Ways to bring videos into your elearning mix

Videos are a great way to learn and a popular means as well - take a look at YouTube and you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. I feel that there are at least three effective ways of using standalone video for elearning and I'd like to share them with you today.

Distribute videos with Chapter Markers

In a previous post, I've talked about how important it is to break up your learning into small pieces that tell you "How to...". If you're distributing downloadable videos, then its perhaps a little annoying for people to have to download each "How to..." individually. So one of the tricks I like to use to create movies with chapter markers. This way your learners can skip to the content that's most relevant to them, without having to browse through and download multiple videos.

Use YouTube

I'm really excited about the fact that at ThoughtWorks, we're going to have our own YouTube installation. I believe the Google Apps suite is well worth the investment for your company. That said, I think sharing videos on the regular YouTube is a great idea. You could go ahead and create a playlist on YouTube and share your videos individually too with your learners. Also, YouTube generates embed codes that you can put into your LMS. Given people's familiarity with the tool, it makes a great place to put up your videos.

Generate a podcast

A podcast is nothing but a blog with media files (audio/video) in each post. If you add itpc instead of http on your RSS feed, it adds directly to iTunes and your learners can access all the media files off their iPhone or computer. Its the ultimate flexibility in terms of being able to learn offline; while on the train, in the bus, or while at home or over lunch. There's always time for that short tutorial.

I'm sure there are other ways to share video using Web 2.0 technology. Do let me know what other techniques you've used for this purpose. Hope you enjoyed this short post.