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

[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.

[xs4me2@mastodon.social]

@Daojoan

True…

[aoe@berlin.social]

@Daojoan @sashabilton True. But there are exceptions.

[klausman@mas.to]

@Daojoan
Heartily agreed! While _some_ things benefit from video (like "How do you take apart this thing?", though well made photos do the same), most things really don't need a video and bad voice over.

FWIW, there is this script:

GitHub - obra/Youtube2Webpage: I learn much better from text than from videos

I learn much better from text than from videos. Contribute to obra/Youtube2Webpage development by creating an account on GitHub.

GitHub (github.com)

which converts YT videos to a series of screenshots along with the subtitled text. I have not tried it, so I don't know how well it works.

[post_reader@wehavecookies.social]

@Daojoan
Just right, I hate videos personally: it is heavy, breaks keyword search and version control.
What's even worse, I assume we talk about youtube and tiktok/reels videos.

[hc@mastodon.africa]

@Daojoan and you listen to the annoying video that ultimately doesn't deliver

or, if it does, you have try to rewind to relisten to the relevant bit and always rewind too far,

or you try to take a screenshot of the critical part but are not allowed to.

[femore@mastodon.social]

@Daojoan Really annoying
But luckily I have found an exception for coding:
Codecademy

No video, just text and coding exercises. Directly on their platform. You code following the exercise, it corrects you and you can test yourself directly on their platform

I have a love/hate relationship with them: I love the fact that it is practical, no 30 minute video course, but the pace is really slow.
But if you want to tackle a new topic in coding, it's just great

[mjsberna@infosec.exchange]

@Daojoan
But every information is repeated 5 times, to get the 10 minutes video filled up.
With garbage.

[fenixmaster@mastodon.social]

@Daojoan We should just return to minimal text pages. No beautiful design, just straight to the point information.

[tydalforce@mastodon.world]

@Daojoan A guy I now work with documents internal procedures by linking to YT vids. I'm about ready to rewrite all our wiki pages

[nuko147@mastodon.social]

@Daojoan I dont know if is this or that Discord replaced so many forums, that many problem solving answers and learning material is not searchable or will get lost forever.

[thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io]

@Daojoan No worries, we now have VibeMaster 2000 to transform video tutorials into badly written and half-wrong written guides!

[geospaz@mastodon.social]

@GentlemanTech @Daojoan so much this. I still refuse to listen anyone waffling about when trying to find a simple tech trick, i mute & put cc's on and jump about in a video (if no text-only help available) and when i hit the right keywords start listening.

I thought turning video tutorials to text would be the killer app for "ai" but meh. Maybe I should watch a video on how to vibecode a utube2txt .

[tivasyk@awawa.club]

this. and that (and the love of books in general) drives me to hoard old books like this 800-pager «workout c» sirca 1992. do i need to (re-)learn c? nope. but the thought that i could without having to subject myself to this new internet trend is warming.

[stevendewitt@social.vivaldi.net]

@Daojoan I can't agree more! I in particular do best learning through text and am good at scanning a document quickly to find what I need. I hate watching videos produced by amateurs with annoying speaking habits who spend the whole video drawing imaginary circles with their cursor around the menu item they are talking about!

[pitrh@mastodon.social]

@Daojoan I only recently started realizing that more often than not, people are surprised to find that for the presentations I give, there usually is a full text written version, and that the references are links to actual text resources.