mediajunk

I'm a great believer in life-long learning. The ability to learn fast is one of the greatest assets an individual -- or company -- can have these days.

Recently, I've been taking an online video course in PHP. It's not an interactive class; nor is it Scorm-compliant (an eLearning standard) or anything so fancy.

It's just a CD-sized bundle of files (though I purchased the course electronically), with a series of desktop videos. I hear the lecturer speaking without seeing him, and I watch his cursor move across the screen as he clicks on his Dreamweaver application. So, as eLearning technology goes, this is pretty low-grade.

But it works -- mainly because the lectures are quite good, and well structured. There are no exercises but the package comes with accompanying PHP code samples.

I had learned the basics of programming in C from a book some years ago, and I also have a grasp of the rudiments of PHP, so that's all helping me follow along with these lectures. If you were an absolute beginner, I'd say it might be too tricky. But that's a criticism of the quality of the lectures rather than the quality of the medium.

Overall though, it's a great feeling to be learning "virtually". Yes, I've seen and even worked on many more sophisticated eLearning products (we did a lot of work for examsupport.ie last year, for example). But becoming a student again has made me realise that e-learning works. My understanding of PHP has already improved significantly, and I'm only one-third of the way through.

Tags: elearning, online video, PHP