Modernizing Learning Content

I always get bad reactions when I talk about educational material in private TV. And I must say that this is mostly true, especially with stuff like this happening (on History TV…). But in general TV is a bad place to learn things and yet it has a very strong point in its favor: Animations and video footage.

And yet, I wonder, we today have tools like computers and the internet and there still isn’t much well done learning material available for adults. Yes, there are a myriad of content sites aimed at children (especially the younger ones) but not all of them are truly educational (fact-based) and the ones that might be educational often have design issues.

There are several attempts by people to educate via youtube videos (yet there you have to believe that someone checked them for accuracy) but the major players of the education industry have yet to show that they can truly use the medium.

My idea is to integrate animations, videos and stuff as floating elements in a text. The option to read aloud the text is of course obligatory. This would be a true use of multi-media content in the new “age” of world wide web. And let aside things like Wikipedia and Encarta, which are already first steps, though Wiki is notoriously weak on displaying media-content on a one-page basis and Encarta is notoriously weak on performance and adaptability.

First of all, the content should be mobile-compatible, because mobile internet access is one of the fastest growing economic niches that exist. Secondly, you have to integrate sources to validate your articles at the end of an article. Third, you should arrange media content next to the appropriate paragraphs. Fourth, for every article a wiki-like TOC should be included and a newspaper-style summary is a must.

Your product should be available (as pay-for content?!) on the web, for mobile phones (see above) and on amazon-market, itunes and android-marketplace to ensure a broad availability and accessibility.

Will this provide instant success, I don’t know but I’d like to see it made and perhaps even based on wikipedia-content. You could charge for media-content though…