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Khan Academy: the Teachers Strike Back
theodp writes "With his Khan Academy: The Hype and the Reality screed in the Washington Post, Mathalicious founder Karim Kai Ani — a former middle school teacher and math coach — throws some cold water on the Summer of Khan Love hippies, starting with U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. From the article: 'When asked why so many teachers have such adverse reactions to Khan Academy, Khan suggests it's because they're jealous. "It'd piss me off, too, if I had been teaching for 30 years and suddenly this ex-hedge-fund guy is hailed as the world's teacher." Of course, teachers aren't "pissed off" because Sal Khan is the world's teacher. They're concerned that he's a bad teacher who people think is great; that the guy who's delivered over 170 million lessons to students around the world openly brags about being unprepared and considers the precise explanation of mathematical concepts to be mere "nitpicking." Experienced educators are concerned that when bad teaching happens in the classroom, it's a crisis; but that when it happens on YouTube, it's a "revolution."'"
I thought they just had an aversion to him. Apparently things are more serious than I'd understood!
And the unions are pissed because high pay for bad teaching is their territory!
Online education is in its infancy. This is an area where many ideas are being tried. Some will work better than others. Probably nothing currently available is "the answer", but rather all are those little baby steps toward what will eventually emerge. It's a normal and pretty universally unavoidable process.
WALSTIB!
Experienced educators are concerned that when bad teaching happens in the classroom, it's a crisis; but that when it happens on YouTube, it's a "revolution."'"
The "revolution" in sex ed will now commence.
If the teaching is going to be bad either way, then Kahn costs a heck of a lot less to get the same result.
If Kahn and a unionized teacher are both bad, for Kahn the solution is for someone to upload a new lesson that's better. For the teacher, the solution is to suck it up because teacher unions demand that seniority trumps all other considerations.
I have no idea if Kahn or classroom teachers are ultimately the better choice. But the teachers unions better cobble together some damn good arguments for why they deserve the compensation and job protections they get, if Kahn offers way better bang for the buck.
Given the state of schooling in many countries. Post secondary school, especially, has the nasty habit of being massively bloated and wasteful in terms of resources, as well as teachers pushing their own books as courseware at insane prices, then not even referencing them in the course. At least with Khan, the price is right and you don't feel ripped off, or pressured into continuing education in a broken system with more administrative holes than swiss cheese.
My personal thought is, who cares? You get what you pay for, right? Services like Khan Academy are great if they're helping people learn things they wouldn't otherwise take an interest in learning about, or if it enables learning they were interested in but couldn't afford traditional methods of education.
If you're already IN a traditional classroom environment, then no - I'm not sure Khan Academy lessons are so great. I mean, you have to ask, as a paying student, why you're paying your hard-earned money to get a personal classroom experience with supposed educational professionals, who turn around and ask you to sit through canned Khan presentations instead of presenting the material themselves.
As for the "precise explanation of mathematical concepts to be mere nitpicking"? Maybe it is, really? By that, I mean, most people are really only interested in learning math as long as it allows them to accomplish something. The minority who find the theory itself fascinating and want to learn more math for the sake of learning it are the ones who will probably move beyond whatever Khan Academy teaches, and consult other sources.
If you know enough math to get correct answers to the problem you encounter as part of your daily life or job, then that's likely ALL the math you really need to know.
I for one salute our bad e-teacher overlords. That'll give me the time I need to repurpose all the college kids currently being recruited into obsolete analog teaching positions for my growing army of disaffected warriors. We'll play the long game, and wait as humanity embraces non-nitpicky math, jesus-science, and non offensive literature. As the idiocracy grows in ignorance, so shall we grow in power and hunger... Soon the great feast shall commence! Bwahahahahaha.
I mean... errrr... gosh I'm excited about new technology improving education, why do teachers need to be such party poopers with facts. Its probably all some union's fault.
Although I haven't watched any of the Khan Academy videos, I suspect they're sort of a crash-course, designed to bring the viewer up to speed about topics fast, and give them a working knowledge. University education, on the other hand, aims to give the student in-depth knowledge to enable him/her to do scientifically rigorous, groundbreaking work in their field.
The two are on fundamentally different levels, while both are teaching, and equally legitimate. Just for different purposes ("emergency" knowledge VS. scientific knowledge).
Hyperbole: I use it liberally!
Show me a teacher who's willing to give me a random, informative, 5-minute lecture, for free, with a 30-second lead time in my own bathroom and we can talk.
This is article deriding free on-line math education written by a person who develops paid on-line math education.
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
I always looked at it as a great way to explain the process to kids.
When my kids are frustrated with a problem, I will bring up an example in the Khan academy. It helps them, or at the very least helps them tell me precisely where they are confused.
And any parent knows, when A kid is frustrated, getting a lesson from a parent can exacerbate the problem.
That said, if you only went to the Khan Academy to learn math, you will miss out on the finer details that are important with more advanced math. It doesn't help people THINK about what the math is doing. Subtle, but important distinction. I wan't my kids to know where and when to apply Algebra and Geometry in the real world. I do it often enough where the see it, but extra is good.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
If the complaint about how "rise of run isn't a formal definition of slope" is indicative of the kinds of errors in his lectures, then I'd say Khan is right that the naysayers are just being picky. Yah, it's not perfectly accurate or a formal definition, but it's an excellent start to understanding a deeper understanding.
An educators job should be to get people excited about a subject, not to present the most perfect, gods honest truth answers to everything. Anyone interested in a subject will go on to learn more, and find out the more nuanced and correct answers. If you've ever become an expert in any field, you know that everyone (including the best teachers) don't always have time or knowledge to give the best possible answers. That's OK, since education doesn't stop once the class stops.
If your ultimate (and final) response when asked why you believe something is "because my teacher told me", then you really don't understand the subject matter very well at all.
AccountKiller
Encourage their students to watch it and get the general idea as homework one night, teach a follow up lesson the next day and then give a homework on that topic that evening. The more exposure to the material the better.
