Courses Are Dead? Google Gemini 2.5 Changes Everything for Online Educators

Hey, let's go live. James Fing speaking. Training sites.

io. Um, Google did it again. 2.

5 Pro Gemini experimental came out on May 6th. I guess I'm going to look at a blog post because there was something that caught my eye with it and it should with you because I think Google 2. 5 Pro experimental shows you why all of this AI stuff from Google and the other platforms but especially Google is going to make it really really hard to not want to replace your courses with web apps.

Now what the heck am I talking about it and why should you know if you're starting building and grow an education business. That's what we're going to actually cover uh in the video today. So, here's kind of the first thing that jumped out at me.

Uh May 6, 2025 is when this was done. Uh one minute read. You can go through it and I recommend that you do.

I actually have uh just do Google 2. 5 Pro updates. Uh do a search for it.

It'll come up. Has a little bit of a video and a quick uh thing on it and some demos. But that's not the part that you should pay attention to.

What you should pay attention to, in my opinion, if you're an online course creator or someone a content creator that is actually teaching people and you're traditionally thinking of courses as the way to teach, here's the key right here in my opinion. Build rich interactive web apps with an updated Gemini 2. 5 Pro.

What that means is you, me and anyone off the street can basically ask Google Gemini 2. 5 Pro in this uh point, the experimental one that is available to everyone as I think now. I think it was only available to the states yesterday, but I'm in Canada, it's available today.

I would think maybe if you're watching this in a couple days from now, it will be available everywhere. Um, I can create apps just by a couple sentences or a prompt, uh, you know, a prompt. And it actually creates standalone web apps that are deployable in an HTML page and they do some really cool stuff.

And I think they can actually replace courses. And I'm going to show you why I think that and how they actually work moving forward. So, here's the idea, right?

We've got these interactive web apps. What the heck is it that we normally do with them? And why is it important?

Now, if you uh you know, if you go to the uh training sites. io campus, this is my personally branded campus where I have hundreds of tutorials, many courses or micro courses. And for the most part, the traditional way of doing all of this stuff, by the way, training sites.

io/join is free to join. I have all my prompts, all of my AI stuff, the communities here, all of the resources, all of the videos. There's over a thousand videos now, but it's all great information and it's here to help you start, build, and grow an education business.

It's free to join. Um, and we also have some live classes to help you um, implement and apply what it is that you're learning. But the part with all of this stuff, the content that's here, and why it's important that we learn about this new 2.

5 Gemini, is that if I go and look at 99. 99% of anything that's called a course from anyone that's building them right now, myself included, is I will find a talking head video, maybe a narration, a slide deck or a screen capture, maybe with my talking head, maybe there's some bullet points, points on something and then a lesson or lessons or topics will have some text, maybe a link to some resources or a checklist. In the text will have an explanation of something and then some key takeaway bullet points, a summary, maybe maybe uh you know some reflection questions.

Some of them might even have a quiz if you know if they're really really detailed subjects. That is kind of the expected or assumed way that a course gets created. But at the end of the day, what's happening now is a lot of people are just figuring out, I need a specific answer to a specific question.

I have a simple process. I want to learn how to do it and make sure I'm doing it properly. Almost like a standard operating procedure, but it's like teaching someone something, a little mini or micro lesson, something that can be done quickly.

And is it really something that should be done in text? Is it easy to do by just narrating it? Wouldn't it be great if we could have something that visually represents what it is that we're talking about and the stuff is interactive?

So, someone has to be involved with it to learn it. So, that's what we're actually looking at when we talk about something called a web app. What a web app is, and I'm going to show these to you, is it's an HTML page with HTML on it, JavaScript, and CSS, which is cascading stylesheets.

for you and me and regular people who are not programmers or coders or technical. This allow us basically to just give a prompt and it will create a page with an interactive visual representation of what it is we're trying to teach people on how to do something or something that they can recall or a standard operating procedure. This is how this works.

And then I just want you to think about this a little bit further. So, let's say for example, um I'll go through these. Uh let me do this one here.

