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My Embarrassing Dermatology Story

2022-06-10 · letter vlog · Hank · 3:50 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Projects (also: Personal life) · mode: Personal essay · tags: self promotion, fundraising ask

Opening with a med student who thanked him for Crash Course after a dermatology check, Hank explains why Crash Course works: starting on YouTube forced it to hold attention cheaply, which focused it on lowering two barriers to learning, access and the difficulty of learning itself. He closes by plugging the last 2022 Crash Course coins.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Hank's yearly dermatology check and the med student who thanked him for Crash Course

  • ★★ Hank says he takes a medicine that raises his risk of skin cancer, so he sees a dermatologist every year; so far it has always gone fine. — 00:00:00
  • ★ Hank recalls that a biopsy of something in his foot once turned out to be pieces of a pine cone he stepped on in high school. (playful) — 00:00:00

00:00:29 — Why Crash Course works: starting on YouTube, the two barriers to learning, and being where students already are

  • ★★ At his latest dermatology visit, a med student who had been in the room thanked him outside for Crash Course; Hank says that feels good every time. — 00:00:29 · Crash Course
  • ★★ Hank says this happens often: yesterday, at a coffee shop with Orin on his first day of summer vacation, two people thanked him for Crash Course, one about to start nursing school. — 00:00:29 · Orin Green, Crash Course
  • ★★ Hank says that when they started Crash Course he hoped it would help students learn but could not have predicted that it would succeed, or why; now he understands why. — 00:00:29 · Crash Course
  • ★★★ Hank says starting Crash Course as YouTubers mattered: on YouTube you compete by grabbing and holding attention, and by doing it inexpensively. — 00:00:58 · YouTube, Crash Course, attention economy
  • ★★ Hank says that on YouTube creators earn 10 to 100 times less per minute of content than on television. — 00:00:58 · YouTube
  • ★★★ Hank says holding attention with educational content means making it really good, and doing it cheaply means cutting everything else; that produced Crash Course's focus on lowering barriers to education. — 00:00:58 · Crash Course, lowering barriers to learning
  • ★★★ Hank names two major barriers to learning: access (cost, availability, acceptance) and the often ignored difficulty of learning itself, since getting complex ideas into heads takes well-trained experts. — 00:01:27 · education
  • ★★ Hank argues that if learning were easy, people would not take out tens of thousands of dollars in student loans to do it. — 00:01:27
  • ★★ Hank says Crash Course lowers the learning barrier by being as good as it can: finding stories, giving context that matters to students, and emulating styles they already like. — 00:01:56 · Crash Course
  • ★★ Hank says Crash Course tackles the access barrier by being free and available to anyone with an internet connection and good English. — 00:01:56 · Crash Course
  • ★ Hank adds that Crash Course has made a course in Arabic and is working on a biology course in Spanish. — 00:01:56 · Crash Course
  • ★★★ Hank says Crash Course is on YouTube because students and teachers already are; instead of selling to school districts and forcing it on teachers, it lets them choose, so it is used only when found useful. — 00:01:56 · Crash Course, YouTube
  • ★★★ Hank says the goal must be to push barriers to learning as low as possible, since they cannot be eliminated, because the human story is about how well we help each other learn. — 00:02:55 · education
  • ★★ Hank says Crash Course reaches many people on a low budget that still costs a lot, and 37% of that budget comes from Patreon and the Crash Course coin. — 00:02:55 · Crash Course, Crash Course coin
  • ★★★ Hank says the coin is minted in Arkansas from hand-engraved dies, and the 10,000-learner coins have sold out. — 00:02:55 · Crash Course coin

00:03:24 — The last 2022 Crash Course coins; sign-off

  • ★★ Hank says the 2022 200-learner coins remain available through this weekend and then never again. — 00:03:24 · Crash Course coin
  • ★★★ Hank asks viewers who want to help Crash Course and have $100 to spare to buy a coin via the link in the description, saying he understands if they cannot. — 00:03:24 · Crash Course coin, Crash Course

In the description and comments

  • ★ In a comment Hank says the 'embarrassing dermatology story' title was there because he needed viewers to click on a video about Crash Course. (playful) — creator comment · Crash Course

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: Crash Course · education · lowering barriers to learning · YouTube

Also: Arkansas · attention economy · Crash Course coin · English language · Orin Green · Patreon · Student loan · television

Also centred on lowering barriers to learning: The Surprising Origin of Crash Course

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