One of my best math teachers in college used to encourage us to watch these types of videos, once he gave us an assignment where the guy in the video was doing something wrong. Our assignment was to find out what he was doing wrong and write up what he should have done that would make it correct.
Modern teachers always bitch about not enough resources or time to do things... well here's your resource, it's often free and accessible, take advantage of it.
If the teaching is going to be bad either way, then Kahn [sic] costs a heck of a lot less to get the same result.
I think I should point out that I haven't found any place where Khan suggests that his youtube videos replace public education.
Khan's made a few mistakes. The first that is the worst is that the article mentions he was corrected about multiplying negative numbers and instead of praising the people for making a new video correcting him, he apparently just took his video down and replaced it. And then made some little remark about why people put up such a big fuss about this concept. His second and less grievous mistake was to engage talking heads and accept praise from politicians. I think if he had just focused on making videos, ignored the praise and let Bill Gates or some other public figure pitch the video, he wouldn't find himself the target in this back and forth. We need to stop looking at online education as a replacement and instead as an augmenting force in our children's learning.
My work here is dung.
The proof is in the metrics. American students suck because they're not taught fundamentals when its time to learn fundamentals. Instead they are taught social agendas and happy thoughts. The teachers should've been pissed 30-40 years ago when this started happening, not waiting until idiocracy dominates the system output.
Those traditional teachers say that as though they take an actual interest in their students and take the time to fully answer their questions in a thorough, instructive manner. Lemme save the younglings here the costly journey through higher education now and say, they don't! Traditional teachers have canned lectures they give over and over for 30 years. What do they care if they make no sense? They have non-English speaking TA's for that. Or if they don't, who cares? At the end of the day they're the ones issuing the grades so if you don't like it you can take a hike. Seriously.
Then you take somebody like Khan who wants to explain the concepts in an accessible way, and take no money for it. It seems the only ones who have a problem with that are the ones who have been doing it wrong for generations and charging a premium for it, as gatekeepers to ineffable knowledge.
Well, friends, this is the sound of chickens coming home to roost. Rip enough people off for long enough, and they will route around your damage. Watch, and beware, ye (teachers|bankers|politicians|oilmen|1%)
If not us, who? If not now, when?
Khan Academy is the greatest supplemental education resource I have ever seen. But, one thing it can't do is force you to sit down, block off an hour a day, and learn a subject. Let's face is, 95% of us do not have that motivation, especially where one tab away awaits an entire internet of distractions.
Having a physical obligation, to an in-face person in a physical location to show up and learn something is an exceptionally powerful psychological motivational force and something that online education simply can't replace.
But man, would have I killed to have Khan available when it came to exam time in high school and college.
So basically some guy who now has his own teaching web-site is trashing another guy who currently has the more popular teaching web-site.
Does that about sum it up?
There is so much of accessible math theory locked behind the wall of algebra. Mathematics is BORING until you can show people WHY they are learning this. Most math classes i have taken are just total wrote calculation with no rhyme or reason. Its 'do it this way, you'll figure why out later'. When the 'later' is 2 years of math classes down the road, Khan's kinda got a point.
Good-bye
Back in the '80s, cable TV was inundated by infomercials for a home workout gadget called Health Rider. It was a gadget where one slowly rocked back and forth (usually with a big smile on one's face), and after 15 minutes (three in the commercial), it was folded up and stowed under the bed. Sure, it didn't come cheap, but a gym membership was much more expensive, and the costs of being permanently out of shape could be catastrophic.
The problem wasn't that the gadget didn't deliver a workout. It did, but the workout wasn't very good. Customers had to find out for themselves that getting in shape required time, effort, and dedication. They're finding out the same thing about Sal's videos. The problem isn't Sal, just like the problem wasn't Health Rider. The problem is that shortcuts fail.
How about this from wikipedia:
Khan has stated a vision of turning the academy into a charter school:
This could be the DNA for a physical school where students spend 20 percent of their day watching videos and doing self-paced exercises and the rest of the day building robots or painting pictures or composing music or whatever.[9]
Sounds like he is advocating a replacement to public education ...
We need to be wary of Kahn Academy, but we have to be wary of "experts" that are condemning Kahn Academy as well.
A lot of times the "experts" doing on the complaining in popular media are just as worthless as listening to your fat neighbor who is bitching over his beer on his porch. Most of the talking heads on TV are like this and more and more even the people that are high ranking in governmental and professional organizations are well is well. It's because they're better at bullshit then their "expert" subject.
So.. as far as Kahn Academy, it's likely a little bit of both sides are right and both sides are wrong. You have "educators" that don't want to absorb different ideas and you have Kahn who is also a bit of an ass himself.
I read the article criticizing a few particular lessons, but by comparison the education in public schools can be much worse. Yes there's some amazing teachers out there that will blow Khan's Academy out of the water covering the same material, but for every great teacher there's dozens of mediocore ones and a handful of really bad ones that you probably would never want your child hanging around, much less be subjugated to.
I wonder if Secretary of Education Arne Duncan cares about that?
Look at this like Wikipedia. There are obvious quality problems, but Wikipedia keeps improving and getting larger, and if you're Microsoft Encarta, there's just no market for you any longer (thus, the first MS product actually killed by Open Source).
The guild apprenticeship system really hated book-learning. Copyists really hated printing. Both of these were previous means to commoditize education. This is just more of the same.
There will be tremendous economic repercussions from the further commoditization of education.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
cried KHAAAAAN.... khaaaaan
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
People decrying this are the teachers who are in fear of change. Nobody said his solution has to be the final one but guess what - do you see any of these teachers who are complaining doing anything to create online teaching methods?
If anything, Khan should be commended for apparently doing what some teachers have not - and for free, no less.
This is article deriding free on-line math education written by a person who develops paid on-line math education.
