Winston Churchill once said: “I am always ready to learn although I do not always like being taught”. Churchill was a Punekar (Puneite) in that sense. I too, like any genuine Pune resident, don’t like to be taught; but I am always willing to learn!
And if you really want to learn with above motto, this is the best time period to live in! A phenomenon called “YouTube” has revolutionised the concept of learning. When I say “YouTube” it mainly refers to online learning through MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) offered by edX, Coursera, Khan Academy, and Indian initiatives such as NPTEL. But YouTube is more representative.
These online tools have achieved three main things:
- Shifted focus from Teaching to Learning – Now you can learn based on your needs and learn via various sources (Video, online class, online books, tests etc) rather than only from an assigned “teacher”
- Made learning a continuous process and on-demand – You can access learning resources at your own pace and convenience and as and when you need it
- Connected great minds and thoughts from the past directly with the present generation – I can now watch a recorded speech or talk from 1986 by Warrent Buffett to an MBA graduating class. I can watch a rare speech by Dr. Ambedkar / Mahatma Gandhi and others. I watched on YouTube a great docu-series by Nobel laureate Milton Friedman and learnt much more about his ideas than fron Economics book. It wouldn’t have been possible to learn from “eminent dead” without this new medium. It has also enabled each and every person to become a tutor, a trainer, a teacher by leveraging free platforms such as YouTube.
So when Google bought YouTube in 2006 for an unbelievable and astronomical sum of $1.65 billion, everybody was flabbergasted! It defied all the conventional wisdom of valuation and generated huge debate whether Google had committed a blunder. 12 years on I think debate is well settled. YouTube is probably worth far more than $1.65 billion.
I intend to write a separate blog series on Valuation and will write in detail about YouTube valuation. However the purpose of this blog is to share an interesting series/initiative on YouTube for learning new thing everyday.
The series is aptly called “Smarter Every Day” posted on the YouTube Channel with the same name.
A guy posts small videos for each day which help us learn a new, interesting thing, idea, principle everyday and thus make us smarter each day. The video is meant as a quick learning intervention which could then be followed by in-depth learning from various resources. I liked the idea and it’s great to see how people can come up with such innovation, once a platform (like YouTube or Vimeo etc) is made available to them. Another example of this is the YouTube channel on Indian Classical Music which I blogged about few days back.
Check the Smarter Every Day YouTube channel and these videos in particular:
The Backwards Brain Cycle
The Archer’s Paradox
Slow Motion Flipping Cat Physics
ekoshapu 
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