The University of YouTube Is Now Open For Enrolment!

I’ll let you in on a secret. My kids learn more science from a 5-minute make your own magnetic putty youtube tutorial than a 45-minute school science lesson. 

My friend’s son learnt to tap dance on YouTube. In under a year he got so good at it, he started performing at musicals. Sure, there’s a lot of bad stuff on YouTube. But there’s also a lot of good stuff too. 

Eight million kids around the world are on YouTube every week^. And I'm pretty sure that's a conservative number. The powers that be at Google have a wonderful tool in their hands. All it needs is a more structured education model that allows for unstructured learning to be accredited so YouTube and its very organic and intuitive method of teaching our children, can become an actual accredited University - UTube. 

 This has been on my mind for a while. A few nights back when I was invited by General Assembly to give a talk on Design Trends, I was asked a question that gave me the platform to verbally voice it. And judging from the looks I got from the mostly-millennial crowd, I think it’s a concept that could really take off.

And so here I am posting this to the brilliant and good people on LinkedIn hoping to harness your thoughts on this. But first here are the reasons why I think this would work.

Kids are already on it. Nobody needs to force kids to get on YouTube. They gravitate to it like ants to candy. Kids as young as 6 months watch YouTube. On this platform they are not pressured by a set of rules. Here, they are hunting down knowledge based on what’s important to them and what they want to learn. This is the opposite of our education system that pushes outdated, mostly irrelevant stuff down their throats. 

What amazes me is that my science-loving son seeks out and discovers tutorials that help him conduct chemistry experiments at home. After watching a five minute video, he is able to recite to me what’s needed for the experiment (because mum’s in charge of getting the ingredients) and the hypothesis the experiment is supposed to prove. My daughter has discovered how to dance, knit, build toy cars and make complex lego buildings all from YouTube. And in the early days when she couldn’t spell, it used to be “Siri can you help me find ….. on YouTube?” Here, kids will take ownership of their learning journey and feed their passion because they feel they are in control.

Kids learn from other kids. My daughter follows kiddie influencers on YouTube. They teach her how to draw, paint and make use of different types of materials to make art. It gives her confidence watching other kids her age doing things that used to be done or taught by adults. Now she knows nothing is really complicated and finds the courage to attempt some rather complex endeavours simply because a kid her age is showing how it’s done on YouTube.

YouTube is the most patient teacher. I know YouTube feels no different from school. You’re sitting down and watching what’s being shown to you. And it’s hours of screen time which you think is not good for kids. But I myself have learned a lot of stuff from YouTube like how to pitch those high notes when I’m singing and how to do makeup like Katy Perry (don’t judge). Based on this, I can safely say that YouTube is the world’s most patient teacher. It allows our kids to keep rewinding, pausing and replaying until they get the hang of what they’re doing or what they need to do.

I watch my kids pause the video, rewind it, run back and forth from the fridge and chemical cupboard with the right ingredients. They don’t feel pressured because there’s no impatient teacher on the other end yelling and asking them to hurry up before the bell rings. 

Kids pick up skills faster. Kids who watch YouTube tutorials do so because they want to learn something, or pick up a new skill or trait - I want to colour my hair ombre for a prom night, I want to make different types of putties and sell them for extra income, I want to check if something this heavy can really levitate, I want to see if I can make rainbow fondant all by myself.

My daughter, the mini entrepreneur is constantly trying to make new stuff based on YouTube tutorials to sell to her friends in school. She’s barely 8 and has been doing this since she was 4. 

My son is constantly building amazing levitating products for show and tell from YouTube. He has a drone obsession and learned to code and hack into various MineCraft servers all thanks to YouTube tutorials. He’s barely 10. 

I am not a Tiger mum. I don’t send them for endless numbers of classes. I don’t pressure them to study and do homework. I am so busy with work, when I get back, I want the time I spend with my kids to be fun – playing games, talking about their day and meeting their emotional needs.So I thank God that they are using YouTube to help with homework and school projects before I get back. Sometimes, they save the exciting bits for me.

Kids learn that failure is okay. Now this is my favourite thing about YouTube. Even adults are allowed to fail. There’s no judgement. If I screw up an experiment, I just dump everything, play back the video, see where I went wrong and start afresh. And if the video I picked isn’t giving me my expected results, there’s a whole set of videos by other YouTubers who have done it slightly different. I can always pick a new video and try the same experiment in a slightly different way. 

