Are you on YouTube? No … are you sure? Have you checked? I must admit I was surprised when my son informed me that there was a clip of me (all 20 seconds worth!), clearly recorded (unbeknown to me) on a mobile phone. It was from a talk I gave in Hong Kong last year, and I won’t give you the link as it’s not worth pursuing, but I must admit that I was surprised that it had been viewed by 202 people!

This is 144 more viewers (as of 20 February 2008) than Charles Sturt University’s nice little 15 second clip promoting ‘Distance Education with CSU’.

[kml_flashembed movie=”http://www.youtube.com/v/w_tLsCOjGLQ” width=”425″ height=”350″ wmode=”transparent” /] 

I found this by doing a search of YouTube for ‘distance education Australia’. The result of the search was a bit thin, clearly demonstrating that we’re not particularly strongly engaged with this phenomenon … yet?! 

With somewhat more viewers (1379) is an attractive one minute production from the University of New England. Though it doesn’t specifically mention distance education, there is a nice subtle hint in the flow of images. Have a look.  

[kml_flashembed movie=”http://www.youtube.com/v/ztnVVRfVvzg” width=”425″ height=”350″ wmode=”transparent” /]

Yes, there’s a few more for Australian distance education as you peruse the list (including one from the Academy of Celebrancy!), with CSU featuring prominently.  

I then dropped ‘Australia’ from my search, and the resulting list for ‘distance education’ is still pretty thin (as is ‘open learning’ – in fact, completely emaciated!). First up is a 5-minute clip from a teacher of Coastal Zone Management and Policy, extolling the virtues of distance education (hence the title: Distance Learning: It’s Real Education!), and explaining to his students how they should study his subject.

 [kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/an8rZyqCXW0" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

Finally, while scanning the list, I noticed the title Education Today and Tomorrow in the Related videos section.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/Fnh9q_cQcUE" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

What do you think? Seems more like Education Yesterday and Today to me …

Finally, are there any distance education/open learning gems I’ve missed in my cursory casting of the net with respect to YouTube? Have you put something up (on distance education please!) that should reach a wider audience?