Analysis of MIT YouTube channel

http://www.youtube.com/user/MIT#p/a

A faculty committee of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) proposed in 2000 to launch a program called “Open Course Ware” (OCW); the idea was to publish online MIT teaching materials and course content, and make it widely available to everyone for free.

With the help of some benefit foundation, MIT started its OCW program which had a big success: just in the following four years since the launch of the operation, the OCW materials have been accessed by 35 millions individuals from more than 220 different countries.

There are also more than 100 mirror site, locally hosted version of the OCW site, settled in low-bandwidth areas, especially in South Africa, were people have problems to found money for instruction.

The channel contains simulation, animation and videos of classroom lessons, in total there are 1800 different courses available. Other organization have worked for translate courses in other language, including Spanish, Chinese, Portuguese and Thai.

This open sharing initiative became an example and a model for other research institute, today there are more than 250 universities around the world who are doing their personal open course ware.

In the left column of the page we can find information about the website and the project itself. I think that it’s a very important social initiative, that’s going to have a big impact on the world of information and knowledge, empowering minds of thousands of people.

Lorenzo Rosso