Rethinking Education - Stories and Youtube

An anthropological introduction to Youtube

I've never really put much thought into Youtube. I've used it here and there ever since it showed up on the web radar but I mostly just took it for granted and I was never aware of the community that existed surrounding Youtube. What I found to be really amazing about Youtube was how it has made it possible for anyone to be seen online. 

Michael Welsch starts his presentation by talking about the growth of Youtube. One story he talks about is how

before Youtube an Eastern European band had its song Numa Numa cartoonized by Korean artists and then those videos made it across the ocean to an American boy who lip-synced the song and became an internet sensation. His lip-sync could have been a totally humiliating but instead people all over the world started making videos in imitation of him and it became a shared experience for people all over the world.

What eventually came out of this very interesting video was the idea that a new world exists, or is starting to exist, where meaning and identity are totally different things than in the "real" world. What struck me was the power of this community where people who would never interact in real life are able to start building connections in ways that would have been impossible fifteen years ago.

The danger of a single story

In this Tedtalk, Chimamanda Adichie gives a very moving testimony on the dangers of reducing people and nations down to a single story. As I have been teaching I have observed that there exists a wide spectrum of interests, needs, and stories behind each one of my ELLs that I didn't really realize could have existed before was given the chance to interact with these students. I had unconsciously reduced my students down to a single story that denied the variation and uniqueness of each of their lives.