[pittendrigh]

I'm a born again youtube addict. Woodworking and photo editing are two of my favorite hobbies. I learn new skills almost on a daily basis. At youtube. There are other video sites too but youtube is, for better or for worse, the most skills-instruction oriented.

I'm 70. After retina surgery I can only read with a tablet now, or on my big 32" inch desktop monitor. So I spend a lot of time there.

In the instructional world what is missing most is a hybrid sexual cross between youtube and kindle-mobi-epub-playbooks. The technology is mostly there. Epub3 supports embedded video but the readers mostly don't.

And to the extent hand held readers do support embedded video that genre is still fundamentally flawed because video files are too big to download and store on a hand held device. Text in the hand married to video on the server is one obvious way to make this happen. But most readers intentionally do not support external video, perhaps for security reasons. Why is not that important. That it is not supported is the point.

Another way to do this would be to have web server software that displays epub3, that also has the ability to expand clickable links into live video, inside the current epub page.

If you want to learn how to cook a steak you can learn on youtube now. But if you want to learn how to cook for a living you need books. You need an online course that marries books with live video. That capability doesn't really exist yet. But it should.

Does anybody think otherwise? It amazes me something so obvious and so powerful is staring everybody in the face. And yet it still isn't happening. And why isn't clear.

Ok. Flame away. Or do you agree?

PS: one final post script note, emphasizing the the instructional context. To read Moby Dick you don't need video. I'm talking about how to teach complex skills. If you want to learn how to build a boat without getting a job as a boat builder's apprentice, a combination of the written word married to bits and pieces of live video is the way to go. This is technology in its infancy that will I think, flood like a broken dam once it starts to flow.