I've been creating videos for my mathematics students for a long time. I've used Camtasia and Captivate. The problem is that I exported all these videos to Flash and didn't worry about the dimensions of the videos.
Now it appears that Flash is dying. I'm now using Youtube. Youtube will make sure that its videos will be playable on every device. My hesitation in using your site is what happens if the site gets shutdown? Do I lose the videos? Will they be in a format that can be exported to another service? Is there a self hosting option? I couldn't tell from the main page and didn't sign up for an account.
Congrats Nick and David, I'm thoroughly amazed by how much progress you guys have made. For those who didn't realize, this is the Thiel-funded team behind OPEN (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2582803), who have done a huge amount of work since their initial splash page launched on HN.
Feature idea: The Stanford ML class videos ( http://www.ml-class.org/course/video/preview_list ) had a really cool feature -- superspeed viewing, which allows you to watch the video lesson at 1.2x or 1.5x speed. This is great if you want to quickly skim through the content.
I second this. Video time dilation is a very important and underused feature. Students can make it work themselves if they can download the videos to play in VLC player, but it'd be better if it was built in. I had a hard time staying engaged with Khan Academy at 1x - he goes too slowly for me - but 1.8x was perfect. High speeds are also good for review and for checking over videos after they're made. Depending on the speaker, the student and the subject, the ideal speed can be anywhere from 0.5x-2.5x, so allowing continuous adjustment is important.
Same here. One of the core reasons that I still download the Daily Show with BitTorrent, even though the episodes are freely available on the Daily Show's web site, is that I've gotten used to getting Jon Stewart's jokes at 1.25x speed, and the web site doesn't let me speed it up.
"Students can watch Tablo lessons at home. No need to lecture in the classroom."
I'm not a teacher, but I imagine some portion of them would be offended by the "no need to lecture" bit. I know exactly what you mean, having watched the Khan Academy TED talk, but it might not come off the way you meant it to.
Teachers don't want to hear that their classroom teaching time is or could be made unnecessary. Instead, emphasize good things they can do with classroom time that's freed up: More time for discussion, activities, and individual attention.
I co-founded Academy123 (2003). We licensed our product to AOL and we were acquired by Discovery Education (2006).
We did the very same thing: an online education platform for the rapid development and delivery of multimedia content.
In about 18 months, we enabled hundreds of math teachers to work from home and record 50,000 mini-videos (2-3 minutes in length) aligned with the most commonly-used textbooks in the U.S.
Lessons are defined as one object. Lessons are often bite size bits of customized content to meet the needs of your audience. These are not really lessons, they are preached pieces of content with a static audience in mind..
There are various video creating, editing and sharing websites already available for teachers. Most content of much value ends up on youtube exclusively.
Disclaimer: I work in this field (tech in edu)
Wish them the best though :) Integrate Etherpad for more real time collabo ;) Would be great to have a time slider running along side the video to give more context / detail =)
The audio quality on the video could be better. I'd also lazy load the video after all the other assets have loaded. Just give it an image of the video before it loads.
Before even digging in to the site, love the name.
Looks like a fantastic idea, would love to see how educators take advantage of it. A word of advice: I have FlashBlock on, and I had no idea how to use the interactive lesson. Plus, a giant Flash element appeared at the bottom of the page. Might want to add some kind of info for users without Flash so they understand what they need to use the site.
Good idea. Until HTML5 Device steps up it's game, Flash is the only way to record audio, leading to some very strange bugs and that annoying dialog box.
I actually had trouble watching the terminal velocity video on the front page. On an OSX 10.7.2. The video won't start. Could be something on the video though.
This is an outstanding product. I can easily see it letting non-technical teachers have their own Kahn Academy.
Any plans to let teachers share or sell lessons/lectures with one another?
I experienced some bugginess submitting forms with the unit name clearing my entry.
Is it possible to embed videos on external sites?
Only thing I dislike is how dull and drab the sample lesson is. I'd actually use it to teach (or re-teach) some concept that the audience is likely to remember.
Now it appears that Flash is dying. I'm now using Youtube. Youtube will make sure that its videos will be playable on every device. My hesitation in using your site is what happens if the site gets shutdown? Do I lose the videos? Will they be in a format that can be exported to another service? Is there a self hosting option? I couldn't tell from the main page and didn't sign up for an account.