The other night, I watched the movie Accepted.  Its a teenage centered flick about a bunch of kids that couldn’t get accepted at mainstream colleges so they fake a college acceptance letter from a fake school, then in order to keep from being discovered build a school (South Hampton Institute of Technology … *smirk*).

They end up having a big white board installed where the students can write what they’d like to learn this semester.  And it up having a high old time doing what every other college seems to do (i.e. party, drink, dance, play loud music…) and find out they learn something in the end. 

Quoting the movie’s climatic speech by Bartleby (Justin Long, aka I’m a Mac) during the fake schools accreditation hearing:

…But out of that desperation, something happened that was so amazing. Life was full of possibilities. A – and isn’t that what you ultimately want for us? As parents, I mean, is – is that, is possibilities. Well, we came here today to ask for your approval, and something just occurred to me. I don’t give a s#!t. Who cares about your approval? We don’t need your approval to tell us that what we did was real. ‘Cause there are so few truths in this world, that when you see one, you just know it. And I know that it is a truth that real learning took place at South Harmon. Whether you like it or not, it did. …

Pure dreck.. but in a fun and entertaining kinda way.

In a truth-is-stranger than fiction story, Yahoo News has this article:

Pitzer College this fall began offering what may be the first course about the video-sharing site. About 35 students meet in a classroom but work mostly online, where they view YouTube content and post their comments.

Class lessons also are posted and students are encouraged to post videos. One class member, for instance, posted a 1:36-minute video of himself juggling.

…

Jeez, where was this course, when I had to learn FORTRAN from Mech E?