Hey guys!
My name is Alex Nickel and I run an educational YouTube channel called Technicality
Today, I'm here on The Road to Nerdfighteria to tell y'all how I found this amazing community.
So, just before we start, for reference, I am currently off school because of summer.
I just completed my freshman year of high school, and I'm flying towards my sophomore
year.
Anywho, now jump back to fourth grade.
I can't tell you what year it was because my mind works in grades. *laughs*
It's my fourth grade year, and my friends and I were obsessed with any little
toy we could find.
Like, for example, there was this angry birds eraser, we loved them and would always collect them
We went through this little eraser phase, and then we moved on to an origami phase.
We loved making things outta paper, a matter of fact, I still have some of the paper we
used back in the day to make origami.
Yeah. Major throwback right here.
One day during this origami phase, my good friend, Joseph, came in with a hexaflexagon,
and I was just blown away.
It was so cool and so mind blowing.
So I asked him how he made it, and he pointed me to this channel...
Vi Hart.
Vi Hart, of course, if you don't know, is a mathemusician who used to make videos
all about math and sometimes music for her YouTube channel with the same name, however,
currently, she uploads only once or twice a year, for she is now working at eleVR, a non-profit
dedicated to researching VR and AR technologies.
She still, however, maintains a strong cult following including people like myself.
Vi Hart, if you're watching this, you have inspired me and affected my life in ways beyond anything
I can be thankful for.
But it's worth a shot: Thank You.
Also, please subscribe!
One of the most notable ways she's affected Technicality is voice speed.
I love talking fast and that's probably from Vi.
Just listen to the first couple seconds of her most recent video.
[Vi]: It's eleVRs when your anniversary is being hosted by y-combinator research, and we wanted to commemorate the occasion by looking past on some of the projects we've been working on in the past year.
Man, I love it!
Anywho, from there, I was introduced to Michael Stevens.
Yes, I was around when the outro for Vsauce videos was still...
[Nostalgic Vsauce outro music]
Remember that?
I was obsessed with Vsauce and Michael's curiosity of the world.
As I continued through and finished elementary school, I kept finding more and more educational
YouTubers.
You know, Veritasium, SmarterEveryDay, Brady & Grey, etc.
A matter of fact, the summer leading up to my sixth grade year, I literally watched all
of Minute Physics.
Like, from first video to last video.
Yeah
I think I also binged Grey that summer.
One day at lunch in the middle of sixth grade, I was watching an ASAPscience video in one of my school's
science classrooms, when my science teacher at the time, Ms. Flores, knowing my love of educational
YouTubers, said, "Hey, Alex, you should check out this video from a channel called SciShow."
So I watched a video hosted by Hank Green, and from the moment I heard the "Dun-Da-Duuu!"
(scishow opening credits), I was hooked.
From there, I found CrashCourse and Mental Floss and Vlogbrothers, and the rest is history.
Actually, it's not, I still have two more anecdotes: One: there was one summer when I attempted to watch
all of the Vlogbrothers videos.
I failed, and only got through about the first two years.
However, I did absorb basically all the videos I watched, and I proved myself when I did
the collab with Matt from Conjecture about Bruce Springsteen.
If you go back and watch the video, you'll notice that in the first couple seconds I use a clip of John from an early
Vlogbrothers video, and, when making the video, I didn't look that up!
I knew exactly where I could find the quote, and I just pulled it up, offhandedly.
Two: I want to give another huge shoutout to my science teacher at the time, Crista Flores,
for really encouraging that I watch all of these Educational YouTube videos.
Of course, she introduced me to the Vlogbrothers themselves, but on top of that, she did one
more thing: Essentially, how my science class in sixth grade worked was we didn't have any
assigned homework, but we had to get a minimum of about one hundred science points.
You could earn science points from doing a variety of things, like robotics or experimentation,
but my preferred method was this: TED Talks.
You could get two points for every TED Talk you watched.
So, after watching many of them, I found the TED-Ed YouTube channel.
Ms. Flores let me get the two science points for each TED-Ed video I watched, and then
I was like.
Hey.
Hey.
So, uh, if I watch any educational YouTube video, can I get science points for that?
And she said yes!
So essentially, I was watching Physics Girl for my science homework.
And it was awesome.
I ended breaking the science points record that year, and I got about 1,500 points, which
blew away the old record clean outta the water.
A matter of fact, my record was only broken last year.
By literally allowing me to watch educational Youtube videos for homework, Ms. Flores ignited my passion for online educational
video, and that flame burns bright today.
By the way, you can follow her on Twitter, if you want.
Hopefully this video is less than four minutes. If not, I guess punish away.
DFTBA, thanks for watching, check out my channel, Technicality, and explore on.
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