If if uh and again I'm logged into Gemini right now and if you look just above my head in the top left there, you'll see Gemini Advanced and it's 2. 5 Pro Experimental. And again, my understanding that this is uh all available for everyone right now.

It's here. And uh I'll just give you an example of what I did is I just wanted to do one where I said, you know, um show me how to make some coffee. And it came up with and I said, create a web app that teaches me how to create coffee.

And it came up with this. If I click it, I've got this web page. And again, I'm using the canvas, which is in Google Gemini.

It's basically uh on this side here. It's basically a prompt chat on this side here. The canvas is the interactive representation of the content that is being generated.

So I asked for an application for a visual representation of brewing coffee in the morning. So here's what happens. It created this.

I did no graphics. I did no text. All I said is coffee ritual, morning visual representation.

And now it goes. So here's the morning ritual it suggested. Step one, the grind.

Grind complete. And again, it's going through the steps. Brewing finished.

Enjoy. Very simple. Ritual complete.

So, you're probably going, "Okay, that's cool. What happened here? " Well, I had a kind of a flash card, but there were steps where I had to go and be involved in this, right, and do it.

So, that was just a simple example with a simple prompt. But how can we extend this a little bit further if we're going to be teaching something? So, uh, I did a couple more prompts here just playing around with it.

And again, I just got access to this yesterday slash this morning and, uh, there are things that you can do to make sure that someone is learning something. And this has traditionally been done in some kind of quiz, right, to affirm that someone can recall something. Some of them you may find that there are some interactive tools away.

I just wanted to create one about a process that I had as some lessons in a course and I said, you know what, let's do a sequencing application. So I basically said, you know, here's the 10 steps of a process. Create an application that allows the learner to organize these in the correct order.

Again, I did nothing here. Nothing. This is what was put together.

And it's a basic thing to make sure that hey, it's like a way for someone to check to see if they've actually done this properly and it's in the correct order. So I can move these around and at the bottom it's like hey check my order. Oh, one topic's in the correct position.

I did poorly. I got to go back and learn something. So there's an example of these are applications that are being created by a single prompt or a single paragraph.

So, think about this when you're thinking about, oh, I got a course. I got to create a mini course, a micro course. I want to be able to teach something.

Is it really worthwhile to do what we normally think of of a screen capture andor some kind of prompting with Chat GPT and say, "Create a syllabus, create the individual lessons, create the text, create a video script for me, go get in front of a camera, show it, do a screen capture. " all of these things. Is that really necessary anymore?

Well, let's take a look a little bit further and see what happens with this. And again, I only played around this morning, but these are the things I'm starting to think about as we get into this because anyone can create a web app now. It's gone from, hey, here's just a prompt that I use in Chat GPT to get some text out of it that maybe I have to manipulate and actually change, but these are things now that are allowing me to actually create content.

And I was just thinking about, you know, for other skills other than making coffee, what are some of the examples of these kind of things that come up? So I put a couple together, some personal skills. Let's say you were doing photo editing for social media.

What is the process that gets created here? So if I said, you know, teach me how to do or teach my students how to do basic photo editing for social media and it would basically come up with the steps and some of the pieces and it created this. If you, you know, basically the outline that's here, you can take a look at it now with Google 2.

5 Pro, it shows you what it's thinking on how this would actually be done. And hey, it creates a web app for it. Uh, I did this one here, how to cook the perfect scrambled eggs.

You know, what is the actual process of doing that? And it went through some uh tidy up routine. So, these are personal ones, right?

Do you need a miniourse or a microcourse? Or can you use a web app to actually teach the same thing and get people involved in the actual learning of it as opposed to here's some text to read? For small business, what about handling uh customer inquiries, incoming emails, phone calls?

What about things like creating social media posts? What's the process that you want people to cover? How do they do it?

How do you onboard new customers? What are the steps in visuals? So, I was just playing around with this and I said, "You know what?

