Keyboarding skills: I have used Dance Mat with elementary students. The middle school keyboarding teacher and I both used Sense-Lang this year. I like the online keyboarding skill sites because the students can go to them at home as well as school.
I just laughed to myself when I saw the first topic for the Google search because I had recently decided to knit some socks. I hadn't knit in years and thought I knew what I was doing, but I forgot how to purl. A brief look at a video was all that was needed to refresh my memory. Handy thing to have when my aunt, who taught me to knit, isn't available.
I watched a variety of videos on all three sites. I liked the slide shows on Instructable for something that I would need to go at a slower pace and check back on a prior step. e.g. fixing a faucet. MonkeySee had a video on making Pumpkin Cranberry Nut bread. I didn't want the entire video, just enough to get the recipe and I had to back track twice to get that. If I were a beginning cook and didn't have a clue what was in the recipe I probably would have had to go back five or six times.
On Graspr I watched several videos on origami or at least parts of some. As with most things the quality varied with the producer of the video. One I really didn't like was subtitled and played music. The only way I could have watched the entire thing was to mute the music. One showing how to make a Halloween cat on a broomstick was very well done. The folder stopped at points to show what the shape should look like. It was done by ActivityV out of the UK.
I am going to pass the URL of Khan Academy on to the teachers at school. I think there are many ways they could use them.
My thoughts:
Video how-to sites and How- to books each have their place. If you only have a desktop computer it would be difficult to follow along on a video that showed how to change your spark plug wires. Also if the project you are working on requires frequent referral back to the video, a book or the PDF printouts from Instructable might be handier.
I would see people using the videos for learning activities that could be done at the computer or a quick refresher like my purl stitch.
