How Education Is Changing Thanks To Khan Academy 240
An anonymous reader writes "Wired reports on how freely-available lectures from Khan Academy are affecting both teaching methods and learning methods in classrooms across the country. From the article: 'Initially, Thordarson thought Khan Academy would merely be a helpful supplement to her normal instruction. But it quickly become far more than that. She's now on her way to "flipping" the way her class works. This involves replacing some of her lectures with Khan's videos, which students can watch at home. Then, in class, they focus on working problem sets. The idea is to invert the normal rhythms of school, so that lectures are viewed on the kids' own time and homework is done at school. ... It's when they're doing homework that students are really grappling with a subject and are most likely to need someone to talk to. And now Thordarson can tell just when this grappling occurs: Khan Academy provides teachers with a dashboard application that lets her see the instant a student gets stuck. "I'm able to give specific, pinpointed help when needed, she says. The result is that Thordarson's students move at their own pace. Those who are struggling get surgically targeted guidance, while advanced kids ... rocket far ahead; once they're answering questions without making mistakes, Khan's site automatically recommends new topics to move on to.'"
Salman Khan suggested it... (Score:5, Informative)
Isn't this just doing what Salman Khan suggested in his TED talk [ted.com]? He proposed that teachers should use class time for supervising and assisting in problem solving, and that students should watch lessons at home.
Re:Salman Khan suggested it... (Score:4, Interesting)
Pretty much, all according to plan.
I can't help being jealous of these kids -- I imagine like many people here, being able to learn exactly at my own pace would have done a lot to keep me engaged in school.
I hope this catches on with public schools. It may be one of the most important shifts in education since... well, ever. Finally, technology in the classroom means something.
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That is actually how my elementry school worked. By the time I was half way through sixth grade, me and two of my friends had exhausted the educational materials, which only covered up to the eighth grade. When I went to a normal Jr. high in the 7th grade, I fell on my face. I was sooooo goddamned bored. I didn't do the most basic assignments. Can't we just agree that I know this and let me move on?
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>>I hope this catches on with public schools. It may be one of the most important shifts in education since... well, ever. Finally, technology in the classroom means something.
Heya Phrosty,
I see K-12 teachers (who I work with) and districts giving up control of the classroom from their cold, dead hands.
In particular, school teachers have mandates that control a lot of what they do in the classroom nowadays. Pacing guides... hell, a lot of elementary school teachers are handed a script that they're sup
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Re:I agree (Score:4, Interesting)
Very few things really are, we're just prone to hyperbole regarding the minor hiccups we encounter.
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Sounds like the solution to the problem of parents who aren't normally supportive of their child's education.
(Yes, I'm aware that many parents are unable to support their child in this way due to both knowledge and time constraints. Not trying to troll here.)
But this isn't a new concept. When I was in school, we often did assignments in the classroom and read chapters at home. This is just a new video format. But as it turned out, we rarely had to do much of the reading, as the hands-on assignments woul
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Sounds like the solution to the problem of parents who aren't normally supportive of their child's education.
This is all about getting the most out of their time in the classroom, and should benefit all types of students. It shifts time wasted on fast learners to the slow learners. It's really not there to compensate for poor parental support.
Fast learners can fast forward lectures at home once they understand a subject, take a quick test in class, then move on to the next thing without any teacher involvement. Slow learners can pause and rewind at home, and get dedicated support in class. Teachers can accurat
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Why?
Perhaps they learn more slowly because they take a great deal more care learning it, and are building a stronger foundation upon which to learn new information, information which might become relevant next week, but might only become relevant in three years.
If anything, I think all students should be taking those classes, even the fast learners who are clearly not going to make a career out of them. They're handy skills to have, and being at least a little bit familiar with them is pretty important to n
asian kids are getting hit with books? (Score:2)
thats horrible. well, at least it's not wire coathangers.
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He means the stereotypical overachieving Asians you mostly see on TV.
It's a popular trope, and one that frequently changes targets depending on which ethnicity the predominant milieu likes at a given time. It is often given in implied comparison to the failings of disfavored ethnic groups. Currently, the positive is primarily assigned to Asians, and the negative primarily to Hispanics. As with most ridiculous stereotypes there is some degree of truth to it (Asians are slightly above-average in most educatio
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I'm from the view, that they are paying a person to teach the class, and necessarily they know the topic and I'd be able to ask them as much as I can. So even though some people think a student should be letting the professor teach the class, and asking students are annoying. I believe that they're not there to read me the book, but to clear my doubts.