Why don't we do one for eggs? " Doing scrambled eggs. I was watching this in the morning, so I thought, "Hey, haven't had breakfast yet.

Why don't we find out how to do scrambled eggs? " So, I did one that was a interactive scrambled egg tutorial. Um, how did I create this?

I basically copied what they had from the script and I said, "Create a web app for this to represent this visually. " So, what is it you're talking about? All you're going to do is say, "Create a web app to represent this visually or an interactive web app to do it.

" So, I clicked it and we now have this open. I'll move my head out of the way here for a second. There we go.

So, perfect scrambled eggs. Learn how to make a delicious fluffy scrambled eggs ready to start cooking. Let's begin.

So, here I go. Step one, gather the ingredients. You need two to three eggs, splash of milk or cream, optional, a knob of butter, I've never heard that before, salt and pepper.

Don't forget a non-stick pan. Uh pan, whisk, and spatula. So, those are the things that are needed to gather the ingredients.

Okay, I got everything. Prep the eggs. Crack your eggs into a bowl.

Add a small splash of milk or cream. About one tablespoon per egg for extra creaminess. Season with a pinch of salt, pepper.

Okay, I'm prepped. Whisk the eggs until the yolks and whites are fully combined and mixture even yellow color. A little froth is good.

Okay, I'm whisked. Place the non-stick over medium low heat. You get the picture.

Pan ready. Pour the whisked eggs. Let it sit about 20 30 seconds until the edges begin to set.

Eggs in pan using the spatula. You get the deal. Folding slowly.

cooked. Done. I've now been taught if I don't know how to cook scrambled eggs, but it's been taught from a prompt.

Now, if I was going to do that simple example as a course, think of something other than eggs. Obviously, there was a process, a set of steps that was there. If I had turned that into some lessons and I had multiple lessons and it was text and a single video, yeah, I might be able to do that, but someone will probably rifle through those particular pieces of the text and not have to stop and go through each of them individually and interact with the visual which is being forced here.

Again, this is something that can be created simply for small items and or joined for bigger groupings of items like we normally would have done in a course. But I have created no video here. I've done no screen capture.

I've created no text. I've created no scripts. Everything is done in fact live here for me with the creation of web app.

And Gemini 2. 5 makes that available. So what's the next piece here?

You're thinking, "Okay, James, that's kind of cool. I can kind of create that. Um, what about if it requires some input from people?

Well, I can also go through and have a checklist. I did one for social media. It's like, hey, here's my standard operating procedures.

These are the things I want you to do when you're creating social media. Now, you can also automate this. I'm not saying that you can't.

I just use this example, but this is a web app that basically says it's got interaction in terms of what the person needs to do. I did this with a prompt. I didn't do any of it.

Just a prompt and put it back together. So we've now got a situation where we have web apps again that can be deployed that teach processes or skills and people can have to interact with them to make sure that they're following the process. It's not a course.

It's a learning experience. Fundamental change has nothing to do with creating courses. It has to do with creating web apps.

Now playing around with this a little bit more. Playing around with this more. And here's the one that I want you to just start noodling around in your head.

I did um when was it? I did uh a couple maybe a month and a half or two months ago uh Google had this thing called a studio. google.

com and that's kind of like one of their playgrounds where they have all of the cool tools that they're bringing out. And at the time they had this one called Flash 2. 5 Experimental and it introduced something called multimodal AI.

And what that means for you and me and the examples that I showed was you can have uh Google and Gemini, you can show your screen so that Google can see the screen what you're doing and explain verbally so that you can hear and you can interact with the AI about what you're doing on the screen. And the same thing was for video. So, it could have been a screen capture or something from your phone where you're showing video talking to the Gemini and it can explain what's going on, answer questions, but it's all those modes of modes of communication, whether it be visual or auditory uh or text, they're all there available.

So, Google has this already and now they've got this thing where you can create your own web apps. What does that mean for teaching stuff and creating courses? So, let me give you an example.

