Canal U

Canal U is a Francophone digital video database for higher education teaching. It is produced and financed by the Ministry of High Education Learning and Research of France since 2000. It features around 3,000 pedagogical titles which can be accessed gratuitously.

Its search engine gives the options Theme, Discipline and Level. One can also search alphabetically by producer or filmmaker.
Perhaps ominously, the website warns “Streaming technology demands Internet access for one to be able to watch the videos.” A realistic yet perverse bit of information to read after having watched a medical video on conjunctivitis and Chlamydia-stricken patients in Mali. We can see them, they cannot see us.

The idea of virtual interactivity in France can easily be thought as anathema, since its entire educational system is rooted in the notion of the educator as the untouchable sage and the student as the attentive note-taker. More often than not, university students are unable to obtain their professors’ email addresses, so it makes one wonder what kind of usage Canal U would find in practice. A modern-looking tool that could only glaze over but not change the basic premises of a system so conventionally structured? Considering the main point in the University of Paris - Sorbonne's web statement of initiatives for digital learning is "to guarantee wireless access in its campuses" (a given in higher ed American institutions), it makes one wonder how much usage Canal U may get in situ.