There are YouTubers who make millions from showcasing their epic fails. My kids love watching influencers who feature bloopers and oopsie. This teaches our kids that even the “pros” they watch on YouTube are capable of failing. And it’s ok to fail and we learn from our mistakes. Now, when my kids’ experiments go awry, instead of kicking a fuss or beating themselves up, they laugh about it and try again. 

Kids become proficient in what they are passionate about. YouTube has levelled the playing field. Even five-year olds can become millionaires. How amazing is that? The days of forcing our kids to graduate at a specific age is over. Kids learn things differently, at different paces. Some learn faster. Others need more time. And when they get frustrated because the lessons aren’t taught fast enough or in an interesting way, they get bored and stop showing interest. They might become disruptive during class and be diagnosed with ADHD. The kids who need a bit more time to pick up certain principles because their minds are wired differently or the teaching method is just not getting through to them, might be diagnosed as slow learners. 

YouTube presents a learning and development style that allows kids to progress at their own pace. Kids can choose the topics they love and the learning methods and teachers/YouTuber who appeals most to them. Because of this, our kids will never be left behind. They will learn for the love of learning and turn their passion into purpose from a ripe young age.

The lessons when organised into proper models can be complete, comprehensive and enjoyable - the best university for kids. If we develop a model that turns YouTube’s content into a structured curriculum that provides unstructured learning, it could be highly effective and successful. 

For example, different physics lessons could be condensed into five-minute how to videos by popular kiddie you tubers. Physics doesn’t have to be learnt through the limited examples given in our science books - the best way to learn it, is within a contextual setting of trial and error. And that’s exactly what a lot of YouTube tutorials do. And that’s exactly why they succeed - they contextualise principles that are otherwise hard to grasp. 

Kids who watch these videos and demonstrate that they understand the principles and are able to successfully replicate the tutorial, should then be accorded credits for that particular lesson. Perhaps this could be done by allowing the kids in turn to make their own videos of trials and errors of the experiments or project and posting it. These should be graded in non linear fashion – not how well they do it but for their attempts, learnings and their ability to demonstrate an understanding of the principles. 

The grades can then be combined and if they hit a certain number of credits, they would qualify for a certificate, similar to Lynda.com. Who knows, just by doing this, our kids might have completed enough credits to get a bachelor’s degree whilst learning and doing the things they love, without having gone through the traditional model of a university.

What if too much screen time turns my kids nuts, you ask? Ha! I hear this a lot. But let’s get real. The internet will be all around us soon. We won’t be able to escape it. We will be doing more and more things online. The experience will be immersive and it will only become more intense. With device-free VR and AR, the lines between reality and fantasy will be nonexistent. 

We have experienced a world before such technology and a world with such technology. We can make comparisons and this is the reason behind our fear – our reluctance to move on or meld both worlds. Kids 10 years down the road will only have one reality – an immersive reality where information is readily available with myriads of choices and forms of different content. They won’t have anything to compare it to. This short attention-spanned, instant gratification seeking reality is all they will know. It’s called evolution and in this future of immersive technology, kids will develop new senses beyond the five to cope and acclimatise to this new environment. 

I know you’re worried about the bad stuff on YouTube. What’s worse, there’s a lot of bad stuff masquerading as good. As a parent, I have learnt I can’t hide my kids from the bad stuff. They will find it. Or more likely, it will find them. The best way to protect them is to teach them to do the right thing when they encounter the bad stuff. And create an open environment where they can talk to you about what they’re seen. And of course there’s the parental control filter you can turn on - which doesn’t necessarily keep the bad stuff out. 

Which brings me back to UTube. It is a brilliant platform for education. It is also a highly democratic platform. Kids can learn. Kids can teach. Kids can reiterate and build on what’s been taught. Kids can put out their own hypothesis and get multiple peers from around the world to test and demo these hypothesis. And kids can learn from adults and adults can learn from kids. It’s two way mentorship at its finest. No longer is the burden of discovering, understanding and learning on the individual person; it has become a shared economy where we learn from each other and share that knowledge. This frees us up to learn faster and better. And we as parents owe our kids that.

^ https://www.google.com.sg/amp/s/expandedramblings.com/index.php/youtube-statistics/amp/