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A collaborative effort to bring science to YouTube/Google

qarnos

Cold-hearted skeptic
qarnos
Joined
Apr 25, 2004
Messages
2,084
This is an idea I have been toying with for a while, and I'd like to hear your thoughts on this.

I've often thought it would be a good idea to put together a series of short (5-10 minute) documentaries together for posting on Youtube/Google video. These would cover a very narrow topic (obviously, due to time constraints) and be aimed at the average Joe to try to explain scientific ideas in laymans terms. Take a look at the 9/11 conspiracy debunking shorts put together by forumite boloboffin for a general idea of what I am talking about.

My initial idea was a short on Special Relativity. This is a subject that I, as a layman, have significant knowledge about to produce something informative, and I think my status as a layman would allow me to explain it well it terms that even I can understand! ;) My main concern would be making sure I don't get anything wrong.

The more I thought about it, the more I realised that it was a good idea, but probably beyond my capacity to execute as a solo effort within a reasonable time frame. So I put this to you:

Who would be interested in working on some collaborations like this? This is an education forum, after all, so why don't we put something out there? Just going over it in my head, I think we would need people with the following skills:

* Writers - laymen (who, arguably, would know best on how to explain an idea to other laymen), and specialists (for general assistance and checking the scripts for errors)
* Narrators - People with a good, clear, authoritative narrating voice.
* CGI - I'd expect most of this kinda stuff to require computer images/animations.
* Musicians - What's a doco without some nice soothing (but unobtrusive) background music.
* Editors - putting it all together.

Well, you get the idea. I've probably missed something obvious, but this is just a general "feeler" to see what the reaction to the idea is. As I said about, we are an educational forum, so let's educate! :)
 
It's a good idea & if I had the any of the talents you require, I'd volunteer them.

Maybe I could be something like a test audience - if you need one?

The only other talents I have are joke mining & spelling - there are people here who are much better at these than I am.
 
Definitely sounds like a good idea to me and I'd love to participate.
I have a good academic knowledge of math (which may or may not be appropriate material for this series) as well as a reasonable amount of lay knowledge on quantum physics and general relativity.

I have a good, clear voice without a serious accent (though authoritative is questionable) and I am also computer-capable enough to do some editing work.
 
I'd be happy to volunteer my services for the writing and editing departments.
 
And when you run out of interesting topics to cover, I could help you with the boring and necessary bit that is taxonomy and systematics. I am quite well educated in both fields, as well as in biology in general. I don't expect anyone to actually want to watch that sort of thing, though.
 
qarnos said:
This is an idea I have been toying with for a while, and I'd like to hear your thoughts on this.
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Wouldn't it make more sense to collaborate on an existing project, such as Wikiversity, iTunesU, or simply direct viewers to material such as the Stanford science lecture series, the MIT science lecture series, the UC Berkeley science series... ?

I hate to be a wet blanket, but why start a redundant project?
 
Just to clarify that I'm not being negative: I do think that Skeptics can contribute by producing videos on skeptical subjects. Things you might find in Skeptic or Skeptical Inquirer.
 
Couldn't help you too much with physics (except maybe as a test-dummie to tell you if I understood the concepts?)

Biology however is my forte. I remember part of the way I'd always study for my exams is by teaching the material to my dog as we went for our jogs. I came quick to realize that the more and more I dumbed bio concepts down with mnemonics and analogies, the better I understood it.

Excellent idea!
 
Thanks for all the replies so far. It seems there is a bit of interest so I will put together a brief outline of the ideas I had in mind for special relativity, and see how it goes from there.

To respond to blutoski and robinson - I don't see your comments as negative - just constructive criticism, which is always welcome. Blutoski, I am not familiar with the resources you mentioned, so I can't comment on them specifically. I'd just add that most "average joe" types probably haven't heard of these resources either, whereas almost everyone is aware of youtube. I'm thinking of the type of person who might, on a whim, decide to search for relativity on youtube.

Robinson, that's for the heads up. I'll check out what is on there already and see if there are any major differences between what is there and what I had in mind. This project isn't just about this one topic, however - it is just the example which is foremost in my mind.

Does anybody have any other suggestions for topics to cover? I'd like to try to avoid "debunking" anything - since that is probably seen by most people as a negative approach and reinforces the misconception between scepticism and cynicism. Therefore, I'd rather stick to "positive information" (for lack of a better term).
 
Only thing I don't think I agree with is the idea that laymen are most suited to explain the concepts to other laymen because they would best know how to put it in language other laymen understand.

I think you're ever so slightly opening a door towards perpetuating common mistakes laymen makes when reading about/researching these topics. An expert might not catch an error like that when he looks at what a layman wrote, because he's filling in gaps that another layman will fill in differently and wrong.

I think it's better to have the expert write the synopsis and than have it go back and forth between him and a layman untill it's clear for the layman.
 
SomeGuy said:
I think it's better to have the expert write the synopsis and than have it go back and forth between him and a layman untill it's clear for the layman.
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Actually, that gives me an interesting idea for a variation on this theme. Instead of narrated shorts, these could be done as actual dialogues between an expert willing to teach and a layman who wants to learn. Different experts for different areas and for each area to be covered we'd have to find a layman who knows almost nothing about it, but it might work.

Of course, this idea just came to me now, so there may be numerous problems with it that I just can't see, but I figured I'd put it out there.
 
qarnos said:
Blutoski, I am not familiar with the resources you mentioned, so I can't comment on them specifically. I'd just add that most "average joe" types probably haven't heard of these resources either, whereas almost everyone is aware of youtube. I'm thinking of the type of person who might, on a whim, decide to search for relativity on youtube.
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I think that's one of the problems with the eyeball competition evident on the internet. Most people I know don't use youtube - it's not easy to save videos for offline viewing. Wikiversity is part of Wikipedia, iTunesU is the collaboration between iTunes and MIT, UC, and Stanford to do exactly what you're proposing - free, DRM-free, video lecture modules on basic and advanced science topics that can be downloaded and viewed on any device.

We've been doing this at BCSkeptics for years, although it's been in VHS until maybe the mid-90s. We're undertaking a project to digitize the older material into masters, from which we make lower-quality quicktime or windowsmedia distributions for download or snailmail.

I think one major drawback to YouTube is that it's a bit limited in distribution options. I'm not sure it has a significant finder advantage over, say, google, to compensate. There's also a risk that it could become a fad and be eclipsed (consider all those clubs that established themselves on Friendster, then moved to MySpace, and now have to also maintain a Facebook presence too), and you'd be committed to either abandoning old links or maintaining multiple sites.

OTOH, if you preserve high-quality originals, you can both post them on a dedicated website in multiple formats and additionally post them on YouTube. The question is about either committing to maintaining multiple networking sites as popularity shifts versus just building a permanent location and relying on google.
 
Yiab said:
Actually, that gives me an interesting idea for a variation on this theme. Instead of narrated shorts, these could be done as actual dialogues between an expert willing to teach and a layman who wants to learn. Different experts for different areas and for each area to be covered we'd have to find a layman who knows almost nothing about it, but it might work.

Of course, this idea just came to me now, so there may be numerous problems with it that I just can't see, but I figured I'd put it out there.
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The discussion-as-lesson is a very old tradition, actually! From Aristotle to Galileo. Just don't name the student 'Simplicio'.
 
blutoski said:
The discussion-as-lesson is a very old tradition, actually! From Aristotle to Galileo. Just don't name the student 'Simplicio'.
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Yes, and I'd rather not wind up executed either, but I was bringing it up more regarding its utility as a mode of meeting the particular goal of this project than as a method of instruction in general.
 
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