What Is A Video E-Book?

Last year, I had the dream of creating a learning tool that was like no other that I had ever seen. I didn't have a word for it, so I thought of it as a "Video E-book". Now, videos and e-books have been around for a while. In fact, many instructors have done a great job at combining these two emerging media into a complementary training package. But until now, combining these two training methods meant:

• Providing the learner with multiple files they had to manipulate to take advantage of the training
  
  
• Or often utilizing proprietary software to make the two technologies work together.
  

My idea was to create a single file based on common technology that allowed me to bring these two training methods together. Fortunately for me, that was the time that Adobe upgraded their Acrobat Reader and their Flash movie player to allow this to happen.

With the Acrobat Reader and the Acrobat Flash Player available for free and being an industry standard, it meant that I could create the "Video E-Book" training in a way that hid the technology under the hood. Users could simply download a single file to take advantage of this new training media.

So, what is my idea of a "Video E-Book"? Quite simply, it's a PDF e-book that has instructional training videos embedded right in it. When you read about opening a Social Oomph account to help you schedule your Twitter tweets, you can watch a video of someone scheduling tweets on Social Oomph just by clicking on the video right in the e-book.

No external links.
No folders of videos to link to the e-book.
No special proprietary programs to download.

It was important to me that technology aided people in learning, not get in the way. That's why, when I release Conducting Effective Twitter Contests on Monday, I am releasing a learning platform that you will most likely be unfamiliar with.

True "Video E-books" as I described just don't exists yet. At least, I am not familiar with them, and most marketing experts I am working with on this launch have not seen anything quite like it. But it's my belief now that the technology is readily available, "Video E-Books" will start to become more and more commonplace. After all, they take advantage of the time honored learning principle created by Edgar Dale, a U.S. educationist who developed the famous Cone of Experience. Dale said that we:

• Remember 10% of what we read
  
• Remember 20% of what we hear
  
• Remember 30% of what we see
  
• Remember 50% of what we see and hear.
  

Conducting Effective Twitter Contests, my first "Video E-book," takes advantage of the way we learn by combing multiple avenues of learning. You can see a quick visual of Dale’s cone from the University of Iowa's website here:

Cone of Experience

So, when you hear me use the term "Video E-book", this is what I mean. If you are an author or marketer, I suggest that you take a look at this new technology. In my opinion, multimedia is the future of education and the "Video E-book" is one great application of the technology available to us.

Already, marketers are starting to become proficient in providing training via webcasts, podcasts, teleseminars, videos, Internet radio, and mp3 recordings. These are all related siblings in the multimedia era we live in. The true beneficiary of this new technology is the recipient of the training, especially if we don't allow the technology to get in the way.

Where is the future of training headed? Who knows? But based on where it has come so far, I am excited to find out.

Tony Eldridge