Do you learn best from books or videos?

binarysoul

I often find excellent training videos only to find myself enjoying a nice sleep after 15 minutes . In a way I like books, but maybe the best way is to mix books, video and most important doing things practically.

What's your method of effective and efficient learning? Maybe you can share your 'Einstein' way of learning!

Ivanjam

@binarysoul - I have the same problem, be it Jeremy, Chris, Brian, Professor Messer or the nasal guy from The New Boston. I too prefer books - hard copy ones, in fact, not something on a screen with burning hot or bar-room cool names - it's just not the same thing as literal "pulp" non-fiction.

TechGuy215

I prefer hands on, along with both videos and books. In my opinion though, nothing beats setting up your own labs and actually doing it.

DevilWAH

I agree hands on if the way to go,

Books I find boring and don't really give anything apart from the facts.. I generally only use books at the end of study to make sure I have covered the topics if I am planning to take the exam.

Videos are again useful for filling in the blanks and gaps and I do find with a good teacher who does hands on that videos teach you more. Although some videos are simply the person reading from the book. and are guaranteed to send you to sleep.

I have serious issues remembering facts so for me there is no reading a book or watching a video and "knowing" the material. Set it up, and then break it to see how it really works, is the only learning method for me.

Einsteins methods was thought experiments to figure out the fundamentals and then getting his students to do the complex maths to check his ideas . and this is the same kind of thing with me, if I haven't got a firm grasp of why a technology was developed and what issues it was designed to resolve, then the "facts" will never make sense. One i get it though its all just common sense.

ptilsen

Books followed by hands-on. I learn relatively little from reading about doing things if I don't do them shortly thereafter, and certainly won't retain the information if I don't use it.

N2IT

Videos of people doing the particular task and then me following up almost copying their commands. I find that to be the best way for me to learn. Reading a book is great for high level material PMP - ITIL, but anything where the rubber meets the road requires hands on and usually I follow that up with video/CBT's. One thing I noticed about technical books, they are either so pathetically elementary you get nothing from it accept sleep or they are so damn advanced you just set it down and use it as a paper weight or sell it on eBay like I do. Come to think of it I hate technical books lol. Videos 100% along with hands on. Usually in the reverse order though.

FloOz

Hands on is best for me too as stated. However when comparing books and videos I do prefer videos. I always use both though

binarysoul

Excellent answers all !

So far the consensus seems to be "hands on is the king of learning" with some preferring video and books as a supplement and not as a replacement for effective learning.

Someone said he didn't like "technical books" and rather sell them on eBay, LOL Good one!

kohr-ah

Book and hands on also.

Videos I think are great for, labs. Example lets use CBT Nuggets CCNP Videos. The "CCNP ROUTE Simplified book" has taught me more than the videos did but the lab videos are great because I can see what he is doing and duplicate it.

That and videos always seem to leave out useful information.

horusthesun

Labs!!!!!!!!!!!!

Haswell

Videos with labs/hands works best for me.

Snow.bros

On my side i think i learn best with books rather than videos because a book always goes into detail there is no way you would not understand but sometimes i get lazy for books that's when i start using videos which in my opinion does not go into all details, but a combination of both a book and videos does it for me. never tried the labs though.

Master Of Puppets

First books. Then videos. After that comes the hands-on for me. This has proven to be my best personal combo. Also, trying to teach the stuff to someone else but chances are, in the vast majority of situations, there won't be great opportunities for that. Probably very few people can find someone interested in learning each and every one of the certs/technologies they are currently in pursuit of mastering. However, for the ones that you do find, it can prove to be very helpful.