The author of “The Fault in our Stars” novel, recently released as a movie, John Green, has , along with his brother Hank, been producing online learning videos for the YouTube platform called “Crash Course”. They also have had a very popular blog where they are called the “VlogBrothers”.
Partly because of their online presence, and partly because of the novels that John has written, the brothers have a huge fan presence. There’s a term for such fans “Nerdfighters”. Read more about all that here in New Yorker article.
From Wikipedia:
Crash Course was one of the 100 initial channels of YouTube’s $100 million original channel initiative. Having finished earlier courses on Biology, World History, Ecology, English Literature, Chemistry, and United States History, Hank and John Green now teach, respectively, Psychology and Literature.
Crash Course launched a preview on December 2, 2011. As of April 6, 2014, the CrashCourse YouTube channel has earned over 1.5 million subscribers and over 90 million video views.
The Green brothers are featured in all these courses- YouTubes (DLE?)…but neither one are traditional “teachers”, and they have professional help with scripts, and camera work. Of obvious note here is that those 90 million views are not “sponsored or directed” by established educational institutions, and represent to some extent, more or less pure hunger for learning on the part of the viewers. AFAIK.
PSA would like to know what sort of support context might exist among viewers and learners? Do people collaborate during viewing, have discussions? Are there mentors around, or Sherpas?