The Three-Legged Woman and Other Excursions in Teaching

How I Youtubed my Biology Course

166 p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p howiyoutubedmybiologycourse I’ve been a latecomer to many aspects of the electronic revolution . I was late getting into computers, late getting a high-speed connection, and late getting a cell phone. In this last matter, I bought the cheapest phone I could find, with the cheapest plan. I carried this phone for years, a thick, bulky thing with a bricksize vibrating battery. The rig looked like something the Soviet Union might have produced at the height of the Cold War. Needless to say, I was a latecomer to YouTube. I had heard of it, but in the same way people have heard of Greenland: I knew it existed, but beyond that, almost nothing. Despite this, I kept an open ear when I heard my students exulting over this or that YouTube video. At first, I didn’t know what they were talking about, but everything associated with YouTube seemed to be funny. At least to them: amateur musicians who couldn’t sing, narcoleptic dogs, foul-mouthed toddlers, animal tricks, practical jokes, and farting. If this was what YouTube was all about, I wasn’t missing anything. And then, one evening, I found my ten-year-old son riveted to the computer. I tactfully passed behind him and looked over his shoulder. He was watching a YouTube video on skateboard maintenance. I’m not a skateboarder, and the clip was very unprofessional , but the kid doing the explaining was earnest and knowledgeable. At that moment, although I wasn’t yet aware of it, a seed was planted. I still didn’t have much contact with YouTube in the ensuing weeks. But one day, as I was organizing materials for a lecture on dna, I panicked when I couldn’t find the well-worn video I used to illustrate the workings of this molecule of life. I had only an hour before class, so there was no possibility of ordering another video or finding a library that might have it. And then, well, why How I YouTubed My Biology Course p 167 not give it a try? I went to YouTube and did a search for “dna.” I was rewarded with a cornucopia of video clips on the subject. With my lecture fast approaching, I had nothing to lose. I began to work my way through the videos. The effort was akin to mining diamonds: a lot of rock had to be chiseled out of the way to access the occasional gem. But gems there were. An investment of twenty minutes at the keyboard rewarded me with three precious clips: dna structure, dna replication, and protein synthesis. Exactly what I needed. I bookmarked these and headed for class. After booting up the computer, I commenced my lecture in the usual fashion, introducing dna, holding up a model, and discussing James Watson and Francis Crick, the two scientists who worked out its structure back in the 1950s. And then, seamlessly, as if I were an old hand at it, I turned on the projector, clicked the first YouTube videos, and . . . magic. The clip was only one minute and nineteen seconds long, but the author had produced it with utmost care and professionalism. It showed my students all that I wanted them to know about the structure of this molecule , and in a dynamic, clearly presented manner. What’s more, it was available to all of them on the Web. In my years of teaching there have not been many sea-change moments (the last two were the advent of personal computers and the transition from ditto machines and their sweet-smelling spirit fluid to photocopiers). But this YouTube thing was certainly one of them. I was hooked. For me, it was like discovering a new species. I quickly realized that YouTube was the ticket to rescuing one of my courses that had gone creaky in the joints: marine biology. I taught this course once a year, during the fall semester. One of the major sections involved the marine invertebrates—animals, like jellyfishes and sea urchins, that have no backbone. It’s a massive , diverse group of startlingly beautiful creatures. My students had seen few of them either in the wild or in captivity. I tried to make up for this deficiency by passing around specimens that 168 p m e t h o...