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Grant To Allow Khan Academy To Expand, Build a Physical School
mayberry42 writes with this news snipped from Hack Education: "Khan Academy announced this morning that it has raised $5 million from the O'Sullivan Foundation (a foundation created by Irish engineer and investor Sean O'Sullivan). The money is earmarked for several initiatives: expanding the Khan Academy faculty, creating a content management system so that others can use the program's learning analytics system, and building an actual brick-and-mortar school, beginning with a summer camp program."
And all the for-profit schools raise their fists in the air and scream: "KKHAAANNNN!!!"
There's a spot in User Info for World of Warcraft account names? Really?
I agree. I played all Khan lessons in my bedroom hoping that, as I slept, I'd have a grasp of all topics. I was not impressed at all. You have to pay attention, and even try to apply it if you really want to learn anything.
F. Would not try again.
When the policeman of the tie, rule you violate, hello punishment of the kitty?
Can someone figure out why they need to actually build their own place? I just don't see how it fits with their strengths...
It's more than that, the more connections you have between facts the more likely they are to be retained. A good class will involve more than just one modality of involvement by the students, and online classes of any sort really haven't managed to master that yet. Khan probably being even worse as there's no possibility of meeting off line and the tests being somewhat less vigorous than normal.
I'm sure folks do learn from it, I just doubt very much that it's going to advance education much more than the encyclopedia did.
It doesn't replace a good textbook
I've never read a decent textbook that didn't require a teacher to actually teach the material. I think they're all written that way on purpose.
And the more a person (any person) actually uses what they learn, the greater their likelihood of retention. I took trigonometry last spring and now I'm taking pre-calc. I had to go back and review everything I had learned in trig (including re-memorizing those damned identities) because I had forgotten about half of it. Why? Because not once during the summer did I actually use anything I learned in the class. Algebra, on the other hand, is a different story. The concepts that are used repeatedly, ever semester, are the ones I remember without having to look up my notes
In my opinion, when it comes to math, it's not so important that I retain every single concept I learn, but rather, when such a problem arises later on, I recognize the problem and I have a general idea of how to solve it. If I have to look up a few formulas along the way, so be it.
As for the Khan Academy, the website has saved my ass a few times. It's one of the first places I turn when I'm struggling with something in my homework. It never has been a replacement for classroom attendance, but rather a really good supplement.
I wish that average Americans would consider this sort of learning more seriously. While it isn't a full university degree by any means, at least it should help bring them up to the level that the rest of the world is at, in terms of education and knowledge.
Although I'm European, I do have to deal with typical Americans far more often than I'd like through my work. Virtually all of the Americans I deal with are working for large businesses, so perhaps they're even above average to some extent. However, in terms of knowledge, education and basic reasoning abilities, they are far below the comparable people I deal with in Europe and Asia.
Let me give you some examples. On at least eight occasions now I've had to deal with Americans who couldn't perform basic arithmetic. In these cases, they contacted us, complaining that we overbilled them. We take these complaints seriously, so we double-checked the accounting and everything added up according to our numbers. We asked the Americans for theirs, and they provided us with the same numbers we had. We double-checked their arithmetic, and they had made some errors with basic addition! Although we do far more business with European and Asian customers, we have never once had to field a similar complain from them.
I occasionally have to deal with these Americans by email. You wouldn't believe how atrocious their grasp of English is, including many who are native English speakers! Some of them, including high-level managers and executives, do not know about capitalization or punctuation. If it weren't for most email clients today having built-in spellchecking, I suspect that these emails would be rife with typos, too. I have never seen this when emailing European or Asian customers in English, however. Even the lowest-level employees there often have impeccable written English skills. It has gotten to the point that I can reliably tell where a customer is located based on the body of the email alone, considering only whether or not capitalization and punctuation are used.
I don't dislike these Americans, but it's clear that they are below the rest of the world when it comes to education. I wish that they would better consider opportunities like this. Even if they don't attain the level of education and knowledge that the rest of the world has, any elevation whatsoever would be beneficial for all of us.
At least in physics there is a HUGE body of evidence that telling is basically not teaching, be it lectures or videos. That is, one must confront student misconceptions and more generally understand how people learn. We don't learn deeply by watching. Seriously, what elite athlete learned by watching and listening?
