University... Studies... Education...

Expensive... Stressful... Boring...

There's got to be a way to offer students a cheap, exciting and fun education. That's what I told myself as the depressing and monotone voice of my math professor echoed within my ears. I didn't need to listen to this part since he already talked about it yesterday, and was just doing a quick and useless recap. I was already half asleep when he moved on to the next chapter, but this was also familiar. As it turned out, I had already learned about this lesson last year, but because not everyone had taken the same courses I had, the teacher was forced to repeat it. I dozed off for about 40 min, which seems impossible due to the uncomfortable chairs and hard desk. When I woke up, I was pleased to learn that the teacher had almost finished repeating the stuff I already knew and was about to move on to something new. Then he did exactly what I had feared: he asked if anyone had any questions.

'No! No!' I felt like shouting. Come on people, this stuff really isn't that hard, I got an A in the course last year, it's easy, there's really no need to ask questions, right? Wrong. One student lifted his hand, and just as I was about to bang my head on the table, another student followed suite and lifted his hand. Student A went first:

"I didn't really understand the recursive propriety that you talked about earlier."

God have mercy, I thought to myself. Where's the fast forward button when you need it? The teacher re-explained the recursive property for seven minutes, then started talking about the next chapter. 'Yes!' I said, but my joy was too early, as the student B, who had previously lifted his hand, interrupted with his question that the professor had forgotten. Fortunately, this was a shorter question, taking only six minutes to answer. At least now we can get on with the lesson, I thought, looking at my watch to see how much time I had already wasted. 58 minutes?! Oh well, as long as we start n... Wait a second, 58 minutes? No, I can't be. But it was. The first hour was over, and it was time for the 5 min break...

(Just to let you know, you, as the reader, are lucky. You get to skip ahead to see what happens next. I had to wait through the whole 5 minutes, which turned out to be 8 minutes because the teacher felt a bit peckish!)

The professor was back, the class fell silent, let the learning begin. It wasn't that I enjoyed learning so much, nor that I enjoy math so much, but for the amount of money I was forking out every 4 months, I wanted to get something out of it. And I did. The teacher started the next chapter, which turned out to be very interesting

'Wow, that's neat.'

'Hey, that's a much faster way of calculating that.'

'Amazing, why didn't I come up with that?'

I was very pleased with what I was learning, it was a great feeling. And that feeling lasted about a whole 15 minutes. Then my thoughts were:

'Ya, I know, you said that already.'

'Well ya, that's pretty obvious, don't you think?'

'Please don't tell me you need really need this long to calculate that.'

'42, the answer is 42!'

'No, not 46, 42!'

'Yes, now you've got it, not that anyone could tell from that chicken scratch of yours.'

'No, don't you dare ask how he got 42.'

'Don't.'

'D'aahhh!'

And again I was wishing for my fast-forward button. Then, all of the sudden, the things he was saying weren't making sense anymore:

'Huh? How do you figure that?'

'No, that can't be right.'

'What is this guy talking about?'

Then I couldn't take it anymore. I raised my hand.

"Sorry sir, but how can that be? The function is ever increasing, that can't be right."

"That's because we moved on to page 179. Maybe if you paid more attention, you wouldn't waste everybody's time with such stupid comments!"

'Me? Waste their time? Give me a break! You can't pronounce worth a damn and then it's my fault for thinking we're still on the same page. Not to mention the chicken scratch on the chalk board you call letters. I couldn't read a word you wrote if my life depended on it!'

Just as I was thinking up more insults, I felt the sudden need use the bathroom. Remembering my prior need for a fast forward button, I was now wishing for a pause button, but there wasn't one. Only 38 minutes to go, perhaps I can hold it. But as my palms got sweaty and my concentration faded, I realised that was not an option. So I got up, went to the bathroom, came back, and was lost because I had missed three minutes of the class. Because I missed three minutes, the remaining half hour was ruined. And there was no rewind button, just like there was no pause or fast forward button. So I missed out on the rest of the lesson.

Sometime after the lesson, I got home, pissed off at the amount of time I had just lost. I decided to distract myself with my faithful computer. After surfing the net for a while, I stumbled across a series of tutorial videos explaining how to use the immensely complicated Unreal Tournament 3 Editor. For those of you who don't know, it's a program that allows you to create levels and mods for a game called Unreal Tournament 3.

I'm the kind of person who will take something, throw away the instruction manual for it, and play around with it until I figure out how it works. This was the approach I used with the Unreal Tournament 3 Editor, and after an hour and a half of playing with it, I gave up out of frustration. It was simply far too complicated for someone to figure out how it works by just guessing.

So I was interested to see if the tutorial videos were any help. I was amazed to find out that it didn't just help, it was the most fun learning I had ever had. The videos were commentated by two guys who actually spoke English, and who were accompanied by footage of someone using the Editor on a computer. However, it was just the excellence of the videos that made the experience fun, it was also the fact that they actually were videos that I could watch from my home computer. Let me give you a few examples:

The commentators never paused to think about what they should say next. Everything that was written was typed out on the computer. If they accidently started repeating themselves, I could fast-forward. If I missed something they said or didn't fully understand something, I could rewind. I was sitting at my nice desk in my comfy chair, and if I needed to leave it to go to the bathroom, or even to get something to eat, I could just pause the video. If I had enough for one day, I could just stop the video at any point and resume the next day from the same point. If I felt like learning more, I could, since the next tutorial video was ready to be watched. If I forgot how something worked or how to do something, I could re-watch the video segment that explains it instead of trying to re-read my class notes. And because I didn't need to take notes, I could actually pay attention to what the commentators where saying. There was nobody else to ask stupid questions.

There were also no tests, so if I tried something with the Editor and it didn't work, I just tried it again, instead of waiting a few months for the next exam. I also didn't have to travel across town and freeze my ass off in the cold for these lessons. To top it all off, not only was the quality of the lessons vastly superior to the math classes I took in university (which is surprising because math is so much easier than learning to use a very complicated program), it was also free. I can just go to the site and download those tutorial videos for free. And not just me, but everybody in the world can do the same. So, by making tutorial videos and posting them in the internet rather than having actual classes, their lessons are better, more convenient, easier to understand, FREE, and can be used to teach more people than a regular professor could teach in his lifetime.

Now just think, if someone, I don't know, say the GOVERMENT, did this with university courses, it would most likely help students with their studies. More importantly, people whose parents can't afford the ridiculous sums of money required by universities would have a shot at an education. EVERYBODY would have a shot at an education.

I did not write this story to tell you that the people who made the tutorial videos are geniuses, nor to tell you that the education system today is lousy compared to what it could and should be. I'm hoping you'll figure those two things out by yourself. I wrote this story to ask you, the all important reader, a question. Which is more important: knowing how to use an program to make levels for a video game, or the math skills required by every student wishing to pursue a scientific career?

Then why is it so much easier to learn the first one?