Let Them Eat Khan Academy 134
theodp writes "Connie Ballmer announced that Seattle's Lakeside School and nine other private schools have formed the Global Online Academy to enhance learning opportunities for students at the elite institutions, some of which charge upwards of $35,000 in tuition and count the likes of Bill Gates, President Obama, Steve Case, Mitt Romney, and Sean Lennon as alums. 'Independent schools have traditionally struggled with how to provide their education models and resources to a wider student population in order to serve a public purpose,' Ballmer explained. 'While the initial classes will be for students at member schools only there is potential to share them with a broader community and help narrow the disparity of educational opportunity.' In the meantime, there's always Khan Academy."
Re:Online free curriculum? (Score:5, Interesting)
IME as a private school graduate, they don't give you a better education anyway. What you get:
(i) How to talk the talk, i.e. say what people want to hear - most of life's tests aren't about properly understanding stuff, just about giving the impression that you do;
(ii) The right friends - they will help you out whenever you need it;
(iii) A sense of self-importance which gives you just enough tenacity and lack of empathy to overcome any adversary^H^H^Hity.
Curriculum? Read good books and talk to smart, keen people.
Re:If I were to change the US educational system.. (Score:5, Interesting)
One of my college physics professors had a novel solution for using scan-trons for easy grading while avoiding the multiple choice dilemma. Instead of selecting from a series of 4 or 5 choices to choose from, he gave us scan-tron sheets with the columns of numbers from 0-9 like the ones you see when you fill out your social security numbers. You work out your physics problem and then input the number on 3 or 4 columns.
It's a great way to make exams easy to grade while avoiding multiple choice. We always had our physics exam grades back the next class for that class.
Re:If I were to change the US educational system.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Incidentally, here's the professor:
http://www.physics.rutgers.edu/~croft/FARADAY.HTML [rutgers.edu]
Awesome dude. For the last 14 years, he's given the annual Faraday Christmas Children's Lecture where he messes around with physics experiments like jetting around on rollerblades and a 50 pound fire extinguisher and having a cinder block broken on his chest while laying on a bed of nails.
Re:Threatened (Score:3, Interesting)
That may work in some simpler degrees, but many degrees require hands on work and experience as well. This can't be handled through books and podcasts. Do you really want your Doctors, your Engineers and your Nuclear Scientists learning from books on tape before they go out and start operating on you, building your bridges and running your nuclear reactors?
Re:Online free curriculum? (Score:5, Interesting)
At the highschool level, things like "AP" and "IB" are pretty heavily codified, and the tests that actually verify your knowledge of them are administered independently of the school, so you don't run into the "You say that 'my mommy and daddy academy' was taught according to Roxbury Latin's curriculum. How cute... Now go away." problem. Public schools, similarly, have voluminous state standards and approved textbooks that are trivially available for public inspection.
What schools actually sell isn't really curriculum; but (depending on level and institution) a mixture of prestige/networking, a reputation that allows them to (credibly) assert that a graduate with a decent GPA has actually learned their curriculum, practicum courses using facilities unavailable to smaller institutions or individuals(particularly in things like chemistry and physics), and access to really good people in the relevant fields.
Access to a good curriculum can, certainly, make autodidactic behavior easier(given that the set of books/resources one could possibly devote time to is larger than could be tackled in a lifetime, it sure does help to have somebody else suggest the ones worth starting on, a problem for which some intelligence is required; but no level of brilliance will substitute for years of experience...) and one's experience with a merely OK teacher following a good curriculum will be much better than the same teacher following a bad one. However, it is really impressive to watch and experience what a Good teacher can do, with or without a curriculum. There are plenty of stuffed suits out there, and plenty of research-focused intellectuals barely cleared for human interaction; but there are also Good Teachers who can bring more insight into a series of extemporaneous talks and reading suggestions than could 90% of their lesser peers, given full access to a curriculum. Good schools try to have some of those on hand.
I applaud efforts to use technology's ability to organize and cheaply disseminate information that would historically have mouldered away somewhere to provide broader access to information, and advice on how to use it, to people who don't have a good source thereof. Hopefully it will even outcompete some pathologically counterproductive teaching environments. I'm somewhat skeptical, however, of such projects abilities to either rival having access to really good teaching, or to handle the task of introducing students to new things. Given how cheap technology makes it, a system that is purely helpful to autodidacts is still entirely worth it; but some of the pieces where the motivated autodidacts of the world stand around congratulating each other on how brilliant their newfound educational model is seem to miss the fact that much of the educational world's "trench work" consists of trying to inspire disinterested students to become interested learners(and, if that fails, at least shove enough basic knowledge into them that they don't become another recruit for the useless festering underclass...)
Why aren't there more Khans on the internet? (Score:5, Interesting)
The reaction to Khan and his incredible resources is universal: People applaud and cheerfully encourage him to "keep going"
Now imagine if the reaction to Linus Torvalds had been the same in 1993. "Neato, Linus! More please! You're really awesome to have done all this yourself!"
Luckily for the world, that was not the reaction to the release of the Linux source code back then. People were like "Yeah, this is a great start, now let me add something to this so that we can build this into a fully functioning system." To be fair, Linus openly encouraged this and provided a framework for volunteer contributions. Khan doesn't do that, but does nothing to discourage it.
Yeah, his lessons are the work of one man, but already, they contain like 5% of a full curriculum of education. With 19 other Khans working in their spare time, we could finish the job and release "curriculum 1.0". Then, hopefully, many other Khans would work on augmenting and improving it. But it's almost shocking to me that something this important and easy is not being done. There might even be money in it for a company that releases free/openly licensed teaching material and then administers for-pay achievement tests or certification tests. If this were done right, it would be the obviously right path for gifted students, homeschoolers, and people who lack access to good traditional schools. They could go through the material at their own pace and take certification tests as quickly as they work through the material. Wise governments would even offer them a refund for the cost of tests they passed. It's much cheaper than the same government paying to "school" them.
Re:Why aren't there more Khans on the internet? (Score:2, Interesting)
What are you on about? I've seen Khan in talks where he discusses others chipping in with their fields of expertise. Those with the skills aren't bothering, they see him as a threat, those without skills who think they have them are submitting awful lessons. Sooner or later someone from a field will come in and do a great job, or the obvious alternative is to stump up some cash through sponsorship and hire someone to do it.