That sounds like an ad hominem. Motives aside, is the argument valid? One part of the article stood out to me:
As a result, experienced educators have begun to push back against what they see as fundamental problems with Khan’s approach to teaching. In June, two professors from Grand Valley State University created their own video in which they pointed out errors in Khan’s lesson on negative numbers: not things they disagreed with, but things he got plain wrong. To his credit, Khan did replace the video. However, instead of using this as an opportunity to engage educators and improve his teaching, he dismissed the criticism.
“It’s kind of weird,” Khan explained, “when people are nitpicking about multiplying negative numbers.”
When asked why so many teachers have such adverse reactions to Khan Academy, Khan suggests it’s because they’re jealous. “It’d piss me off, too, if I had been teaching for 30 years and suddenly this ex-hedge-fund guy is hailed as the world’s teacher.”
Why isn't Khan embracing criticism and review/removal/replacement of his videos by knowledgeable folks? I would be rewarding people proofing my many videos and trying to get more people doing that instead of dismissing it as "nitpicking."
My work here is dung.
KHANNNN!!
There should be exactly one goal in online education: to improve the quality of education. There is nothing else to discuss until that matter is settled, and it is nowhere near settled. "Transforming education" is only good if the transformation yields better education.
Here in the USA, education has become almost exclusively a matter of vocational training. That has been extremely destructive to education and to the society that education serves (and make no mistake, what is bad for education is bad for society). We spend all our time teaching people formulaic approaches to problems, and almost never take the time to help students develop their intellect or their ability to develop new approaches to the problems they need to solve. If the Kahn academy is not addressing that problem, then it is not addressing the most important issue that faces education here.
To put it another way, look at the state of computer education in schools. Students are taught how to use the prepackaged solutions that their school districts buy, and those students who dare to go beyond "here is how you make the font bigger" are often punished (you know, because they are dangerous hackers who know how to get a terminal opened on a system that is programmed to stop them from writing their own software). Even when we do bother to teach people to write software, we give them formulaic approaches to solving programming problems -- when I TA'd a CS101 course, the students were required to have their programs formatted in a specific way, to write their programs in a specific language, and my personal favorite rule, they were forbidden to use language features that they had not been taught about.
I do not want to discredit online education, since it may very well enable a better approach in some topics (I doubt all -- one cannot really judge a sculpture without being able to see it first hand). However, given that I have not heard anyone express any alternative philosophy on education (it's purpose or how best to carry it out), I have doubts. If someone believes that education is about training people for a job, they are not likely to develop anything other than a vocational training program.
Palm trees and 8
By all means include teachers in the process, particularly passionate teachers with amazing results because they have something to say, something to share, and they can shape this thing into a better tool to serve humanity. To those who are concerned that its threatening your turf, get over it, technology hasn't even begun to threaten your turf. You want to shape the future, ride the wave, become a meaningful part of the change. Those of you just putting in time, because its your job, sorry, it may not be your job much longer. There are a ton of great teachers out there who will find a way to use this technology to improve their educational process, and teachers aren't going away any time soon. People like people to people interaction in educating their children, its how human beings are designed.
That said, the only way to transform the vast majority of poor and suffering human beings on the planet is to bring enlightenment, and that takes education. What Khan is doing will change the world. Who cares if someone else designs the curriculum, and another person delivers the classes. The point is that anyone anywhere with an inexpensive tablet will soon be able to take their child from early grade school to college, at their own pace. Can anything be more important on the planet today. Hell, I'd love to have a few folks in D.C. sit through a few of those classes. We might get some sanity.
..."I know exactly what I’m going to say, because that’s what teaching means."
So, teaching means either you're a psychic who knows exactly how quick the students will be on the uptake and what questions they will ask in class, or you're teaching your stuff like a tape recorder, without looking into the classroom and gauging whether they are following you and without allowing them to ask questions? *shudder*
I think a debate about Khan's specific videos is beside the point. For years, people have been talking about online education and we got these dreadful videos of a professor lecturing, shot from the back of the room. Khan shows us a realistic vision of how online education can happen at reasonable cost. It will not necessarily replace the teachers, but it will replace a teacher who repeats the same material multiple times a day. And it will help to level the playing field.
People in universities are talking a lot about is the "flipped classroom", which means the lecture is online and clarification and working of problems occur in the classroom. This model is most obviously applicable to STEM classes, and if you haven't been following the developments, this site at NC State offers an overview of what's going on with one kind of flipped classroom and where it's happening. The University of Minnesota has recently made a huge investment in this kind of classroom.
Whatever happens with Khan specifically, he's energized a process of transformation that everyone knew had to happen eventually. Kudos to him.
Might be a moron with a scam.
But he's still miles ahead of the rest of the educators in america. We have no high ground on which to denounce ANYONES education anything... we've fucked it all up from top to bottom inside and out.
Americas education systems are a fucking joke.
Now begin the arguing about whos fault that is. Instead of fixing any of it..... and........ GO.
I've used Khan Academy in the classroom a few times for Algebra 1 when doing my student teaching. While the video was playing my mentor says to me "it's so boring" and I said "I know, but they're addicted to TV so they're watching it." For one lesson I came up with what I thought was a great way to teach multiplying polynomials and I said to myself, if Khan doesn't teach it this was, I'm not showing the video. Turns out, he had the same idea so I showed the video. The students got it. But not without me running through a few examples and reiterating the prior knowledge that makes it "nothing new" to them. The video is nice way to introduce the material the first time, but it needs to be repeated by the teacher to make sure everyone in the class gets it.
At one point the video says "I'm going to use magenta because it shows up well." The students in the room were about to yell out "NO STOP IT!" because magenta does not show up when using a video projector in a classroom. Khan also makes jokes to which I pointed out "as a teacher I'm responding to you and making adjustments in response to your feedback, Khan is talking to himself and has no idea what's going on."
I now do tutoring and for my student I have him using Khan Academy. I can see what the site can't. For example, the student is decent at math but his handwriting sucks which is normal. Khan Academy can't see that. I can, so now I have the student work problems using 1/2" grid paper with one number per box. His handwriting is improving and silly mistakes are going down dramatically.
