The worst thing about online learning is that everything has become a video.

[jwcph@helvede.net]

@Daojoan Absolutely agree. To everyone making tutorials, DON'T START WITH YOUR LIFE STORY!, just get to the point.

It should be noted that they got it from somewhere; user manuals are also almost always paragraphs or pages of barely subject-adjacent slog before getting to anything the the thing does & even then it's somehow over- & underexplained at the same time.

There's a reason teaching is something you train for; it's actually pretty difficult to do well.

[till@ubuntu.social]

@Daojoan I am posting news about my work at #OpenPrinting regularly and did already for more than 5 years.

I intentionally do this as a written blog and not as videos, as on the blog you can search text, easily navigate, you can copy example code and paste, auto translators work better on written than on spoken text, same for accessibility tools ...

Or do you prefer watching an old graybeard talking, and for those who want video, I get interviewed here and then.

News and Events

Making Printing Just Work.

OpenPrinting (openprinting.github.io)

[npars01@mstdn.social]

@Daojoan

The video is interrupted by an advertisement every few minutes. Very irritating.

[oisin@mastodon.ie]

@Daojoan I so much dislike this fact, stopping and starting and going back over the video, the irritations like voice tone and speed, the digressions and emotional notes, ugh, please, just express the knowledge in clearly written form.

[stevefenton@mastodon.social]

@Daojoan

"How to save your Google Doc"

00:00 Why digital files need to be saved
07:24 A history of save icons
23:32 Formats used by different office tools
31:56 Famous errors caused by not saving files
58:45 Saving files in Google Docs

And all to say "they save automatically".

Like and subscribe!

[silviavont@bolha.us]

@Daojoan it sure does look like that a lot of times, you are right. Awful...

[luc0x61@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@Daojoan That is so true. I believe it's all about two factors, the easier "stream of thought speaking" (against writing a correct text) and the desire to show off themselves, before any technical content

[autiomaa@mementomori.social]

@earthshine @passenger @Daojoan Similar problems with Slack based communities, because "free" version actively hides and deletes older posts after a certain amount of time.

[ftranschel@norden.social]

@passenger @earthshine @Daojoan Well yes and no - since the knowledge wasn't accessible in the traditional sense anyways, the informational margin is suprisingly slim imo.

[ftranschel@norden.social]

@Npars01 @Daojoan There are browser extension for at least this problem. And they work well.

[peacegiverman@mastodon.social]

@sophiarose @Daojoan I’ve found that Firefox’s picture-in-picture mode works really well in cases like this. Usually, it tricks the page that it still has focus, so the video keeps playing, but even if stops, you can resume it with PiP controls.

[mavu@mastodon.social]

@Daojoan but on the plus side: you can use the YouTube "ai" to turn the video into a longer-winded text full of errors!

[jimkennedy@mas.to]

@Daojoan and the first two minutes telling you how "we're gonna jump right into it."

[mark_f_lynch@mastodon.ie]

@Daojoan all compounded by the fact that the vast majority of people uploading instructional videos are *monumentally fucking shit* at instructing. Teaching is a skill, and most people who try to do it just leave you wanting to punch them repeatedly for being so obliviously bad at it

[haverholm@radikal.social]

@Daojoan Very much agree. I'm a visual person, but in the sense that I scan a well organised text much, much faster than a rando with a webcam can explain it.

[sophiarose@hachyderm.io]

@peacegiverman @Daojoan I tried that. The javascript on the site must have been polling focus because a few seconds after restarting playback, it would pause again! At which point it was "right, this is war. I will not be beaten!" Thankfully, it was an unprotected mp4 file, so trivial to feed into vlc

[photo55@mastodon.social]

@Daojoan I like the use of #video as very short clips embedded in a text narrative or instructions, along with still #photographs.
As used by the @bbc in the early days of the Web.
Stills are often best for showing which part is where, video is a good way to see how someone skilled does a particular tricky move, words convey #structuredinformation, and best printed.

[elricofmelnibone@mastodon.social]

@Daojoan I blame the platforms (Coursera, Udemy, etc). They all enable mediocre quality video peddlers to make a fair amount of money.

A course-creation/monetization platform that didn't rely on video would probably be beneficial.

[bubblegumyeti@mastodon.social]

@Daojoan true. I wouldn't mind so much if they didn't pad it out so much with useless ramblings just to stretch the useful bit.

[csstrowbridge@mastodon.social]

@Daojoan

Or if you do find a written tutorial, it's written by AI, so you can't trust it.