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."

Comments

And all...

[DWMorse]

And all the for-profit schools raise their fists in the air and scream: "KKHAAANNNN!!!"

brick-and-mortar seems counterproductive

[bloody_liberal]

Can someone figure out why they need to actually build their own place? I just don't see how it fits with their strengths...

Re:brick-and-mortar seems counterproductive

[denpun]

I think money for buildings should be spent on creating more content.

KA's biggest strength is that it is online, ie, easily accessible, content easily creatable, no barriers to entry accept internet. Videos should be downloadable....and this will solve that issue.

I don't mind his teaching methods but some of his language may be too advanced for for younger kids....so money should be spent on creating more suitable content for a wider range of topics. Not just for the reason I mentioned but there is only so much he can do....and he has surely done a lot......

Open it up for anyone to be able to create...pay people not to create but to moderate other creations....this way...you allow anyone to use the skills to create and moderators can make sure it is appropriate and passes QA.

Schools should use KA and integrate it into their curriculum instead of KA starting their own school
Summers camps can he held anywhere using KA.

I agree with the other expenses, ie CMS, etc since making content creation and management easy is a big deal and will allow for other content creators to upload and mange content properly. I would go with integrating an elearning system with it for all the courses. They already have something for some but not all courses.
Teachers form anywhere should be able to integrate with the elearning system and keep track of students activities, thsi way you are empowering many teachers as opposed to only KA teachers/students.

Re:brick-and-mortar seems counterproductive

[Belial6]

I would disagree. His language is great for younger kids. One of the reasons KA is so successful and kids like him is that he doesn't talk down to them.

I would also hate to see KA opened up to the general public for content. Our education system is a self feeding monster that would likely get it's fingers involved and break KA. Better would be for Kahn to hand pick some individuals to help create new content.

I do agree that one of KA's big strengths is that it is online and is largely barrier free. A brick an mortar school is more likely to drag KA down to the level of other schools than it is to raise up KA to a new level.

Re:Khan Academy = math/science for dummies

[scottbomb]

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.

It's better to know some than none.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

First: Fund Methods That Have Evidence They Work

[bgoffe]

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.