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The videos are far too long (8-10 minutes, usually) for the video on demand culture.
No computer/Internet? (Score:2)
I'm wondering, though, what happens when a student doesn't have a computer or internet access.
Re:No computer/Internet? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Yes. Because feedback is king. When solving difficult math or science problems, doing homework and then getting the grade back a week later does very little to help you learn. This is because by the time the grades get in, the train of thought during the problem-solving period is long gone. While hopefully future generations of parents will be able to mentor their own children in their younger years, the whole point of going to school or university is to be under the tutelage of someone very well versed in
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It wasn't for me, but high school was 39 years ago, and I was expected to work and meet certain standards for graduation.
Is it your point that homework is too much for students today?
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Most research actually does show that the amount of homework assigned has been steadily increasing for the past few decades. It's gotten to the point where doctors have begun observing a trend toward back and joint dysfunctions caused by carrying backpacks that are too heavy... the amount of homework has increased to the point where it can now be meaningfully measured by weight.
To make matters worse, standardized testing has forced many schools to significantly increase the scope of the curriculum and short
Re:Who is "that kid"? (Score:4, Insightful)
Who exactly is "that kid" that you're talking about? The minority youth whose only ambition in life is to become a "thug"? The one who goes out of his way to avoid getting any sort of an education? The one who speaks his native language like he's a fucking moron? The one who wears his pants at his ankles? The one who intentionally seeks out violence, and abuses drugs and alcohol?
No, nothing can be done for him. He's a failure. Some kids just are. Don't blame greater society, the schools or the educators for such youth doing everything in their power to fail at every aspect of life.
Yes, the answer is to marginalize such youth. There is no hope for them, and they are not worth our time to try to save. There are many more deserving youth who should get such attention instead. You know, the ones who come from impoverish backgrounds, but who actually want to learn.
Not sure if you're trying to be satirical.
Anyway, such things can be improved. Go into an inner-city school and watch a good talk on gender abuse. Boys who otherwise think it's normal to abuse their girlfriends often have a major breakthrough when they make the connection to child abuse--and pretty much everyone in that environment is familiar with child abuse. Lives can improve. People can improve.
Of course it's easier to marginalize, and to avoid that segment of society altogether, for the individual. But for society as a whole, we are far better off if we don't.
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Not sure if you're trying to be satirical.
I sure hope so, but the more I see people discussing my city (Newark), the more sure I am that people like him actually believe the shit that they say.
Writing off people is dangerous in the long run (Score:3)
"Yes, the answer is to marginalize such youth. There is no hope for them, and they are not worth our time to try to save. "
Writing off people is a dangerous and expensive game to play. Not spending an extra $10K, $20K on educating kids from marginalised/ messed up families now now means somebody who ten years down the line might well decide the only way to get on in society because they aren't literate and have no qualifications is to turn to crime, mug you/ steal your car/shoot somebody you know/ or simila
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If you reread deniable's comment you will see that he is making reference to the fact that young people have an exceptional talent at marginalizing and ignoring other kids due to social status. If a kid's family
Re:No computer/Internet? (Score:4, Informative)
I didn't have an internet connection or a computer. I barely had a home. My parents were drug addicts. I'm glad my teachers didn't leave my education up to my parents. I would have turned out just like my parents, otherwise.
I would have loved to live in a free dormitory.
Instead, I was one of the few kids to make it out of my area (likely the only one genuine below the poverty level) and in to college. There, I got involved with other peoples educations and made a career of higher education outreach into low-income middle schools, high schools, and community colleges.
No, we can't leave any part of a child's success to his/her parents. We can do our best to involve them, but if the parents fail, then the child fails, and we in education fail. We're not allowed to fail.
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This is precisely the problem in poor/inner-city areas. Too much is left to the parents, which had the same (or worse) shitty opportunities. ...and then they blame the kids for not making it (who then grow up to have kids that don't make it).
Lots of people (Score:2)
We volunteer on school programs, help on literacy schemes, get involved in also sorts of grassroots community programs that help support local communities become stronger and help each other. We'd love you to get involved.
