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I know we're talking about kids here, but as an adult, I'm not a video learner. I need written material (with good examples, usually) to really learn something.

I know we're talking about kids here, but as an adult, I'm not a video learner. I need written material (with good examples, usually) to really learn something. I need to read to understand and then apply and be able to check what I'm doing against a crop of known good implementations. The trend in learning, like Frontend Masters, while amazing for what it is, its all video, and I'm finding people are putting out more and more video to teach topics, and less and less written works to teach stuff, and I'm getting more and more frustrated at this, as it takes me longer to digest videos than written materials. I don't know how anyone learns to become a developer from just watching videos and doing exercises, my pace would be that of a snail. And yes, I get that everyone learns differently, but us who learn best from reading are being left out in the cold.

opportune 3y ago
Oh, completely agree. Same with podcasts honestly. I can consume the content way faster, search and skim more easily, determine relevancy in a flash with text vs video. It’s why I have no interest in TikTok and never developed the YouTube addiction that seems so common among tweens. Bringing it back to kids, I realized you could draw some parallels to TV. The thing about TV is that you had much fewer choices in what to watch and it was harder to “hide” from your parents compared to smartphone videos - if your parents thought something was stupid they could just overhear it and make you turn it off more easily than the smartphone equivalent. Also, with TV the branding is usually not done on the e-celeb/individual level, it’s more show-based branding, so it’s a little less tilted towards parasocial content. There are a few things driving this trend towards video I think, one is that a lot of consumers now are less literate/educated than would be on the internet in the past, as well as younger with poorer reading skills - video has relatively more demand vs text. The other is that videos are easier to monetize and from what I understand have higher paying ads.
- no_wizard 3y ago
  I'd also argue to some degree, that video is easier to produce well vs the written word. Its a lot harder to become a block buster author than it is to become a block buster video feed producer, in my observation. You're right the continuing trend of less and less "serious" readers continues unabated as it has for decades
arp242 3y ago
This has been an on-going (escalating) trend for a while; over 20 years ago the short-lived sketch show Bruiser already did a parody of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qb_dIsnDJGk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qb_dIsnDJGk And it pretty much matches my experience in school at the time. You could also see this with school books, where the older books were "serious" and the newer ones "fun". I also find it rather funny that the "Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong"[1] that was mentioned in another thread is only available as a podcast, and isn't a written story (there's a transcript, but it's very hard to follow). [1]: https://features.apmreports.org/sold-a-story/ https://features.apmreports.org/sold-a-story/
- no_wizard 3y ago
  I'm reading the transcripts of this, and I do find it interesting. Linear presentation of transcripts makes it hard to follow sometimes but these are good enough that I was able to follow mostly without issue. I think, to be completely honest, this right here is the summary of the problem with education in the United States: >Who thinks about that? I don’t know how to teach a child how to read, so I just assumed that the children I sent to school would come back to me literate. Cause that’s what school does, right? Parents, even well meaning ones, just not digging into what it is there kids are doing in the classrooms, not really investing in learning on a high level how the kids are learning and its effectiveness. If more parents cared about that, I think we'd have way better schools on the whole

opportune 3y ago

Oh, completely agree. Same with podcasts honestly. I can consume the content way faster, search and skim more easily, determine relevancy in a flash with text vs video. It’s why I have no interest in TikTok and never developed the YouTube addiction that seems so common among tweens. Bringing it back to kids, I realized you could draw some parallels to TV. The thing about TV is that you had much fewer choices in what to watch and it was harder to “hide” from your parents compared to smartphone videos - if your parents thought something was stupid they could just overhear it and make you turn it off more easily than the smartphone equivalent. Also, with TV the branding is usually not done on the e-celeb/individual level, it’s more show-based branding, so it’s a little less tilted towards parasocial content. There are a few things driving this trend towards video I think, one is that a lot of consumers now are less literate/educated than would be on the internet in the past, as well as younger with poorer reading skills - video has relatively more demand vs text. The other is that videos are easier to monetize and from what I understand have higher paying ads.

no_wizard 3y ago
I'd also argue to some degree, that video is easier to produce well vs the written word. Its a lot harder to become a block buster author than it is to become a block buster video feed producer, in my observation. You're right the continuing trend of less and less "serious" readers continues unabated as it has for decades

arp242 3y ago

This has been an on-going (escalating) trend for a while; over 20 years ago the short-lived sketch show Bruiser already did a parody of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qb_dIsnDJGk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qb_dIsnDJGk And it pretty much matches my experience in school at the time. You could also see this with school books, where the older books were "serious" and the newer ones "fun". I also find it rather funny that the "Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong"[1] that was mentioned in another thread is only available as a podcast, and isn't a written story (there's a transcript, but it's very hard to follow). [1]: https://features.apmreports.org/sold-a-story/ https://features.apmreports.org/sold-a-story/

no_wizard 3y ago
I'm reading the transcripts of this, and I do find it interesting. Linear presentation of transcripts makes it hard to follow sometimes but these are good enough that I was able to follow mostly without issue. I think, to be completely honest, this right here is the summary of the problem with education in the United States: >Who thinks about that? I don’t know how to teach a child how to read, so I just assumed that the children I sent to school would come back to me literate. Cause that’s what school does, right? Parents, even well meaning ones, just not digging into what it is there kids are doing in the classrooms, not really investing in learning on a high level how the kids are learning and its effectiveness. If more parents cared about that, I think we'd have way better schools on the whole