding great education TED-Ed talks like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

    1. Re:Already done by rtb61 · · Score: 1, Informative

      Ohhh propaganada of the slimiest kind paraded as education. Hey what the fuck are we paying all those education departments around the planet for, can they not come up with clean educational content. Coming out of Google is will be serve serving advertising to start with, freevertising where it generates news thats get reported and voila cheap Google marketing (probably already got its money back). Then there is the actual content, how much will be clean educational, how much corporate propaganda and how much just really slimey Google self promotion.

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
    2. Re:Already done by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      Education schools train teachers. Nobody would trust them to write curriculum. Look what shitty a job they do teaching teachers.

      Until you can build an AI competent to smack the little bastards, lower grades will remain hands on, 'Lord of the Flies'.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    3. Re:Already done by VeryFluffyBunny · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The irony is that what The Onion publishes is more valid & evidence informed than TED Talks. The amount of feel-good but meaningless edu-babble, outdated & wrong theories, i.e. They contradict current knowledge in neurosci, cogsci, & Ed research, & just plain edu-quackery that TED Talks put out should have them banned from any education system.

      For example, Sir Ken Robinson has given 3 TED Talks. He talks about creativity as if it's a generic skill (It isn't), claims that schools kill creativity (They don't), & offers no concrete, falsifiable alternatives to current educational practices. In fact, he isn't an expert in education at all; he did his PhD in drama studies & knows little about the science of learning & teaching. If he did, he wouldn't spout the feel-good nonsense that he does.

      --
      Debate is a form of harassment. Do not question my truth.
    4. Re:Already done by sad_ · · Score: 2

      TED and TED-ed are two different things, TED-ed are really educational and basically a quick introduction (each video runs at about 5 mins average) into some sience/history/literature topic.

      --
      On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
    5. Re:Already done by VeryFluffyBunny · · Score: 1

      Here's an example of a TED-Ed talk, "The benefits of a bilingual brain - Mia Nacamulli": https://ed.ted.com/lessons/how...

      Left/right hemisphere dominance in the brain is a myth. We use all of the brain all of the time. Different areas are associated with particular tasks but each region is almost always associated with more than one task, e.g. Broca's area is famously associated with grammar, but also with action recognition & gestures.

      Critical period hypothesis is controversial & probably not true, except for accents.

      Bilingualism doesn't prevent the onset of Alzheimer's, it's just that the symptoms are less apparent in bilingual patients because they compensate for the effects better.

      Bilingualism is no more cognitively beneficial than exercise, playing board games, or socialising, i.e. there's nothing special about bilingualism.

      And they managed to pack those errors and more into just 5 minutes.

      No, you can get more accurate, comprehensive, coherent, peer-reviewed information for free from Open Textbooks, e.g. https://open.bccampus.ca/find-... & https://openstax.org/subjects

      --
      Debate is a form of harassment. Do not question my truth.
  2. AvE for the win. by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

    But no, a few innocent jokes, a little beer in the machinist a 'bad word or three' and YouTube get's a (barbed splintering) stick firmly wedged up their asses.

    Bet they won't even consider him 'educational'.

    --
    John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    1. Re:AvE for the win. by viperidaenz · · Score: 2

      Focus you fuck

    2. Re:AvE for the win. by nitehawk214 · · Score: 1

      It's time to start dropping some F-bombs.

      --
      I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
    3. Re:AvE for the win. by gman003 · · Score: 1

      If AvE is trying to be educational, he's kind of failing. Most of his videos (at least, as of when I quit watching him, maybe he's changed) are just product teardowns and reviews... that might count as consumer education but I don't think it's what most people consider an educational video.

    4. Re:AvE for the win. by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      When Engineers are kids, they take things apart. The ones that will grow up to be successful engineers sometimes manage to put them back together so they work.

      Uncle bumblefuck has tons of real world, hands dirty knowledge. He's getting a lot of reverse engineers started, that's a skill that is almost never taught.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    5. Re:AvE for the win. by gman003 · · Score: 1

      That's how he was when I started watching. After a while, it started drifting more towards a product review. It wasn't "this drill does something nifty in how it works, let's figure it out" so much as it was "here's all the places they cheaped out on it, don't buy this". That's around when I stopped watching. Maybe he's changed back, I don't know, that's why I had that parenthetical qualifier in my first post.

    6. Re:AvE for the win. by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      He's always done some 'product reviews'...but even there, it's educational for most, at least the first crappy drill review is. The third, not so much.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
  3. It would be better to by bobstreo · · Score: 2

    invest in Season 3 of "Ow, My Balls!"

    or to have dedicated live feeds of Russian Car Crashes.

    1. Re:It would be better to by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      They have to own the trademark, or someone else would have already made it real.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
  4. thanks thought bubble! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Crashcourse is awesome. The history and big history especially.

    1. Re:thanks thought bubble! by Mr.+Droopy+Drawers · · Score: 1

      Thanks for the tip!

      Frankly, it would be move valuable to share good educational links rather than Google paying to get more content. I believe there's plenty of good content. The hard part is separating the wheat from the chaff.

      Some sites I enjoy are:
      * Technology Connections
      * SmarterEveryDay
      * The Coding Train

      --

      To Copy from One is Plagiarism; To Copy from Many is Research.

  5. Hopelessly Skewed by Kunedog · · Score: 2

    TED itself puts out a ton of transparent leftist propaganda:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

    This one outright promotes indoctrinating students:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

    They're one of the last outfits who should be producing educational content.

  6. Netflix by speedplane · · Score: 1

    Literally 3 stories down, is news that Netflix is investing $2B in content. $20M seems like a tiny drop.

    --
    Fast Federal Court and I.T.C. updates
  7. Meanwhile Demonitized Me Kept the $80 They Owed by BrendaEM · · Score: 1

    Isn't it wonderful when a company can be so magnanimous with other people's promised money. And not just my channel, but thousands of others.
    https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCALWDnHfbhcpdPco0cXIeOQ/videos?sort=dd&view=0&shelf_id=0

    "End of BrendaEM's Youtube Channel."

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
  8. We DO need more educational videos on YouTube by froggyjojodaddy · · Score: 1

    When it comes to YouTube "how to" videos, it's not STEM type videos I'm watching, it's things like car repair, construction (e.g. framing, drywalling, plumbing etc), or welding.

    I enjoy working on my cars and bought the Haynes repair manuals but watching someone change the rear main seal vs. reading how to do it and looking at grainy black-and-white pictures is no contest. Regardless of the subject though, there a massive variance in the quality of the "how to" video. Some people are precariously balancing a smartphone while using both hands to do get to a bolt but others have taken the time to understand camera position, lighting, graphics etc. Those should be rewarded appropriately if the aim is to encourage effective educational videos.

    More recently, I stood up an ELK implementation and spent a few days trying to find a decent tutorial. Only by chance did I find a great YouTube video that walked through the basics and them some additional detail on config and logstash that I was struggling with.