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Students without broadband (Score:2)
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Wikipedia tells me that "twelfth grade (12) [is] for 16–19-year-olds". When I was 16 and in college I was using the college library every day. I think that an effective education must involve independent learning, which will often involve a library. Younger students can't be expected to be learning independently, but once a student is 15 or 16, they should be in the library most days anyway.
School bus (Score:5, Interesting)
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I don't there are schoolbuses in Europe. (There isn't in Hungary for sure.) Kids just take public transportation.
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Some countries have decent and functional public transportation.
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There are towns small enough in the US where a kid could WALK to and from school. We never had busing in my school district at all.
Re:School bus (Score:4, Interesting)
on the late bus? Seriously I used it all the time to get home. it was the bus that dropped off sports teams, after school detention students, and students doing after school projects(class president, various clubs, etc)
It ran something like 2-3 hours later. I liked those days, as I would do my after school project then my homework and leave all my stuff in my locker for the next day. I wouldn't have to carry much home.
Car culture (Score:3)
on the late bus?
If my school district made such a "late bus" available while I was in school, I was never notified of it. Perhaps it's just the car culture prevalent in my country: parents are expected to own and use cars, and by the time the "late bus" would leave, the parent is expected to be off work.
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The schools are responsible for sending students home. Just because you never heard of it doesn't mean much. It just means you never bothered looking.
Also that is in NY. It was either the late bus or a 25 mile walk home for some kids.
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In Indiana there was no 'late bus'. If you chose to do an "extra curricular" then it was just that, extra. You walked, got picked up by your parents or found friends. I remember closing the public library at 8 pm after being there since 5, 5 days a week while my mom got off work and came over to get me.
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The schools are responsible for sending students home.
They me be in your part of the world. They're not in mine. We also didn't have any late bus.
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Agreed. You'll find in the US, it's not true, and our media scares moms so badly that they're afraid to let them take public transit anyway. It's all stupidity, and my parents never fell for it (miss the school bus again did you? here's a buck 55; walk up the hill and take the city bus because we're sick of driving you).
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Look at me! I assume that my personal experience is universally applicable. I'm awesome!
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In the UK there aren't generally school buses for college (age 16 to 18), I used public transport (service buses) or cycled. Through secondary school (age 11 to 16) there were school-buses which would leave immediately after lessons finished however a mini-bus occasionally took people home doing after school activities. If that wasn't available you could either use public transport or do as I did and walk home (I only lived 5 miles from my secondary school).
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or do as I did and walk home (I only lived 5 miles from my secondary school).
There are thought to be too many child predators for an hour and a half of walking every day.
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He's absolutely correct though... he didn't say "I think," he said "there are thought." And it's true. This recent Brooklyn murder has had acquaintances of mine telling people that they can't let their kids out of their sight for a moment.
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Don't forget about the pervasive fear-culture also at play. I suspect that has at least as much to do with the situation.
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I routinely walked the 2.5km to grade school or the 5.5 kms to high school, i even walked the 10.8km to cegep. When you're poor and you want an education you do what you have to.
I did live right in front of the municipal library, but being quebec i exhausted the english section by the time i was about 10. Well, not true, i didn't read all the charlie brown and garfield books they had, never really wasted much time on comics.
I think the distances of my schools is pretty interesting, and of cour
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The lectures are done in class. They kids don't have to view them at home, they simple CAN if they want a refresher. They can do the same at the school itself after hours, or the public library.
they simply can if they have broadband... (Score:3)
"They kids don't have to view them at home, they simple CAN if they want a refresher. They can do the same at the school itself after hours, or the public library."
In my country:
- not all kids have access to a computer and broadband at home
- school libraries are mostly not open after school closes at 4pm, lack of funding
- public libraries are not always within reach of school children
Those that can afford, get better. Lower income kids would fall behind.
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Re:Students without broadband (Score:5, Informative)
Good luck in a lot of places finding a public library that's open when you'd need it to be. Public libraries are closing or cutting hours and services at an alarming rate.
One of the problems with educational reformers is that things that work on a small scale - only put in the best teachers, get parents involved, etc. can't always be replicated on a large scale. And they need to realize that. You can't have 100% excellent teachers. What's the current number - not even a third of the US population gets a 4-year college degree? Exactly how can we pay to have millions of brilliant teachers? Especially when teachers are under attack, there's pressure to drive pay down, etc. And a huge part of public school problems are actually societal problems. We've got drugs, crime, malnutrition, poverty, uninvolved/absent parents, lead poisoning, lousy school facilities and so forth. And the public schools can't cherry pick.
