LIS 9763

One of the things I remember from the Instructional methods course I took a few semesters ago was a presentation we had from a librarian working at Conestoga College.  She walked us through some of the process involved in creating a video tutorial to support a task--say using a particular function in a database.  One of the key things I took away from the presentation was to keep it short.  30-60 seconds.

Now, I could see the point behind her reasoning.  Unlike an in-person presentation where your presence adds some dynamism just by virtue of being a live human being, your audience is waiting with no body language or cues about where you're going.  The odds are stacked against you.  Thus: short and sweet.
 
That's what I was thinking about while watching Georgia Tech ME youtube videos.  "Too long."  "Too long."  But I stopped myself, and asked myself the question I keep bringing  to web 2.0: what's the tool best used for?  Supposedly, this kind of screencasting is exactly it.  So why am I trying to fast-forward these?  The presenter needs a little more rehearsal, but they're not exactly ornate, either.
 
Wanting something to compare to, I went poking around in the Conestoga Online Tutorials.  Notable is the absence of any video tutorials.  This raises the same question.
 
How does the medium serve the purpose?
 
After checking out a bunch of how-to videos, from the somewhat-to-very offensive You Suck at Photoshop (I take no responsibility for the language/subject content of videos on the web) to a great video I refer to when I want to shape a loaf of sandwhich bread, to one I had to watch several times to figure out the oldschool way to shape a kaiser roll.  Sure, the first one has moments of painfully awkward humour, and the second has a cute kid trying to help, but what I'm after is where these are different from the GTME videos.
 
It's all about technique.  The way in which one does something deeply matters.
 
I can read faster than you can talk.  That's something that gets drilled into your head about powerpoint.  There is no ongoing technique to be taught for databases or catalogue.  All interactions are self-contained and discrete.

• Click in the box.
• Enter term.
• Click search

OK, so that's absurdly simple, but you see the point.  Video is not necessarily the best way to walk someone through an electronic tool.  (At least, not to a tech-savvy user like me who has a grounding in searching already--I fully concede that my beef could be because I'm the wrong audience).
 
 The other case studies tended to use youtube in a more traditional sense to host advertising or videos of performers.    Which is fine.  But note that the video with the most views is Superlibrarian.  And oh my, the comments.