Trend-spotting: micro-courses?

The Chase Jarvis Experience added a new twist to online photography education last week when they decided to offer their classes free when you watch them live as they air. You still have to pay if you want to watch later, and you can only buy the whole course, not just an individual class.

This week we have a new trend. Remember micro-computers? These days there's micro-blogging, micro-sites, micro-management, micro-entrees, micro-cars, so how about micro-courses? A new educational website DSLRU.com (via Imaging Resource) has officially launched, and they are offering byte-sized classes, some for free, others for 99c, or $2. The most expensive one is currently $5.

We haven't checked any of the classes, so we can't comment on the content. It will be interesting to see how this progresses. There's already plenty of free stuff on the internets, from the YouTubes, to photography tutorial websites, to edumercials offered by various manufacturers. So the big question is, can they offer a collection of compact and concise micro-courses that photographers would be willing to micro-pay for?