At best, Khan is a supplement to the classroom. It's not a replacement. My goal as a tutor is to get students to understand how to use it to improve their remedial math skills so I can focus on teaching them the new things. When school gets back in session I'll be tutoring a lot more students and working with them using Khan Academy to guide the material as well as working with their current material assigned by their teachers when available.
When I start teaching full time, most likely next fall, I'll be pushing Khan Academy but will not use it in the classroom. It's great for remedial work. It's not for classrooms. And it's certainly no substitute for a teacher.
Work Safe Porn
I can sum up why Khan Academy is so popular in two words: mandatory attendance. To use the age old comparison, broccoli sucks when you are force fed it as a kid, but it can be quite good when you try it voluntarily as an adult. I haven't seen the recent vids, but when it was Khan by himself it was the same old chalk-and-talk you see in so many traditional classrooms, only with less precise terminology and no admitting you don't know the answer in front of the class. There's something to be said for what Khan is doing. It's rather like peer tutoring. It's a great supplement to teachers, but its no replacement. Much like Harry Potter is a great gateway to Lord of the Rings but not a replacement thereof.
These same teachers are making my kid write a report with WIKIPEDIA AS A SOURCE.
Meanwhile, I just encountered a teacher who believes that "word-shape-recognition" is the same thing as "reading". And none of her class can sound out words they've not been taught.
Riiiggghttt.
You mad! You mad! You mad!
You know what looks like Ad Hominem but isn't a logical fallacy?
Appeal to Authority.
Meaning we are to take this person's word on an education matter because she is an educator.
1. She has an opinion on free online education
2. She is an expert on online education
3. Her opinion appears valid
4. She has a monetary interest to deride free online education
So, 5. Her opinion on online education cannot be trusted.
Also notice the equivocation in 1, 2.
Wah! Wah! Wah! I destroy your kid's future and you don't pay me enough to do it. Wah! Wah! Wah!
for saying you were not prepared for class at a public school.
I went through public schools through 12th grade and I know for a fact that there were days, weeks even, when some teachers were clearly mailing it in. They would spend most of their time talking with students on those days, or just showing a movie.
Don't give me this nonsense that the average public school teacher is either prepared for class, or they get fired, that just aint so. In fact it is so so so far away from being realistic it's scary.
I swear they give me mod points to shut me up.
Not knowing in advance what one is going to say is not the same thing as being unprepared.
Telling an interviewer that one often does not know in advance what one is going to say is not the same thing as braging about being unprepared.
News presenters to little more than read tele-prompters. Are they unprepared?
Many politicians read prepared speeches. Does this mean they are prepared?
Maybe being prepared means having memorized a script, regardless of what it means or whether it is understood?
Many professions will become redundant or be radically transformed in the next decade, you can waste time fighting it, or learn to grown with the flow.
Farticus.
"when bad teaching happens in the classroom, it's a crisis" Well, in my opinion, about 90 % of teachers and therefore education is "bad". Even here in Finland, where the politicians brag with our PISA-results. Is there a school where bad teacher is fired for bad teaching? The best thing with Khan Academy is that it is public on the internet, and can be criticised, if necessary. When bad teaching happens in classroom, no one is concerned. Vesa Linja-aho Senior Lecturer
Wrong. Classroom PLUS Khan
Yes, and there are examples that the Classroom + Khan is an effective model. The Economist has an article describing how the Los Altos school district is using Khan's videos to provide the "dry lecture" which is assigned for homework while classroom time is used for supervised problem solving with the teacher roving about helping any struggling students. That model makes complete sense to me especially since we keep hearing stories about how parent's can't do their kids homework (I've been called in to help my little cousin with her math homework at times when her parents were thoroughly confused).
all the time, and nobody cares. They're just concerned about money and feeling empowered. Mostly feeling empowered.
You get back to study!
As a couple of others have noted, there is no reason to posit a false dichotomy - that one must use either Kahn Academy (or similar) or a "live" teacher. Short lessons like Kahn does are useful to review concepts/unit operations where a student is rusty. My wife teaches physics, statistics, and calculus at a small high school and is an adjunct at a local community college, teaching the CC classes in the high school. The best bang for the buck for college credits around. Anyway, her biggest complaint is that too many of her students have been coddled in lower level classes and have either never mastered the pre-requisites or simply not retained them. Kahn's videos are one of many helpful resources for such students. The goal is to transform students into self-directed, life-long learners. This is really the only path to success, because the half-life to obsolescence of any technical course of study is so short.
Prof. Jean-Claude Bradly at Drexel discovered that students actually preferred pod/vodcasts of lectures (they could pause and watch on their schedule) and it freed up class time to work problems and answer questions. I see Kahn Academy videos in this same light. Are they perfect? No. can they be improved? Yes. Will polite, constructive criticism be better received than snarky comments? Absolutely! In this regard, the cliche "everything i needed to know, i learned in kindergarten" has some merit - things are a lot better when everybody is polite and plays nice in the sandbox.
“...learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.”
T.H. White, The Once and Future King
So first we had "ohh, wikipedia is evil because anyone can edit it" and now we have "Khan Academy is evil because his teaching style is to relaxed". Ever thought that a lot of students relate to that relaxed style? It's kind of like listening to one of their friends talk rather than listening to a teacher.
I have used Khan in my classrooms of students at academic risk for more than 2 years now and it has been the best thing that anyone could have possibly done for them. Finally they have a place where they can go to learn the stuff that they should have done years ago, but where to lazy to do so. They don't have to ask anyone for help most of the time, and so they can still look cool in front of everyone else.
These attacks on things like Khan Academy and Wikipedia are simply started as traditional for profit companies take a hit in their earnings. They don't like that, so they just make up rubbish, start spreading it around, and all of a sudden we have all the dumb little sheep saying the same thing. By going around saying Khan academy is crap, the only thing that is going to happen is that some principal will look at what I do, and might question why I'm using it, and then my students will suffer just so that someone can make a bit more profit.