And at a time when standardized tests are being used to evaluate teachers and schools, the kids have no stake in the tests. And there's a ton of pressure (some of it based on the raft of IEPs given to students for all sorts of reasons - some legit, some ridiculous) to grade kids based on effort and not outcome. You want to make adjustments for kids with issues? Provide both absolute and adjusted grades.
And the cost to support students with learning or behavioral problems is high. It's not unheard of now to have a classroom with three or four kids with individual aides, plus there's an assistant teacher to deal with kids who have less-stringent IEPs, plus the lead teacher. Unless, of course, you teach art, music, industrial arts, etc. Then, the aides get that as a break period. So you've got 25 kids in the room - a bunch of whom get aides in other classes and some for behavioral reasons - with no help. And you received no training in how to deal with those students as part of your education.
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"So what do K-12 students without broadband at home do? Go to a public library every day?"
No, teachers can download the content for those without internet access:
http://www.khanacademy.org/downloads [khanacademy.org]
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Get a DVD with the video to bring home? Or a VHS tape? You don't need broadband to watch a video, you know.
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From the summary: "This involves replacing some of her lectures with Khan's videos, which students can watch at home." So what do K-12 students without broadband at home do? Go to a public library every day?
The solution is to do what should have happened 10 years ago with the rise of the internet economy: Make access a fundamental right, utility and regulated like utilities.
For those of you who rebut my point with prattle about "free market" and such, keep in mind that telecoms and cable has never really been free; it's always been a) patchwork of local monopolies in the case of cable and b) a fully integrated monopoly for phone/DSL lines for 50 years (was split up in the 80s but is now like the T1000 reassem
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But but but... the Invisible Hand!
Seriously though, introducing competition wouldn't be all that hard: it would just require allowing competition. Towns should be leasing space on utility poles (or in buried ducts, for you Vermonters) to anyone who wants it without worrying about duplicated service or other such strictly business concerns. Comcast, Charter, Verizon, Time Warner etc. would then be in direct competition with one another within individual markets. Companies could elect to lease wire from one a
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So what do K-12 students without broadband at home do?
They could take the lectures home on a DVD, an SD-Card, or a USB thumb drive. They can watch the DVD using a $20 player hooked up to any TV. Or they can use an adequate second-hand computer available at Goodwill for $40. That is no more than the cost of a single textbook.
Good lectures need done once. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm glad to see that this is finally happening. A "good" lecture on a subject needs to only be done once. It seem like a waste repeating the same thing year after year. Where students (speaking for myself) need help is in the actual implementation of the lecture subject. Now that the students are doing 'homework' in class, that resource is available. And if Kahn's methods don't work for you, then maybe there need to be 3-4 different teaching styles. One that is heavy on theory light on examples, heavy on examples and light on theory and some that mix it up a bit.
In college we would get together in study groups or the teacher or TA had office hours (hopefully). For elementary, middle and high school students this really isn't an option. They're usually in class all day and then go home. So if they get hung up on something simple they're essentially stalled. Resulting in frustration, loss of interest and possibly a bad grade. Thankfully my teachers would often assign at least one 'type' of problem where the answer was in the back of the book. If I didn't get it I could figure out how to get the right answer and then apply that to other problems.
This worked all the way up through this year when I took a graduate level linear algebra class. The teacher made Ben Stein look animated. The course material was very dry and it was way too theoretical (for myself). If a homework answer wasn't in the back of the book. I'd find a similar problem that did have the answer, work through it to get the solution and feel a bit more confident on the homework problems. I can't name the number of "Eureka!" moments I had while doing homework.
I'd much rather watch a video on how to do something (welding, car repair, etc) and have someone watch over my shoulder while I do it and be there for questions than have them lecture to me and then go "alright, now you get to do it blind". I'm glad to see that teachers are getting an opportunity to 'teach' rather than 'lecture'.
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I have been saying this for years. A well produced video on a subject would save lots of money by replacing lectures. So try taking this to it's logical conclusion. The school model for teaching is going to go away. If parents have access to educational material on any subject than what good does a traditional teacher serve? You could replace this with a video lecture and private mentor/tutor model. The vast majority of the work of education would be done by video and you can just pay for individual acces
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Both parents have to work in order to pay their taxes for things like schools. Eliminate schools and their taxes will make it more affordable for a parent tomstay home.
