Khan Academy Will Be Ready For Its Close-Up In Idaho 102
theodp writes "Education officials with Northwest Nazarene University and the J.A. and Kathryn Albertson Foundation say they are arranging to have Khan Academy classes tested in about two dozen public schools next fall in Idaho, where state law now requires high school students to take online courses for two of their 47 graduation credits. 'This is the first time Khan Academy is partnering to tackle the math education of an entire state,' said Khan Academy's Maureen Suhendra. Alas, the Idaho Press-Tribune reports (alas, behind a paywall) that next fall would be too late for film director and producer Davis Guggenheim (Waiting for Superman, An Inconvenient Truth), who will be in Idaho in January filming The Great Teacher Project, a documentary which will highlight positives of education, like the Khan Academy pilot in Idaho. Not to worry. For the film, a few teachers will implement Khan Academy in day-to-day teaching starting in January, before the entire pilot program launches in fall 2013."
Cheating (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Required online courses? (Score:3, Insightful)
1. Someone noticed that kids who took online classes were doing better than average in school. The geniuses in the Idaho state legislature assumed that correlation is the same thing as causation, and thus decided that if EVERYONE took online classes, everyone would do better than they were now.
2. The Idaho legislature spent too much money and/or cut taxes too much. Someone pointed out that teachers cost more money than an internet connection. Someone else suggsted raising taxes to pay for teachers' salaries. That second person was laughed out of the building.
(To clarify, I'm cynical about state legislators, not online classes or specifically the Khan Academy, which could indeed be a big improvement over public school teachers.)
Re:Required online courses? (Score:3, Insightful)
High school is less about learning information than it is about learning how to learn. Learning from an online source is how a lot of people are going to continue their education after school and being able to learn in that environment is important to success. When you don't know how to code something, do you look at the local colleges for classes or do you Google around for a tutorial? I would encourage high schools to make every student take a self directed course of the student's choice, but there's no way they have the teaching manpower to do it effectively. This provides at least a glimpse of what real world (read: after high school/college) learning is about.
Re:Required online courses? (Score:2, Insightful)
Um, High School (at least in the US) is less about learning anything and more about fitting in and trying to be as popular as possible. For those less inclined to popularity, high school is less about learning and more about trying to survive humiliation and degradation day to day in order to hopefully get to college, where one can then be saddled with explosive nondischargable debt in the hopes of conforming to some vague materialistic notion of a middle class existence.
Your insinuation that government-sponsored "education" is anything more than just taxpayer funded mandatory day-care and indoctrination is laughable. Keep reaching for that rainbow, Citizen!
Re:Required online courses? (Score:4, Insightful)