Khan Academy Pilot Educators On Khan Academy 110
theodp writes "In what may surprise Khan Academy backers Google and Bill Gates, educators from the Los Altos School District where KA was initially piloted and implemented have responded to some recent KA critiques with a blog entry which notes, 'Teachers in our district have determined that the greatest value of the Khan Academy lies, not in the videos, but in the exercise modules and data generated as students work practice problems.' Not too surprisingly, when it comes to revolutionizing student learning, teachers are bullish on teachers. 'Key to this revolution are the Los Altos teachers,' the educators conclude. 'Teachers in our district are highly valued for their pedagogical perspective, content knowledge, experience, and creative abilities. When district administrators put tools in the hands of teachers and give them room to work, amazing things happen for students. Tools will come and go, but it's the teachers who create meaningful learning experiences that challenge students to grow.'"
Teachers see writing on the wall (Score:4, Interesting)
An extremely useful resource. (Score:5, Interesting)
A family member of mine quit high school a year ago when she was just beginning 11th grade. At that time, she didn't even understand fractions and could only do the most basic of basic math. Still, she got to grade 11 just by memorizing material, regurgitating it on a test, and then forgetting it. After she quit (she convinced her mother to let her learn math on her own), she started using Khan Academy. She's currently learning calculus and actually seems to understand the material (unlike many public school students). While Khan Academy may not be revolutionary or perfect, it's an extremely useful resource. You can't, however, just watch the videos passively and expect to learn. You have to actually think about the material, do things on your own, and attempt to understand it.
A video can't answer questions. (Score:5, Interesting)
It also isn't nearly as good as a real teacher at inspiring students, and when a student doesn't get it, a video can't think of an alternate way to explain the same issue, or find an analogy the student understands.
This hatred of teachers becomes a downward spiral. We hate them, so we won't raise their pay, so fewer good people are inclined to take up the job -- who needs the hatred and the low pay? -- and so the quality gets worse, and down it goes.
Khan Academy is great, but it's only assistive technology, not a substitute for the real thing.
Re:You mean ... (Score:5, Interesting)
It depends on the student really. Some kids have the get up and go to do it themselves, others don't, for various reasons. I think their parents and family can play as much of or even a far more important role in encouraging learning. Really we need to ingrain a personal responsbility ethic into the education system, it would be beneficial in many ways. I could see teachers changing from knowledge dispensers to effective tutoring aides over time though.
E learning does work (Score:5, Interesting)
Teachers (Score:3, Interesting)
Pilot educators (Score:2, Interesting)
There's no way I'm getting on a plane where the pilot learned how to fly from Khan's academy.
Sweet mercy, you mean videos aren't the answer? (Score:5, Interesting)
I loathe watching videos. Hate hate hate. Videos are not effective for general learning. And I know, some people "have different learning styles", but everybody and their brother thinks that it's a good idea to make invariably-shitty videos about things that people want to learn. I want to read something with pictures. I don't want to watch a damn video.
Re:An extremely useful resource. (Score:0, Interesting)
The few pots left are Social Security, which takes in a shit-load of cash every year, and we know what the corporate elite want to do with that, and education.
Er. too late. Under Bush SS taxes were overcollected to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy. The largest holder of our national debt is SS.
All the talk about evil "entitlements" is aimed at not having to repay SS. Your McJob burger flipper pays more (total percentagewise) in SS and Medicare taxes (counting the employer's bite which doesn't show up in his paycheck) then Romney did/does in income taxes and Romney pays no SS/Medicare as he has no earned income.
MENTORS -- That's the new model (Score:4, Interesting)
Looking back on my own primary school education, which happened in the 70's and 80's, the best education I got was from those teachers who delivered the material well, often relating it to real life things, or concepts that I could understand, and those that took the time to understand who I was, even if I didn't yet. They were the mentors. They helped to change my life for the better. They teased out things they saw and developed them. They are the ones I did contact long after school to say, "thanks."
I can understand teachers -- educators in general getting a bit nervous over something like Kahn Academy. After all, who really needs teachers when kids can just plug in and get smart?
But the thing is, a vast majority of kids won't do that. Some of them can't. Others can, but won't be self-aware and self-directed enough to do that. For most kids, we need teachers at a minimum, and we really need mentors big. A short story:
In High School, I was exposed to Apple ][ computers. There is an Apple //e on my desk that I use regularly to this day. (Electronics, retro programming, writing) We had some programmed instruction material on disks that was supposed to teach us about the computers. Most everybody was new as the computers were only there for a year or two before I showed up.
Basically, the whole idea was to have the teacher shepard the students through the material, answering questions, etc... and most importantly, just make sure they do it. Anyone could do this, given a dry run or two, and some supplementary material to prep on. In fact, as a student, I did exactly that as part of some project.
That's what the teachers fear, and they are right about it too. The thing is, we've been fixated in the US, on test scores and other hard metrics to a point where we totally ignore the real education. Class time is planned down to small increments, test score stakes have been raised right along with requirements in such a way as to dictate what happens in the classroom, and this denies the educator the opportunity to actually educate!
Now, back to that story! These problems were not really manifesting themselves during my time. Some changes could be seen, but for the most part, my High School education was robust, as it happened before we really started the ugly changes. A few of us found out that we could type ctrl-c on the keyboard and break the flow of the BASIC program contained on the disks! Of course, it didn't take long to LIST the program, and then change it, saving it back onto the disk, which we did.
Back then, material would be contained on copied floppies with those floppies distributed each day from the stack. One never really got the same floppy, and students would sometimes carry their own data floppy too, depending on what they were doing. A group of four of us modified that program, with the goal of introducing some jokes in the hopes of the floppy shuffle putting them in the hands of other students! It worked great! The day after we did it, one of us got the modified disk, no fun, but three other students got them too, and the laughter triggered questions leading back to us!
Now, why do we need educators? How does mentoring play out in this digital age where we've got so much information available? This is why:
That teacher, who doubled as the geometry teacher, took us aside and talked about it. He could have disciplined us at that time, really impacting lives, but he didn't. Instead, we got assigned a different track. Our requirement for that year was to learn all we could. We had to decide to do something, state why, then actually do it. If we did that, we got the A grade. If we didn't, we were back in the planned track, just doing the rote exercises, and probably a B grade, because he knew better.
That year changed my life, and that of my four friends! We went from running games to cracking them. We learned binary math the hard way, having just the computer, some photocopied reference material a