Yes, I said FASTER. Since march 2009 when I started my CCNA through my CCNP and now on my CCIE I have wanted FASTER learning. Well, I have at least tackled one part of this problem: Videos.
Yes, videos. More importantly speeding up videos. I have to read and watch a TON of content, which helps keep content fresh but also keeps me from getting bored, always a good thing.
What I do right now is I watch videos at 1.5x the normal speed. If you are watching something like TrainSignal or CBT Nuggets or other material in Microsoft Media player you can try this out yourself.
I am using Windows Media 11, but I believe this feature works on version 10 as well.
Click on "Now Playing" > "Enhancements" and then "Play Speed settings"
A slider will now appear in the lower left hand corner. You can adjust it to whatever you want, I use around 1.5x or faster depending on the content.
If you watch TrainSignal CCNA or CCNP Videos, you will note that "Chris Bryant CCIE number One Two Nine Three Three" is from the south. Now, I am not saying anything bad about southerners as my Wife's family is from Louisiana so this is not a toss at Chris Bryant. The reason I bring him up in particular as he talks pretty slow, below the normal speed I am used to. I am out in the Los Angeles area in CA and people out here we speak much faster as we are always busy and on the run. Well, my study time reflects this I want to know stuff fast fast FAST! I get complaints on instant messenger that I type to quickly, but really I am like that in life as well.
So what do we do about it? We speed things up - in this case video.
Now I have to say something about the speeding up, in some cases the "pitch" will be preserved where other times it will not. My laptop works great and preserves the pitch - so Chris Bryant will sound like Chris Bryant but will talk much much faster but his voice doesn't sound like a chipmunk. He knows what he's talking about that's for sure and I learned a lot from him for my CCNA and CCNP studies along with CBT Nugget's Jeremy Ciaora.
My other machine in the office has same installation of Media 11 yet when I speed it up, it sounds like a chipmunk. I can't figure out why.
After doing this method for close to a year now, It's PAINFUL to listen to stuff at normal speed. Try it out at 1.5x speed for an hour, let your mind adjust and then go back to normal. It will torture you big time.
I say again, this helped me out a TON and other people I should try this for watching shows I like to watch, but not sure about that haha.
Hope it helps you out.
-Nick
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Unbelievable. I watched the ISIS video the few days ago. After reading this post, I watched the video again at 1.5 times. Them I re-watched it at 2.0 times. What an awesome Idea. I do recommending watching a video first in 1.0 times defore going o 1.5. But after that, the 1.5 review has to be the best idea since the wheel. The cool thing about this is, when you watch it at a higher speed, you focus more, because your brain is trying to process the data at a faster rate. I mean you can actually feel your brain being more alert an attentive. Kudos NIck, this is the best Idea I have heard in a long time. I will steel this idea and post it on my Youtube videos. I might give you credit, or I just might steel it for myself and take all the credit, ;)
ReplyDelete