Bugger off. Khan Academy has saved the academic life of at least 60 of my students, and continues to do so. When my students are feeling better about them self, and more optimistic about their future, they are not stealing your car, breaking in to your house, or assaulting your children.
If educators are getting their panties in a bunch over what some ex-hedge manager is doing on Youtube, then can I kindly suggest... THAT THEY DO SOMETHING ON YOUTUBE!?!?!?!?!? I have a tremendous amount of respect for individual educators but little respect for the K-12 establishment. If you're a teacher and the best thing you can think to do with your time is tear down what you perceive as underqualified competition, then I have no time for you. If you want me to check out your Youtube video, call me. I got a couple 14yr olds who are about to run headlong into Algebra this fall If you can hold their attention better than Kahn can, I'll be right there pimping your stuff on "teh interwebs."
http://mat.usc.edu/u-s-education-versus-the-world-infographic/
Like there needs to be more trades like Education.
We need more people teaching who have done the real work and are not lifers in academia AKA apprenticeships / tech schools.
Higher edu needs to be in smaller chunks and in not so tied to a college time table.
Some needs to be done about sports (maybe even offer sports only degree / plans)
Some of Junk degrees in college like underwater basket weaving need to go or be cut down or maybe even become stuff for the football team at sports colleges.
There should be something along the lines of a GED for the college level or some kind of way to gap real work skills to college with out there being a big time sink.
More skills based classes and stuff like this.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/suburbs/palatine/ct-tl-harper-manufacturing-congress-20120719,0,690738.story
Oh finally a topic I have real-world experience with! :)
:P ) and it's all thanks to Khan! I would say the biggest difference for me when learning at the Khan Academy is Khan has a very robust understanding of the math concepts and even history. I can't learn by having some teacher hand-out a sheet with 10 formulas on it and just be expected to memorize them... I need to understand why and how or I'll never remember. Khan always does a great job of explain WHY and HOW things work even throwing in some history at times to make things much more interesting ( I.E: Pythagoras feeding his apprentice to sharks for showing that 2^(1/2) is an example of an irrational number, which could not be expressed in a nice and neat fraction... Heck my teacher doesn't even know who Pythagoras was :| )
Let me start by pointing out that the biggest criticism against Khan Academy is a strawman-argument. Khan Academy is NOT meant to replace the classroom. In fact Khan himself has explained this. Khan started it all with a few simple videos he posted to YouTube to help tutor his Niece who was being tracked into the lower tier math class'.
Now for my personal experience... There's a LOT of bad Math teachers in Canada. In my country, you don't have choice. If your teacher is crap, oh well. He's protected by one of the nation's largest and most powerful unions and he's not going anywhere. In fact my current Grade 12 math teacher is a prime example. He visibly does not care.. If you don't get a concept, oh well. At the end of the day the entire class moves onto the next concept whether you're ready or not. In a few days you'll be so far behind it can seem pretty hopeless.
For me, Khan Academy got me from the low 60s and 70s up to the high 90s and the top of my class'. Now I'm helping the other students in class and I'm being tracked at the Academic-level ( The highest tier in our school system, which opens up the door to any College & University I want
the parent post's claim that the pay is pretty good when you ignore the months when they aren't working. Shoot, my school job of working at a convenience store would have been great if I could take all of my paychecks and combine them into a single month. Unfortunately, I'd starve the other 11.
CS is not IT and border line programming (varies by school / program) But it is not for your helpdesk, desktop, sever, web, ect side of stuff.
Some college as part of a CS / programming class load tech real skills that are needed to do the job and others it's more about the high level theory.
that realize that they will never amount to anything. In order to not feel too bad about themselves they constantly try to drag others down to their level, feeling that as long as they have company, they aren't total failures.
I teach AP Chemistry and I know several of my students need all the help they can get. I created a class website, making sure to include several pages to the best quality chemistry podcast-type videos I could find. While Khan isn't perfect by any means, I find his videos to be an excellent backup explanation to the topics we discuss in class. I separated his videos into categories that reflect the different units we cover so its was easier for the kids to find a link that meets their needs. I know one of my seniors last year found his website invaluable to pass a college algebra class that switched teachers mid-year, leaving the kids without the best instructor. Sometimes it's nice to have a second voice explaining a topic (we even swap students for tutoring between teachers for this reason), so I think his efforts are on the right track. There are three sets which are of very good quality for AP Chem - the NMSI AP Chem videos, Khan, and a site called Chemguy.com. Even college students in their 100 and 200 level classes would benefit from his offerings.
One huge thing I have concerns about is the concept of the "flipped classroom" where kids are expected to go home and watch some online video and then expected to go into to class tomorrow well-versed on the topic and ready for some activity. Many higher-order topics need that interactive teacher-student discourse to full understand the topic. I've spent entire periods just covering a single free-response question, making sure to cover a number of tangential topics and showing the full spectrum of the question. Two guys named Bergmann and Sams are pushing the flipped classroom in the sciences, but haven't ponied up the numbers to show progress.
In an nutshell, Khan and anyone else who produces quality educational chemistry videos is a resource I will encourage my kids to use. I want it to help support discussion and learning in the classroom, but not replace it.
"Remember,no matter where you go... there you are." - Buckaroo Banzai
you think that someone with a degree (often a masters only deserves a median income) then ignore the fact that you can't eat vacation time, I guess inherently lazy people consider it a plus, but not others. completely forget the fact that they spend an incredible amount of time after those paid hours doing more work. Then to top it off, you blame the teachers for the fact that idiots like you have failed to actually learn anything. I don't know why self-important blowhards like you think that it's some sort of privilege to do all of your work for you, but teaching isn't in the same sort of category as the ignorant grunt labor you seem to be familiar with. You can't expect to pay talented people crap, expect them to do even more work on top of what is acknowledged all for the honor of being treated like dirt by ignorant people and parents who feel that having their kids actually do something is way out of line.
how about you try to increase your standards. there was a time when pensions were the norm. unfortunately, people like you got too lazy and let it all slip away.