Try out these links:
"Khan Academy and the Effectiveness of Science Videos" https://fnoschese.wordpress.com/2011/03/17/khan-academy-and-the-effectiveness-of-science-videos/
"Improved Learning in a Large Enrollment Physics Class" http://www.cwsei.ubc.ca/SEI_research/index.html
"Why Not Try a Scientific Approach to Science Education?" http://www.cwsei.ubc.ca/resources/files/Wieman-Change_Sept-Oct_2007.pdf (the author is both a Nobel Laureate and a U.S. University Professor of the Year; he's currently Deputy Science Adviser to the President for science education)
It is a sad commentary that methods that have rigorously been shown to work, like http://modeling.asu.edu/ , could really use more funding when Khan gets such funding on just the publicity.
A few posible reasons:
That last might be done better in the teacher's own classroom; at least as an initial survey, and then see how they change to deal with a more normalized environment.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Indeed, as a supplement, I think the Khan Academy is really useful. The way it's laid out really supports its use as a supplemental resource. But, it's not set up in a way that's going to replace anybody's classroom. Taking a quick look at the algebra section, there's a few lessons, but there isn't any obvious ordering to it, aside from not doing the part 2 lessons before the part 1 ones.
I would personally have to spend a substantial amount of time going through the lessons to decide the order and combination if I was going to use the materials exclusively to teach with. If I just need a lesson or two, it's not really that difficult, but the whole set up is not one that's going to be useful for somebody that doesn't know anything about how to create lesson plans.
As far as retention goes, if you don't use it within about the first 20 minutes or so of encountering it, the likelihood of retaining the knowledge significantly drops for most people.
The ASU page you linked lists 10s of millions of dollars of NSF grants. I think it is ago if a private individual wants to grant money to a school to do the same thing.
Your post indicates you did not even bother to read the slash dot summary. If you had, you would realize this grant is about doing, not telling. It has nothing at all to do with lecture videos.
That's broadly true of most areas of education. For instance, language classes need to hit four domains with most lessons to be most effective. That is to say reading, writing, listening and speaking, the problem being that a site like the Khan Acadamy isn't going to be well suited to the writing and speaking components, and be very heavy on the reading and listening components. One can still learn like that, but it's a much slower process.
To an extent that applies to other subjects as well, you'd be surprised how much you can learn doing problems, even if you've done one or two like it before, the results add up over time, but if you don't have somebody to check your work or show you how to do it, you're going to take a lot longer to learn it, assuming you do in the first place.
The system that I envision, at least as far as math is concerned, is something that I dub "modular math" -- though, that term should not be confused with modulus. I think the curriculum should be broken up from arithmetic to calculus in models (sets, pods, mods, levels, whatever).
A student meats the material at their level, and progresses through each model. This allows a student to quickly move through material that is easier for them and to have the time required for material that is more difficult. I imagine a system whereby students participate in a math curriculum whereby they progress on their own through CORRECT (yet to be defined) use of online lectures and quizzes and tests.
A teacher is ever present and provides the one on one work that the student requires when they hit a topic that they have trouble with, or need further or alternate explanation. The puts the teacher as a facilitator that needs to be familiar with all levels of math from basic arithmetic through calculus -- and by familiar, I mean able to actually teach the concepts. A teacher may have a student in model 4 and model 10 in the same room, and when each student has an issue, the teacher would need to be able to step in at that topic and work with the student.
I have begun development of the requisite online tools for this, but Khan has, by far, a lead on videos and lectures -- and even presence. I thought of this way before Khan was popular enough for me to have heard of him, but, with most things, it comes down to who implements it first. I think that it could be an exciting next step for the Khan Academy.
No single raindrop believes it is to blame for the flood.
I think you're supposed to create an account then watch the videos and do the exercises, "level up" etc.
On the note of forgetting about half of what you had learned, it reminds me of a pedagogy that I am a fan of: learn the underlying concepts and how to apply them, and you no longer have to "remember" because you "know." With your example, I cannot rattle off hardly any of the trig identities -- but I can derive all of them quite easily.
I think that this is a major issue with our education system when it comes to math: memorization. For example, in my daughter's math class, when going over exponent laws, the teacher said, "anything to the 0 power is 1. Why? Because that is the way it is; it is just one of those things we need to memorize." The same kids who learn this way find themselves in a math class a few years later and cant remember if it is 3^1 = 0 or 3^0 = 1. I wrote him showing how bloody easy it is to learn the correct way -- by looking at what exponents are (repeated multiplication) and that if we work backwards from 3^4, to 3^3, 3^2, we see that we are dividing by three each time, so it is easy to see why 3^0 has to be one. Better yet, this lets students understand why negative exponents are what they are. With this proper understanding, the student can re-derive the exponent laws anytime they may need them.
