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YouTube, an online video sharing website launched back in 2005, is one of the greatest success stories of the digital era. What started only as a technical experiment carried out by three friends who came up with an idea during a dinner party, has become a global phenomenon over the past few years, massing “well over a billion views a day” worldwide.

YouTubes’ latest innovation, YouTube EDU, was made public in the first quarter of 2009. It is a facility which allows educational institutions to build a business presence on YouTube by sharing educational videos of a longer length than those generally allowed for upload.

This month, Adam Smith College became the first UK Further Education Institution to be granted a full YouTube EDU presence. This achievement gives Adam Smith College an open and accessible portal to deliver video content regarding College events, promotions and most importantly, learning. Visitors to the channel can watch anything from cooking to how to conduct a meeting, assembling a circuit board and dealing with mail merging; there is a wide variety of video content available to suit different interests.

Early adopters of this platform currently delivering video content via YouTube are mostly American institutions. Adam Smith College is amongst the first 10 educational institutions in the UK to be enrolled and it is the second in Scotland just behind Edinburgh University.

The determination of the people behind the development of new learning technology initiatives at Adam Smith is influencing the direction of eLearning in the UK and the College is now seen as a leading institution in their industry, ready to face the challenges of the 21st century.