Online education is nothing more than a recast of the CD-ROM education industry 20 years ago and the "learn" to draw by mail things way before that. It's not real. It's not a magic bullet. It's a race to the bottom, fast-food, rubber stamp education that kills us all.
They never seem to think that people can tell for themselves if their teacher is good or bad. No mere mortal can tell if the 170 million lessons people received from Khan Academy are any good. They have to have a proper "educator" to form their opinion for them. I am going to go and throw up.
Depends on the context.
Sure, if you're advocating the use of open source software vs. commercial alternatives, you might just be able to make a strong case that 'You get what you pay for!" is a lie.
But like most sayings, it's not meant to cover all situations. It's just a general piece of commentary. On the whole, I think there's truth to it, to a point, and then it decreases. Statistically, from looking at many, many product reviews from such sources as Consumer Reports, it's said that *generally*, the best value is found somewhere in the middle. For example, if your local Home Depot sells 3 different models of shovels -- the mid-priced one is probably the smartest buy. (Chances are, the high-end one is similar to the mid-grade one in overall quality. The justifications for paying more tend to be such things as offering a more comfortable handle or some small ergonomic benefit. And if you look at those improvements objectively, they probably cost very little to add to the product, vs. its actual markup, which may be a good 50% more than the mid-priced option.)
So if you're addressing someone looking for the "cheapest option" (as so many Americans do), it's not a bad slogan to try to get them to move up a notch in quality.
And a couple more: http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/4f0b5867eab8ea4c24000033/spending-per-pupil-by-country.jpg http://www.supportingevidence.com/sitebuilder/images/PISA_Test_Scores_vs_cumm_edu_spend_by_country-820x565.jpg
In other words he's jealous.
Seems Khan Academy poses more a threat to paid tutoring services than formal education. I view Khan as a free, anytime, anywhere tutor rather than a replacement for earning a BS from an accredited institution.
Quality and reach.
You're all viewing this incorrectly.
This isn't for college students.
This isn't for educators.
This isn't for review.
Khan is for kids or idiot college students like me who've forgone math and now are desperate to understand basic concepts. I love it, it's bootstrapping. You understand a concept and feel great about it. Do you want to learn more? Then buy a book, enroll in a higher level class.
It's amazing that you curmudgeons are complaining that he's too slow or doesn't teach advanced subjects. Get over yourselves. Stop expecting the entire world to be interested in what you like, or to instantly understand a subject. At least students learn, if you want to whine about everything, go start your own online platform and create your own video.
Khan and co are for children who want to (read 90% forced into) learning more. School is for children where 90% do not want to be there. But laws force them to be there. I went to private shcool. They are for forcing children to do things they do not want to do themselves. And it works. We cannot all be geniuses, as Mr Bond once said.
Khan is for the top end of the market. It cannot help where 90% of teachers work. If he is pretending this, he is a liar. But I bet he carefully does not make such claims. I bet he keeps right away from teaching those who do not want to be there. In teaching, he would be a coward deserting his responsibility. Teachers have to wear the (in) ability of their students. Khan method untested.
I rather take his work for free than piss poor job from a bad teacher or college professor. People that decry Khan is a bad teacher should shut the fuck up, or do what he's doing better and (like Khan) for free. Society pays a ton for education, and in general we get shit in return (unless you live in a well-to-do zip code with excellent school ratings.) So screw them, screw them with a cactus. Either that, or they should put their money where their mouths are and show Khan how to do it.
I've always been disappointed in my math skills; I barely passed calc II. After a lot of Khan videos (and a better attitude), I could derive my own trig identities. I'm sure a lot of people can do that in their sleep, but for me, it was a big deal. Khan really brought math down to earth and made it obtainable to me. I think a lot of people who've written themselves off as bad at math would be surprised how far they can go with a good teacher.
The people complaining want an 87 step process to learning. Sometimes 10 minutes is enough.
Whats great about Khan might not be the content but the overall concept. There are some crappy wikipedia pages but noone would argue Wikipedia isn't one of the most revolutionary concepts in human history.
We need to stop looking at online education as a replacement
Why? As long as the videos are well-made, it could very well be a replacement for some intelligent people. School doesn't have a monopoly on information. It has the advantage that you can learn much more (but you'll only learn if you're determined, and I have to question whether most of the people using Khan Academy really learn anything from the videos or if they're just memorizing formulas and claiming to understand) in a short amount of time. For mathematics, anyway. I suspect something like chemistry would be far more difficult to replace.
Did you see the "correction" about his multiplying negative numbers video? It was a couple of morons nit-picking about largely irrelevant shit, like explaining how multiplying two negative numbers works before explaining how multiplying two positive numbers work, and also complaining that he was explaining this using negative and positive one instead of other numbers, as if there were some chance that might lead to confusion. They even complained that he said "positive one" instead of "plus one" which I can't even begin to imagine as being a valid criticism. ...but apparently he saw some value in their comments, and so he recreated his video. However, that he gave no credit is of little surprise to me. The two were clearly assholes simply looking to criticize rather than provide any worthwhile feedback. That he could find anything worthwhile in their video to justify recreating his own video clearly speaks more of his own insight than of any assistance provided by those two morons. I wouldn't have given them credit either. I would have left the video as it was.
But I thought that the standard /. line was to teach to the highest student and pull the rest along. . . . .
Actually, that's the standard teachers union line, where the fast learning kids get to teach the slower kids instead of learning farther ahead themselves. This makes them more manageable, and keeps everything on a nice grade-level basis so the teacher can read the lesson plan a week ahead of having to teach the lesson, instead of knowing the material cold. This is why it's possible for the P.E. teacher to substitute for the History teacher on occasion.
I think the standard /. line, if there was one, would be: let the faster learning kids learn at their own pace, and let the slower learning kids learn to say "would you like fries with that?" to the faster learning kids.