Re:Good lectures need done once. (Score:5, Insightful)
I teach physics at a community college. The Wired article made me curious to see how good the Khan videos were. I went to the Khan Academy web site and viewed this one [khanacademy.org] on Newton's law of gravity. He starts off with some kind of interesting, intellectually stimulating stuff about how gravity is ultimately not something we can explain. (He makes one error, but it's not crucial, and it's prefaced with a modest warning that he's not an expert.) Then he writes down Newton's law of gravity without saying anything about where it comes from, how we know it's true, or whether it's been tested by experiment. Next he spends 6 or 7 minutes, almost the entire video, solving a plug-in problem. After that he has a follow-up lecture in which he solves a problem using ratios.
IMO this video might be fine as a supplement for a student who has poor problem-solving skills and needs to see some very explicit step-by-step remedial instruction in how to solve a plug-in problem, but it would be disastrous for a student to get her first introduction to gravity from this lecture. The lecture just presents a formula and plugs in numbers. There is almost no intellectual content there, just some calculations being cranked out using a formula that pops up mysteriously out of nowhere.
A more fundamental issue is that there's a ton of educational research that shows that in physics, traditional lecturing, no matter how competently done, produces extremely poor conceptual understanding. A bunch of the classic papers are by R.R. Hake. The only techniques that lead to better success are techniques that de-emphasize lecturing to a class that sits and passively listens. Since the Khan lectures are still lectures, they are going to have the same shortcomings as any lectures.
I'm glad to see that this is finally happening. A "good" lecture on a subject needs to only be done once. It seem like a waste repeating the same thing year after year.
The problem here is that you're assuming that instruction must consist of a teacher lecturing while students sit silently in their seats. Even if one isn't a true believer in nontraditional techniques, there's a problem when students can't even ask a question.
You do see a lot of big state schools these days taking videos of lectures given in gigantic halls with 300 seats. Students can watch the videos in their jammies sitting in their dorm rooms. This is pathetic. These schools have simply given up on their educational mission for these large freshman lecture classes. The answer isn't to make the 300-student lecture more efficient, it's to admit that the 300-student lecture is a travesty.
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Critique the lecture and perhaps it will be changed.
Alternately, perform what you'd like to see and post on Youtube.
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Critique the lecture and perhaps it will be changed.
Alternately, perform what you'd like to see and post on Youtube.
Apparently you missing the point being made by the parent. A good "lecture" is not just a matter of a canned speech with good examples. When I "lecture" (which I do often) it is a dynamic process that is driven by the audience. Even in the least interactive form, a good lecture involves reading the audience and knowing when to provide additional examples or when to plow ahead faster. Better lectures involve full participation, where the audience is made to think and answer questions and encouraged to ask on
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An AC replied [slashdot.org] as well as I could have. I'm only posting this because most people won't see an AC post unless it gets moderated up.
Research != learning (Score:2)
Here's an important disconnect between academics and the rest of us. Academics are primarily researchers - they spend their days trying to produce new knowledge about things (at least, in theory). The rest of us just want to learn this knowledge in order to know how things work so we could do something bette
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Teaching is not telling and repeating is not learning.
Half a century of physics education research is continuing to show that people need to learn the conceptual why just as they need to learn how to use the mathematical model. If they don't understand the concept, the math will be nothing more than a magic black box that spits out numbers for them. Engineers need to understand the concepts.
Science is not just a tool, it is one of humanity's primary methods of viewing and interpreting the universe, along
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I teach physics at a community college. The Wired article made me curious to see how good the Khan videos were. I went to the Khan Academy web site and viewed this one [khanacademy.org] on Newton's law of gravity. He starts off with some kind of interesting, intellectually stimulating stuff about how gravity is ultimately not something we can explain. (He makes one error, but it's not crucial, and it's prefaced with a modest warning that he's not an expert.) Then he writes down Newton's law of gravity without saying anything about where it comes from, how we know it's true, or whether it's been tested by experiment. Next he spends 6 or 7 minutes, almost the entire video, solving a plug-in problem. After that he has a follow-up lecture in which he solves a problem using ratios.
