YouTube observations

It’s gratifying that much of this connectivism course seems to be relevant to what I have tried to do with my information architecture teaching — to help people understand that the digital interaction, the connectivity that the technology is part of, influences and even determines the information that is created, consumed or shared. Today I had time to catch up on some of the forum posts, and found this from Dr. Michael Wesch: An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube, presented at the Library of Congress. You’ve probably seen his world-famous video:The machine is us/ing us. He talks about his work with undergrads at Kansas State University, who study YouTube using participant observation. At last, support for me nagging my students to sign up for and play with all the social software they can find.