Yeah, because holy shit that teacher pay rate is out of control.
Seriously, since when did the abysmally low rate of pay teachers receive become a point of contention?
I think that happened about the same time as the career ladder for teachers was redefined so that "up the ladder" meant moving from teaching into administration, coupled with the huge amount of money that should be going to teachers, schools, and school supplies going to the administrators instead, while the whole system becomes more and more administration top-heavy.
A friend of mine is seriously considering starting a non-profit for the schools which "can not even afford minimal school supplies" in order to shame the state into getting rid of one administrator per school, which would be enough to keep every student supplied with pencils, paper, crayons, rulers, and so on for the entire year. I keep telling her that they have no shame, so it's probably not going to work.
One of the most disappointing aspects of my college career has been running into professors who just don't give a damn about their students. It's painfully clear with certain professors that they don't want to be teaching a class when they come completely unprepared, improvise a terrible lecture, and have no understanding of what students have taken away from their class. I'm a UC Berkeley student, and it's shocking to me the number of professors that treat their undergraduate teaching responsibilities with such distain. I can understand that undergraduates are not necessarily the most respectful students, but when regular lecture attendance is below 20% some blame must be placed on the professor. I took linear algebra at Berkeley, and stopped going to lecture after about the month when I realized that the professor wasn't getting any better. In fact, our grad student instructors would tell us that lecture was a waste of time because the professor clearly didn't give a crap. Instead they would hold their office hours at the same time because they knew that's when people would be free to attend them. Khan Academy was a life saver when it came to linear algebra. It wasn't perfect, but it was a great learning resource that provided the basics and allowed me to understand more rigorous resources for linear algebra (like my textbook).
People are different. They are not machines and educated students are NOT like products. MBA's beliefs must be dismissed as the baseless belief it is. They have a fancy hammer and view everything as a nail.
Some people benefit with Khan and I frankly do not care if they are a little wrong or skip some things if it prepares students for further advancement when or if it is needed. Math in the USA is one of the worst topics there is where it is all explained and taught the same methodical way everywhere with varying degrees of quality that does little for somebody who's mind is not prepped for that specific learning process.
Good education should be rooted in the brain sciences; and this does mean to some degree profiling is required. Motivation is a HUGE MASSIVE problem and even if Khan was horrible if he made a few % more people succeed in Math it would be worthwhile. I wouldn't care if you had some bimbo strippers going around saying they like men who know math -- it works for selling a lot of stupid products. Yes, I just gave the basis for a controversial PSA campaign by the Dept of Education! (it would be the most successful one in history but nobody cares about reality if it touches their emotions. Remember, a lot of great scientists got started because of inspirational fiction and fantasies; the ones who did not lacked the right trigger...)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
"Teachers Fight Back" should have read "Founder of Company Trying To Sell Content Khan Gives Out For Free Strikes Back" and a poor hatchet job it was too.
Is it more important that we learn the book definitions for everything, or is it more important to do the actual problems? Some of us can't afford to go to school and Kahn is a welcome resource. Because of Kahn, after struggling with probability and statistics on my own, I'm able to calculate total probability given one or more conditions. The few calc videos I've watched have help there as well. Personally, I don't think Kahn is boring -- he's more interesting than my geometry teacher in high school who would give a lecture in front of an overhead projector.
People who are "concerned" are fucking pathetic. Why not instead of being concerned, do it the way they think it should be done? Nobody is keeping them from putting up math lessons the way they think is right.
But they won't do that because they are lazy incapable snobs who really cannot get anything done except "being concerned".
Their annual salary (12 months) is 60,000. But they only work 9, so despite their headline pay of 60K, they only get paid 40K.
Kahn demonstrably doesn't want to improve his educational courses. Whether or not your assertion otherwise is correct (it has not been tested), this is a fact.
Therefore why bother with his course if he's not willing to find out for himself whether his courses are correct?
I see no point in striking at someone that is trying to help better the world. Come on! Let's be FAIR!
People watch those videos if they find them useful. What opinions traditional teachers hold of them shouldn't matter to anyone, in particular since I suspect that most people who watch Khan videos are people who were failed by traditional schools in one way or another. If Khan Academy ever turns into a charter school, it will again be up to parents and students to decide whether they like the format and find it useful. In education, it's ultimately only results that count, and parents and students are smart enough to figure that out themselves.
Nor will Salman Khan's idea that he is going to build Charter schools where students watch and hour of his videos a day to learn all the math they need to know and spend the rest of the day playing guitar or making paintings.
You completely missed the point of Khan Academy. The point is not to reduce education to watching an hour of videos and it's not to remove teachers from educational process. To the contrary - it's to use the teachers more effectively.
Here are the important points:
1)Teacher's time
At the moment, teachers spend 50% or more of their classroom time delivering a lecture. This is a complete waste of their talent. Instead, kids can look at the lecture themselves online - they cannot interrupt the teacher to ask a question, but they don't do that during a lesson anyway - with a video they can at least rewind it and listen to it again. Then, they can spend the time in the classes doing creative work, discussions and exercises with the teacher's assistance.
2)Student's speed
At the moment we require that all students go through the material at the same speed. This is terribly inefficient as it results with most students either underachieving and getting bored or moving on through the material without learning what's needed. With Khan's approach you can let students go through the material at their own speed. You can still challenge them to do better but you don't need to abandon the slower students because the class has to move on
3)Tracking
The teacher can track each student's development in a comprehensive way - he'll be able to easier identify who has what kind of problems or strengths and use this information to develop the kids to their best possibilities.
Yes, the education process has been developing a long time but if Khan's approach catches on, it will be a pretty big step forward.
>Sure, if you're advocating the use of open source software vs. commercial alternatives, you might just be able to make a strong case that 'You get what you pay for!" is a lie.
It's an outright lie in many (if not most) instances and every culture prior to present-day has known this. I always find you can learn a lot of how past generations thought from etymology.
