YouTube 101, Just Because

Your first reaction to the news that a college offers a class in YouTube might be to dredge up old "underwater basket-weaving" jokes; learning the school is in California, might be less surprising – after all, Stanford offers a course in Facebook apps.

But the guys that made Google came from there so we cut them some slack.

best 50 colleges by US News & World Report, so they must be doing something right over there.

The Yale Daily News Staff named Pitzer one of the "most artsy schools," too. We'll also assume that to mean a certain, well, unorthodox approach to learning, and that they might not be able to throw a football.

But it's all good…this isn't the Eighties and
Well, I think we're just talking one class here, and not a major…yet. I did take a weight-lifting class in college, and karate, and acting, and one called International Approach to Dress (they called me crazy until they found out it was 49 girls and me in there) – you know, classes to help round out my education.

"Classes: nothing before eleven," says Droz. "Beer: it's your best friend, you drink a lot of it."

What do you do in YouTube class? Well, you study what goes on on YouTube. The students have their own USA Today, but that initial WTF twinge you had wasn't helped any by wondering how posting a video of yourself juggling is a form of study.

But Alexandra Juhasz, a Pitzer of a media studies professor there (couldn't resist), brings up a more compelling reason to study YouTube later in the article: raising issues about "corporate-sponsored democratic media expression."

And that is a big issue. We've got a raging conversation going in the comments section of our article on YouTube struggled with international censorship concerns.

A commentator at TechCrunch by the handle "

it’s absurd to think that academic study should not examine a prominent contemporary phenomenon like youtube. this class may need some fine-tuning, but is sorely needed in our increasingly technological world.

I think Wakarimasen gets it, and most likely Pitzer gets it too. This citizen media thing is important and revolutionary and should be studied, even if users admit, from one of the latest
 
_{*Yes, I'm quoting fictional characters. You got a problem with it? Talk to Ogre from Revenge of the Nerds. "CRITICS!" says Ogre. Get'em Ogre.}