Last week I attended a projection of a Breezecast at the LA Flash factory. If you had overheard the sessions, you wouldn't have been impressed. Basically, this guy hemmed and hawed and digressed and clicked happily away as he wrote some Flex-related php code.
Strange thing is, it was the best presentation of code I'd ever seen. Both because underlying his rambling monologue was a methodical mind, and because the format was perfect: he was DOING and EXPLAINING at once.
His success got me thinking:
1) This educational technique is underused. Perhaps with the proliferation of Captivate and other screen-capture technology it might even go behind explaining program-focused curriculum (learning Photoshop). Perhaps there might be a way to create excellent videos that can be proctored (the proctor writes code or answers questions during the session). And perhaps the medium for this format would be…Flash.
2) Voice has an odd quality. It can mix with anything…music, painting, reading…it's the kind of peanut gallery that accompanies everyone's world, tracing the thoughts trying to make sense of it. So, for instance, I think voice+pics generally works better than text+pics. With voice, you don't have to GO AWAY from the thing you are learning, whether a program or a back swing or whatever (a singing lesson?).
Here is a 3d-based site, my old ad agency, that gives you verbal instruction after a nearly unforgiveable splash page.
I wish in this case that the graphics of the site itself moved more in synch with the voice (go HERE, do it LIKE THIS). As it is, voice loses its mix-in potency and becomes a kind of spoken text.
