YouTube has revolutionized the Web, with video content from the serious to the mundane. Can science co-opt this latest grassroots craze in an attempt to reach the researchers of tomorrow? On Nautilus, the Nature Publishing Group blog for past, present and future authors, a group of biological-science professors from the National University of Singapore make the intriguing suggestion of outreach via YouTube.
YouTube is a free website containing more than 70 million video clips. It’s viewed monthly by around 20 million people. Videos can be tagged with key words by the user who uploads them, and hyperlinked to other websites, such as authenticated science information sites. Hence, argue the professors, YouTube is an ideal venue for scientists to contribute expert opinions and persuasive videos to an audience “that primarily consists of impressionable 12- to 17-year-olds”. They provide a link in their Nautilus post to a dramatic example: a video documenting deforestation within Lore Lindu National Park in Sulawesi, Indonesia.
Nature 447, xi; 10 May 2007
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From the blogosphere by Maxine Clarke
An archive of the "From the Blogosphere" column on the Authors page in Nature, highlighting nature.com blog posts of interest to scientists in their role as authors and peer-reviewers. We welcome comments and suggestions.
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Outreach by YouTube -- 10 May 2007
- Date:
- Tuesday, 10 Jul y 2007 - 13:36 UTC
Last updated: Tuesday, 10 Jul 2007 - 13:36 UTC
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Comments
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I think that this is an excellent idea!
It might also be cool if teachers encouraged their pupils to upload their assignments in the form of YouTube movies allowing interaction/commenting in both directions.
I have just searched a few keywords of scientific interest (and a few of more general interest) and found that there was actually quite a lot of science-related material on YouTube. It, therefore, would not be necessary for all of us to go out and make videos – we could contribute immediately by commenting (with links to authenticated science information sites) and voting on the ones that are already out there.
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Here were my findings (in no particular order):
Human cloning 141; AIDS 62,800; Nanotechnology 391; Climate change 8,360; Recycling 6,050; Global Warming 20,100; Nuclear Energy 3,160; Computer Security 4,200; Cloned animal 90; Space Travel 2,360; Harry Potter 111,000; Football 355,000; Dating 41,500; Genetically Modified 27,100; Interest Rates 500
That’s very interesting, Bronwen, though I am personally disappointed to see that Harry is only one-third as popular as football when Quidditch must be at least three times as visually impressive.
Another use of videos is to have them on our site to “train” readers/users in our more tecchy products, eg Scintilla. (I know that videoed protocols have been discussed also – we ran a correspondence letter in Nature about that a while back, and JOVE is a journal experimenting in this area.)