I have not watched this, or any other of his videos, but to be fair, at least from what the wired article says, khan mostly aims at school- or high school-level topics, so it is no surpise that his physics seems basic to someone teaching physics at college level. From TFA:
Khan’s site is unique in that it’s ruthlessly practical: It’s aimed at helping people master the basics, the humble bread-and-butter equations they encounter in elementary and high school.
So the practical, drilling-based approach is deliberate, and I think it has a place in an education, though it also needs to be complemented with other approaches that go more in depth in the "why" rather than just the how: e.g., the diffe
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>>The problem here is that you're assuming that instruction must consist of a teacher lecturing while students sit silently in their seats
Precisely. When I lecture, I am constantly engaging the people I'm talking to, not just checking to see if they're paying attention, but honestly asking their opinions about the problems I pose. And the problems I do pose tend to be more open-ended, with no one particular right or wrong answer. ("How would you change energy policy in America?" "Do you think recyclin
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I think these videos are a good resource, but only the beginning. Interactive learning is the next step, with programs that can track students' progress and even adjust to their individual needs.
Exactly, that's what Salman is advocating. Replace lectures with the videos, homework with the practice modules, and then devote class time to interactive learning where the teacher is free to go from student to student assisting them when they get stuck or have a question. I don't think the parent you were responding to spent enough time on Khan Academy to fully appreciate the model. He viewed a couple of videos and assumed that was the whole thing. The videos are one third. Khan provides another third wit
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I've been thinking the same thing about church for a long time now. A typical contemporary church service goes something like this:
1. A bunch of songs are sung interactively - the unspoken goal of the guy organizing the music is to get it to sound like one of a dozen CDs that sell a bazillion copies every year.
2. Everybody listens to somebody give a lecture on some topic.
3. People pay money towards the operation of the church.
4. Somebody stands up and reads the calendar of events for the next few weeks
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Giving undergraduate lectures isn't what a professor primarily does. It's
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I think that's a bit of an over generalization. Not all professors are primarily researchers, and many actually are focused on teaching first. I have no idea which kind is actually more prevalent across the board, and I suspect getting such information would be difficult. Suffice it to say, I think some institutions are more inclined to hire one or the other type for a variety of reasons.
Ideally, I think a balance would be struck such that the most capable researchers are allowed to perform their research w
we still need to get rid of tech the test maybe te (Score:4, Interesting)
we still need to get rid of tech the test maybe also get rid of the some of the tests as well or make them more hands on.
In college and some cert tests it's so bad that you can cram for the test and pass but have no idea about how to use, setup, run the stuff covered in the course and at the same time you can have some know knows the course, stuff in a cert really well but sucks at testing and fails the test.
Re:we still need to get rid of tech the test maybe (Score:4, Insightful)
you are laboring under the assumption that the alternative to "teaching to the test" is "teaching well" and have failed to consider the far more likely possibility of "not even teaching to the test..."
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I don't see how your assumption is any more logical. If the test is a fundamentally flawed metric of understanding, which is a fairly popular point of view (yes, I know, that's an appeal to authority, but that's the best either of us can realistically have, so it must suffice), then teaching to it is going to be a fundamentally flawed approach. OP has hinged his argument upon an assumption that the test is generally flawed, and that teachers are generally good. Yours hinges upon an assumption that the test
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You write like someone who would fail a Turing test.
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Maybe his English tests were great but he couldn't apply it.
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You must be of the school that believes you can fatten a pig by weighing it.
A test culture means little learning, just endless revision and practicing exam technique.
Why did it take so long? (Score:3)
Why did it take 100+ years for people to think "Hey, read up on something at home, and we'll talk about it and work through problems in class tomorrow"? Actually, that sounds a lot like many smaller university classes I had. Wondering why this is suddenly capturing everyone's imagination. It's pretty obvious, but then again, many ideas are obvious yet don't catch on.
Home study finally became stimulating (Score:5, Insightful)
Why did it take 100+ years for people to think "Hey, read up on something at home, and we'll talk about it and work through problems in class tomorrow"?
Because it took 100+ years for home study to become stimulating enough to hold a child's interest, with audiovisual presentation of lecture material and automated drill and practice.
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Maybe it took the last ten years to do that, but it was only necessary because they'd spent the previous twenty forgetting how to read.