I completely agree with you that Khan is not a replacement. There is something to be said for us social beings being, you know, social when learning.
No single raindrop believes it is to blame for the flood.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Is not that kids are stupid, it is in the presentation.
Math as it is presented in most all schools is one of the driest subjects on the planet.
Yes there are kids who just get it but they are not the majority in point of fact they are a tiny minority.
I remember sitting through basic algebra and it was mind numbing ( this was in the early 70's ) and nothing was related to the real world, just the rules of algebra for weeks on end.
Even today with a 10 year old I am having to go back and re-learn math skills that have long since faded to someplace in the back of my brain so I can help my own kid with his homework. The Kahn Academy has been the best refresher course I have ever found.
Hey KID! Yeah you, get the fuck off my lawn!
I've always preffered bricks and mortar (and concrete) over wooden buildings.
Hivemind harvest in progress..
There are plenty of quizzes, a directed graph to help you pick the next topic, great hinting when you get stuck, silly awards for different types of progress, the ability to create student-teacher account associations ("coach" feature), etc.
Of course, lesson one is that you need to lie about your birthdate if you are under 13. This is because nobody under 13 is allowed to use the Internet, including Khan Academy. Unfortunately you need subtraction to do this, but I'll help you just this once: say you were born in 1969.
Grey means you haven't done the prerequisites. Green means that you have done the prerequisites. Blue means that you have mastered the lesson.
None of this works unless you get an account of course.
Absolutely correct.
I used khan academy some time ago to freshen up my calculus and it worked pretty well. I don't think though that the result would be the same hadn't I taken the amount of notes I did, hadn't done the work after the videos or were walking into calculus withou having a clue about it.
Still it is a good step in the right direction. To make it really work they still need to keep a tight leash on observers and kind of force users to do exercises/homework otherwise the knowledge will dribble out of their ears! (that's a fact)
-- no sig today
I watched some videos and took some practice tests and my mind immediately started thinking: "He tasks me! He tasks me, and I shall have him! I'll chase him round the Moons of Nibia, and round the Antares Maelstrom, and round perdition's flames before I give him up! Prepare to alter course!"
And the more a person (any person) actually uses what they learn, the greater their likelihood of retention.
Retention through repetition? You want this gem:
http://ankisrs.net/
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
one could just do meta-Kahn academy.
Wrap each lesson up into a primer, where that "advanced language" is broken down to basic terms. Core material can then be leveraged in multiple ways where people who do see it differently, or who can expand on what is there are free to do so.
Blogging because I can...
This video and scores does not include the feedback loop of the course exercises. The feedback of the coursework is where the pre-conceptions are corrected. Reviewing a vid can be a moment of discovery when you find a preconception is false.
I am taking some lessons. I am learning. Additional videos from other sources are great reinforcement of learned concepts. I recommend the Physics for Future Presidents.
http://physics.berkeley.edu/academics/Courses/physics10/teaching/Physics10/PffP.html
The truth shall set you free!
Projects like Modeling, http://modeling.asu.edu/ , are designed to ferret out misconceptions. They're typically deeply entrenched and you really have to address them head-on in really thoughtful ways. When you do, deep learning may then occur. Watching videos, not designed to ferret our misconceptions, isn't nearly as likely to do this.
This is totally anecdotal, but I've heard of reports of modeling instructors getting pressured to use Khan's videos. The former has sound pedagogy and tons of research behind it demonstrating improved student understanding and the latter has neither. Sigh.
To really assess you learning (if you're doing Newtonian Mechanics), see if your instructors will give you the "Force Concept Inventory." It's a standard in physics education research. For more on it, see http://modeling.asu.edu/r%26e/fci.pdf . As they put it, "(1) commonsense beliefs about motion and force are incompatible with Newtonian concepts in most respects, (2) conventional physics instruction produces little change in these beliefs, and (3) this result is independent of the instructor and the mode of instruction." At last count, Google Scholar reports 1,400 citations to this paper. It's that important. With Khan's videos as taped lectures, this research implies that they don't produce much deep learning.
anything to the 0 power is 1. Why? Because that is the way it is; it is just one of those things we need to memorize.
