> Video is the future, and we're going to be the largest
> creator of educational videos this year.
Oh no. I cannot wait for the video be the past. It may be the best way to teach some things (mainly involving physical activities or physical manipulation of some sort), but for programming topics it most often just waste of time and bandwidth. Why would I want to spend a minute watching someone to type a line of code with all mistypes and corrections, when I can glance it in a second? Why would I want to fiddle with video controls to get replay of particular section when I can reread it much faster whenever I want?
Seriously, I am starting to see this tendency to do anything in video as some sort of DRM
scheme for content sites. I recently unsubscribed from thinkvitamin.com because they started to push everything to video (with annoying intro at the start of each video).
I did check your guitar lessons… Sorry guys, but with "amazing videos" you have you will never ever beat this guy: http://justinguitar.com/ (check out his beginners course or intermediate method; http://www.youtube.com/user/JustinSandercoe ) — take a look if just to see how expert teaching looks like.
I will chose the best over the largest every time.
While the specific claims made by this article are true, they do not change the fact that most educated, especially self educated people have experienced situations where they have repeatedly gained much more knowledge much faster from one particular type of learning experience than they have from others, and that there is widely differing opinion on which type is best.
Now, while this obviously does not vindicate the claims of the people who assert that learning styles must be embodied in the neurology of the learner, it does show that something is going on, and it would be to the benefit of both learners and teachers to find out more about it.
Everyone learns in different ways, there are lots of people who are "viewers", who learn by watching others do something and there are also those who learn by reading about a topic. Both are perfectly acceptable forms of learning, and the drop in bandwidth and hosting costs is enabling those who teach/learn in that way to come to the fore.
I for one wouldn't know anything about Rails without Ryan Bates' Railscasts series or Patrick Lenz's Simply Rails book. Quality videos watching Ryan work through the code, and show notes with the code written is great for some things, and a book is great for others.
As for Jason, sorry to hear about being forced into such a hard decision - I like the direction Mahalo is taking and wish you all the success.
SpeakerText seems to be a solution to address that problem. I know Matt is a user here. I'm sure he can speak to how it could solve that problem better than I can.
I disagree. For me, I would like to see a world where you could press a button and get a transcript of any video for the times when I don't have the time to dedicate but I would also like the video for those times that I do.
The problem with just reading programming things is you're seeing the final product. If you watch the video there is a better chance that you'll see how the person got to that point.
The thing that always annoyed me about Haskell tutorials, for example, was people would put in all this beautiful code but I couldn't ever make it run. In a video they would probably ran it themselves and I would have been able to see the import statements they were using but not putting in the tutorial (this isn't a problem with Haskell literate programming afaik).
You're right - the only times I've used video tutorials is when performing actions in space (video game guides for hidden objects, where pictures aren't enough, and home repair guides where showing how something works in real-time is paramount).
Trying to teach somebody something like programming over video is taking the lazy way out. In my university days some large first-year classes were delivered by video - I never took any, but I'd wager that student transcripts of the talks would have been worth real money.
Seriously, I am starting to see this tendency to do anything in video as some sort of DRM scheme for content sites. I recently unsubscribed from thinkvitamin.com because they started to push everything to video (with annoying intro at the start of each video).
I did check your guitar lessons… Sorry guys, but with "amazing videos" you have you will never ever beat this guy: http://justinguitar.com/ (check out his beginners course or intermediate method; http://www.youtube.com/user/JustinSandercoe ) — take a look if just to see how expert teaching looks like.
I will chose the best over the largest every time.