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It took 100 years to develop automation to the point where you can do this without having a live person around for 8 hours a day or more. The keyword is "automated", not "stimulating", in my opinion.
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That's not a bad question. My impression is that this used to be the case (I always hear about suggestions for enforcing reading the text prior to class discussion), but discipline got to a point where no one could actually expect that to happen anywhere. Everyone's supposed to succeed and pass the class (no failures, no send-back in grade levels). So in-class time became remediation to the lowest common denominator.
A final observation: Much of my job is basic algebra remediation at the community college le
the old way of getting videos for teachers (Score:2)
once upon a time i worked at an 'educational establishment' and somehow became involved with procuring an updated video for a teacher, to replace a series we had from the 1970s.
there was no process for doing this, it was all ad-hoc. i had to go to a bunch of websites and fill out a bunch of forms and then give them to a supervisor who then probably had to give them to another supervisor and another, and many weeks later the videos showed up... whereupon the teacher had to fill out a bunch of forms every tim
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Kickstarter.
The web is man's greatest invention.
So, they adopted the university approach (Score:3)
link? (Score:5, Informative)
How can Wired write an entire article, and slashdot write a summary, all about a website, and nobody includes the link to Kahn Academy [khanacademy.org]!?? Geesh
Uh, What About Research-Based Methods? (Score:5, Interesting)
There is even evidence that watching Khan videos leads to a false sense of learning. See Khan Academy and the Effectiveness of Science Videos" [wordpress.com] It basically shows that while students think they're learning a lot by watching videos, their actual learning is minimal.
A great into to all this is Wieman's Why Not Try a Scientific Approach to Science Education?" [cwsei.ubc.ca] As he puts it, to increase learning, we need to use
At best, Khan Academy only does the third of these.
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Research-based methods don't lead to big profits for educational reform advocates (paid consulting gigs, speaking engagements), those who run private schools and publishers or scantily-researched educational materials. We've now got the educational equivalent of defense contractors selling weapons to the military that they don't want and that don't work.
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But I thought that was the point, kids really aren't learning that much with the lecture. The lecture just sets up the subject matter. They get the help when doing the problems, in class, with the teacher available for assistance. That is when the learning occurs.
Instruction after introduction... (Score:3)
I had a math teacher who would assign you problems before she had explained how to do 'em in class.
That way, you'd read the book, try to do the problems, and then the next day, be pepared to ask questions on the stuff you were having difficulties with when she actually taught the lessons. She'd then give you another night to fix whatever you needed to on the homework before turning it in.
I found it so much better than just listening to a teacher droning on for an hour or more, then having to go and read the book to figure out what they should've been explaining.
Been doing the lessons (Score:2)
Love the math curriculum, great fun. I did about 10 years of school math in 2 days. No wonder I hated math in school, it moved glacially slowly! Having so much packed into such a small time frame has been a great refresher course, and Khan rewards me with points and achievements. Holy cow, learning doesn't have to be painful! Who knew!?
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It might be the dialectical past tense of "come" which is "come", not "came". "come" as the past tense is more etymologically correct, but the alternate form "came" took over in most places and is now the standard.
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[citation needed]
But anyway, we're talking about become. Verbs that end the same way don't necessarily decline the same way. You don't say "The host welcame me to the party", do you?
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In Old English, the past tense of "cuman" was either "com" (with long o) or "cam" (with long a), neither of which would have produced "came". You can consult any book on Old English to find the conjugation of such a common verb. My one Middle English book only gives "com" and "come" as the past tense of that verb, although with no textual citations. So I went and found an online Middle English dictionary and looked up "comen" (http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/m/mec/med-idx?size=First+100&type=headword
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"How this goes down with blacks, hispanics, ... is the real test."
No. It works for those it works for. For those it may not work for, try something different.
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Arguably? By whom, a racist ignoramus?
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E.D. Hirsch, author of The Schools We Need and Why We Don't Have Them and registered democrat, has a short piece here that you should read, it's very interesting as are his books:
http://www.aei.org/docLib/20030228_traditionaledMA97.pdf [aei.org]
Gramsci was not the only observer to predict the inegalitaria
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I, too thought the Khan Academy's teaching methods must involve encouraging horrible chitinous creatures with far too many legs crawl in the students' ears and wrap themselves around the kids' brainstems.
I'm glad that that apparently is not the case.