Bad example.
x^0=1 for all x in R
is taken as an axiom. There is no reason behind it for the teacher to explain other than if we don't assume it to be true the consequences are mathematically horrifying. You can have an algebraic system were x^0 != 1, but it will be internally inconsistent. Since we like our math to be internally consistent (albeit incomplete, see Godel's incompleteness theorem), we go with x^0=1.
I prefer wooden buildings over concrete buildings because concrete buildings produce echoes too many times. try it in a concrete building.
On the note of forgetting about half of what you had learned, it reminds me of a pedagogy that I am a fan of: learn the underlying concepts and how to apply them, and you no longer have to "remember" because you "know." With your example, I cannot rattle off hardly any of the trig identities -- but I can derive all of them quite easily.
I think that this is a major issue with our education system when it comes to math: memorization. For example, in my daughter's math class, when going over exponent laws, the teacher said, "anything to the 0 power is 1. Why? Because that is the way it is; it is just one of those things we need to memorize." The same kids who learn this way find themselves in a math class a few years later and cant remember if it is 3^1 = 0 or 3^0 = 1. I wrote him showing how bloody easy it is to learn the correct way -- by looking at what exponents are (repeated multiplication) and that if we work backwards from 3^4, to 3^3, 3^2, we see that we are dividing by three each time, so it is easy to see why 3^0 has to be one. Better yet, this lets students understand why negative exponents are what they are. With this proper understanding, the student can re-derive the exponent laws anytime they may need them.
I completely agree with you that Khan is not a replacement. There is something to be said for us social beings being, you know, social when learning.
Some things are just easier if you memorize them though, times tables being the most obvious. It is extremely useful to know instantaneously that 9*7 is 63, rather than having to do the 7, 14, 21, 28, 35, 42. 49. 56, 63 thing in your head like they teach kids nowadays.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Watch Mr. Khan's TEDtalk. Effing brilliant:
http://www.ted.com/talks/salman_khan_let_s_use_video_to_reinvent_education.html
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
I don't think the strength of Khan academy (or any other video-based educational programs) is as a replacement for more traditional education, but rather as a supplement. Khan gives students additional instruction about whatever their interested when they need it. For instance, a student struggling to understand the concept of limits whilst completing a pre-Calculus assignment at 8 pm is not able to get further explanation from their primary instructor at that moment. They can, however, go to the Khan academy lecture on the topic right then, and have the concept explained to them at the moment they need it and immediately put what they've learned into practice on their assigned work. Khan provides immediacy and an alternative viewpoint; it's just like looking the concept up in a textbook, but perhaps easier for many students to follow. So, I agree that it's no replacement for other teaching methods; but it is a great resource which can be made accessible to all English speaking children for a very low cost. Seems worthwhile to me as a supplement to other methods.
I refer my students to KA - not as a teaching tool but as a review tool. The advantage of their delivery method is that a student can rewind and have another look, something that is often not possible in the classroom. The advantage that my students have in my class is that I can see what they are doing, pinpoint where they are struggling and try to find another way of explaining it. So, I believe that KA and conventional teaching can complement each other.
The videos need to be professionally produced. The ad hoc nature is very distracting and time consuming--missing coverage etc. The range and amount of videos is a good specification however. The reversal of homework/instruction times is much needed.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
I've never read a decent textbook that didn't require a teacher to actually teach the material
The trick is to also have the instructor's edition.
Bad example.
x^0=1 for all x in R
is taken as an axiom.
also z^0=1 is true for all z in C (Complex numbers)
Some things are just easier if you memorize them though, times tables being the most obvious. It is extremely useful to know instantaneously that 9*7 is 63, rather than having to do the 7, 14, 21, 28, 35, 42. 49. 56, 63 thing in your head like they teach kids nowadays.
Hmm... I simply did 3 * 7 is 21 and 3 times 21 is 63 - I did that as fast as anyone could do it by rote. Once I could see a pattern, I did not spend too much time rote learning. When others recited 1 * 4 is 4, 2 * 4 is 8 etc., i would simply add 4 to the last answer. I think I got a better idea of the number patterns than those who purely rote learnt.
Later I found I could not do subtractions like 13 - 5, until I developed my own conceptual way of handling it (a hybrid of visual and abstract thinking) - 'borrowing and paying back' is pure nonsense!