Have you seen Michael Hartl's RailsTutorial.org? It's a free online "book" that walks you through from start to finish with building either a Rails 2.3 or Rails 3.0 app (though a $39 PDF rendering is also available). After finishing the book, Michael set to work on some screencasts covering the same ground in video form and it's now released: the The Ruby on Rails Tutorial screencasts, clocking in at over 15 hours of content, are now live.

Michael's project is the latest in a line of self publishing efforts in the Ruby and Rails communities and it's gone down a storm on Hacker News. Michael did such a great job with the free content that you know the videos are going to be easy to follow and value packed. I got review access to all of the material a week ago and can confirm that, yes, these screencasts are awesome (as long as watching over 15 hours of screencasts is your cup of tea). I've seen people compare them to the style used by Ryan Bates on his Railscasts and I'd go along with that. Direct and practical.

At $85, they might seem steep to some readers, but if you basically want to be able to look "over the shoulder" of an experienced Rails developer and see how a Rails development environment is set up and how multiple apps are built, there's nothing that can beat this. This isn't a set of "build a blog in 15 minutes" videos - it's a complete course that could kick off a new career for you with Rails 3.0.

So if you want to learn Rails 3.0 in a practical manner from the ground up, check out Michael's screencasts.