Today the word "amateur" is generally said with scorn, because only "professional" is capable of producing quality - but that is not a true reflection of reality. The latin root of "amateur" is "amo" - meaning love. He who does it because he loves to do it.
In fact - the truth is the exact opposite: the people who do something because they love doing it will usually provide better quality work than those who it to get paid. Even if the amateur is making money doing it, the fact that he is not doing it IN ORDER to make money, but because he loves doing it means he'll put in more effort, he'll have gone above and beyond requirements and educated himself further.
You get what you pay for implies that quality is measured in price - but this is outright false. The measurement of value can in fact be stated as quality / price. That suggests the exact opposite to be true in ANY economics: that you get more quality bang for your buck if you pay less, and the quality of that which is free is nearly infinite.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
He is using his witchcraft to deprive working teacher out of a job and a pension. He should be burned at the stake for this sorcery!
I think we should send some teamsters after his sorry little Pakistani arse and make him learn the same lesson Jimmy Hoffa learnt.
I taught college in the late 90's and used to put my lessons and plans online for general access also...reason being why not spread knowledge? College students should mature enough to be able to largely teach themselves or they shouldn't be in college...you don't spoon feed college students, you put the knowledge out there so they can add it to what they know to date, then associate it to ask their own questions, and form opinions/implications (lib arts, trad sciences) or form plans (engineering). In grad school, students should be prepared to stand up and teach others.
Too many kids enter college unprepared to take on the mantle.
Khan is simply doing the same thing...he just needs help from experts in the fields to bring the vision forward...
I am math certified in multiple states and have three children. My children use Khan Academy every day and I LOVE IT. All of my children score well beyond their peers - typically at the 99th percentile level.
Thanks Sal!
Teachers are paid what they are largely because there are plenty of people who want to do it. If there weren't we'd have to pay them more. It is a fairly safe career choice choice (low unemployment rates, sackings unlikely, etc), and widely considered to be an easier route through undergrad than science, engineering, most ology's, etc. Conversely, no one wants to be a geek so most of us here on slashdot make the big bucks. Even bigger if you understand business concepts and are personable.
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just as Bryan said I'm shocked that any one can earn $5316 in four weeks on the computer. have you read this site http://goo.gl/UUZFR
Actually, I would disagree with this. I know there's the stereotype of incompetent teachers and they do exist, but...
People who tend to teach a topic learn a lot more than their students about it by virtue of *teaching it*. At least that's always been my experience with teaching. This is true even if you go into the topic knowing nothing about it but starting teaching it.
Being a bad teacher (which puts people off from a topic) is it's own disaster but has nothing to do with Khan academy.
My wife is actually testing this approach with some of her classes. She records herself giving the lectures and makes them available to students to watch as homework. It makes a lot of sense to me, especially given the number of times she's mentioned assignments being turned in that have obviously been completed by the parents.
I'm unfamiliar with the multiplying negative numbers mistake (a very quick Google search revealed nothing), but I'll assume somewhere he said negative times a negative is negative. If he did (or really, if any other sign convention was violated), he could still be correct!
It is convention that neg*neg=pos much like the "right hand rule." That is, you COULD do a left hand rule and stay consistent in your own world. Similarly with sign conventions, though the implications are relatively far reaching, e.g. (IIRC) the associative property does not apply universally and the distributive property over multiplication goes away, but the distributive property over addition is created.
I learned this from one of the most enlightening books about the foundations/philosophy of mathematics called "Negative Math" by Alberto A. Martínez (http://www.amazon.com/Negative-Math-Mathematical-Rules-Positively/dp/0691123098/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1343232257&sr=8-1&keywords=negative+math [amazon.com]) In it, he basically creates a new type of algebra with different sign conventions! Very cool and finally "explained" the physical meaning of neg*neg=pos in the sense that one doesn't exist. IN YOUR FACE SNARKY TEACHERS! :o)
You note that information is one of the required elements of self-education, and the other key element is practice. I think for many fields a third key element may also be reflection (though you may be implying this within 'practice'?).
Honestly, do we honestly give a shit what an American teacher has to say. In 40 years they drove the USA from the top 5 in education in the world to the bottom 40% of Planet Earth? That's akin to taking advice from a homeless man on investing.
I think some students can benefit from the flipped classroom method that websites like Khan or MathTV.com embrace.
The Washington Post Company is hardly acting as an unbiased reporter in this article. I do have great respect for their investigative reporting.
In this case writer/reporter founded Mathalicious. The for profit company is an online pay-for-education division of The Washington Post Company.
The Washington Post "Company" page is headed with their motto: "Informing People Through Education and Media". The first sentence of the text begins: "The Washington Post Company delivers quality products to today’s students..."
It must have stung the Post management badly when they realized the income they had expected would no longer flow in. Their lost or potential customers don't need to pay. Instead about anyone can now obtain free high quality lessons from the Khan Academy.
I see the Post's issues as reminiscent of the old music industry paradigm. I am disappointed in The Washington Post for publishing this article. It appears they lambasted the Khan Academy strictly for profit's sake . In my mind it tarnishes their stellar reputation.
I have no affiliation with the Khan Academy nor with other related institution. I am a retired scientist who has enjoyed viewing some of the Kahn Academy lessons. FossilsFriend
Khan is a phenomena. I hold a post-grad degree but still feel if I had some teachers like Khan I would have done much better in my career.Teaching is an art and Sal is a master at it.A guy spending hours teaching courses in such a simplistic way with no remuneration should be awarded whatever is equivalent to Nobel in Education instead of being pilloried for a few construed faults
The Internet is only a supplement. Why do teacher's feel threatened? Even if 95% of visitors do not like the site, 5% like and have found it useful.. That is great enough.
...was also published in WP.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/sal-khan-responds-to-critic/2012/07/25/gJQA83rW9W_blog.html.
He may not be a trained teacher, but he did graduate from the premier technical college in the US in math. Perhaps it is the middle school math teacher who is possibly wrong.