Let's say it's in the morning and I'm incredibly hungry and I've got my phone and I've got Google Gemini on my phone. Uh, and I go to the phone and I've got the multimodal 2. 5 flash on which is available even if I just went to AI Studio on my phone and I hold my phone up and I go to the fridge and I go take a look and say, "Hey, here's what I got in the fridge.

I'm really hungry for breakfast. What do you think? " It looks at the phone.

It's or at the fridge. It looks inside and says, "Okay, this is what we got. " It sees it's got some eggs.

We've got some butter and some milk. So, one of the suggestions is, "Hey, why don't we make scrambled eggs? " Okay, great.

And I say, "Uh, haven't I made scrambled eggs before? How do I do that? " All of a sudden, what shows up?

Remember, this web app was created with what? All it was is a simple prompt. and it goes through and it shows me on my screen.

This is how I actually create it. I don't go and search to YouTube for a video. I don't have to go into a cookbook or something and read from it.

I've now got a web app that shows me exactly what to do. Now, the reason I talked about that multimodal and the AI studio and this is why I think later this month, May 20th, there's the Google IO conference for all the developers. I got a feeling all of this Google stuff is coming together in a big way and I'm really excited about it because the other thing that they did in that AI studio is they had Google V2 VO2 that is text to video.

So let's say I've got my phone and I say teach me how to do that and show me a video. So what happens if I do that? Well, let's go take a look at AI Studio because the other thing that I can have it do in my case here, I'm just going to show you is I'm logged into AI Studio now.

Just move my head out of the way a little bit there. I'm in AI Studio and you'll also see that I now have they're not perfect eggs, but you can see that we're starting to get some eggs together. I used a simple sentence and let's assume that Google Gemini basically said, "Hey, here's the description for the video.

" And sent it to VO and said, "Create a video showing a firsttime cooking eggs and then uh already chopped vegetables in a glass bowl. after adding the ingredients to the glass bowl, they should pour the contents in the bowl into a skillet uh and to cook using a spatula. And again, that's one that I did, but let's say Google did that.

So now I have my presentation, my interactive presentation, and I now have what? I have a video showing what's actually being done. So, I did that quite simply.

It was a simple video, but think about what's going to happen here. Text prompts, cameras, interactive, nothing to do with what was traditionally called a course, nothing to do with figuring out prompts for syllabus, nothing to do with figuring out what text to add, what the key points or the takeaways or summaries are. We've got a visual interactive experience about learning something and a video that is created to support it.

This is one of those ones that we're just going to have to start shaking our head and going, "Oh my god, what's going to happen now and in the future of 2025 and moving forward. " I had a little bit of a chat with one of my customers that I first started working with over a year ago. Uh and at the time we were really excited because we could create content on prompts, right?

Uh you know if you started a year and a half ago it was like wow I can use chatpt to write um a blog post. I don't have to do it anymore. It creates blog post and there's all sorts of prompts and responses about how to make it authentic and SEO optimized all that stuff.

And then here I am today this comes out and it's like here create a video and create an interactive visual web app. This stuff's not going away. It's happening quickly.

Think what's going to happen three months from now, six months from now, nine months from now. Do you need courses for simple lessons, mini and micro courses? What is it that you actually need to teach or represent the lessons or the processes that you're trying to get other people to follow andor use to experience what it is that you've already done as the person teaching it?

This is really, really cool stuff and it's exciting. So, what does it mean? Next time you go to think of a course, think about, do I need or could I use a web app to do this in a real simple way?

And these web apps that I was showing you, just remember this web app that I just got right here, this is a standalone HTML page. That's all that it is. It's like a standard web page that you can put anywhere and have someone interact with it.

Nothing special, nothing fancy, just an easy easy easy thing to do for anyone now who is trying to teach some particular process or make sure that the information that they're sharing is well understood by the people they're teaching it to. So, I hope you found some value in this. Uh again, like and subscribe to the channel and if you haven't already, make sure to go to trainings.

io/join and join my private branded campus. It's absolutely free to join and I'm there to help you start, build, and grow an education business. Take care.

Expect the best.