Online video is no longer just fun and games: You might actually learn something.

The University of California at Berkeley said on Tuesday that it is using Google Video to deliver college courses, including lectures and symposia, free of charge, the first university to have its own featured page on Google Video.

The site is at http://video.google.com/ucberkeley, Google Inc. and campus officials said in a statement.

As an initial offering, the university has put up a library of more than 250 hours of video for public viewing. Most of it previously was not available online, Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said in a statement.

Google Video is a comprehensive index of free and paid, user-generated and professional video content.

Visitors will find a half-dozen Berkeley courses in their entirety, including Physics for Future Presidents, Integrative Biology, and Search Engines: Technology, Society and Business, featuring a lecture by Google co-founder Sergey Brin.

Also available will be a range of public events and academic symposia on topics ranging from climate change to synthetic biology. The campus is set to add more material to the Google Video site in coming months, it said.

Coursecasting is a growing trend in educational technology, enabling students and the general public to download audio and video recordings of class lectures to their computers and portable media devices. Berkeley has been offering a limited set of material since 2001.

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