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Khan Academy Pilot Educators On Khan Academy
theodp writes "In what may surprise Khan Academy backers Google and Bill Gates, educators from the Los Altos School District where KA was initially piloted and implemented have responded to some recent KA critiques with a blog entry which notes, 'Teachers in our district have determined that the greatest value of the Khan Academy lies, not in the videos, but in the exercise modules and data generated as students work practice problems.' Not too surprisingly, when it comes to revolutionizing student learning, teachers are bullish on teachers. 'Key to this revolution are the Los Altos teachers,' the educators conclude. 'Teachers in our district are highly valued for their pedagogical perspective, content knowledge, experience, and creative abilities. When district administrators put tools in the hands of teachers and give them room to work, amazing things happen for students. Tools will come and go, but it's the teachers who create meaningful learning experiences that challenge students to grow.'"
The fun of teaching is doing the teaching part, not being the physical replacement students beat on for some guy on TV.
You mean we can't just point the technology at the kids and make them learn? It takes actual teachers actually teaching, and not being rigidly restricted to rote scripts?
Whoa....who'd a thunk it?
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
"We offered them order!!"
A family member of mine quit high school a year ago when she was just beginning 11th grade. At that time, she didn't even understand fractions and could only do the most basic of basic math. Still, she got to grade 11 just by memorizing material, regurgitating it on a test, and then forgetting it. After she quit (she convinced her mother to let her learn math on her own), she started using Khan Academy. She's currently learning calculus and actually seems to understand the material (unlike many public school students). While Khan Academy may not be revolutionary or perfect, it's an extremely useful resource. You can't, however, just watch the videos passively and expect to learn. You have to actually think about the material, do things on your own, and attempt to understand it.
Not too surprisingly, when it comes to revolutionizing student learning, teachers are bullish on teachers.
Is the purpose of this to revolutionize student learning or augment it? It's important because I think some people are thinking that students will not have to go to school anymore and instead just log into Khan Academy whereas I think the appropriate spot is as an aid or augmenting tool for educators everywhere -- parents, teachers, professors, you name it.
Also in that blog article:
While we don’t have official study results yet, great things are happening in our district for students and some of them are directly related to our use of Khan Academy. Teachers who have used Khan Academy as an instructional tool, have rethought their use of instructional time and are spending more time in math class on less traditional teaching methods effectively changing the student experience. Students are excited about the use of Khan Academy for several reasons: They get direct feedback when they are working a set of problems, they are able to visually see areas where they have excelled in math, and they are able to take some ownership of their own learning. Students are motivated in math and are excited to take on new challenges.
Which sounds pretty positive -- like the teachers are learning from the videos on how to more effectively teach math. They also say:
It is no secret that Khan Academy videos have come under fire in recent weeks. As educators in the Los Altos School District where Salman Khan’s free product was initially piloted and implemented, we would like to share our experiences utilizing Khan Academy as an instructional tool in a blended learning environment. By sharing our experiences, we hope to provide accurate information on how Khan Academy can be effectively used, clear up a few misconceptions, and share some of the lessons we have learned on our journey thus far.
The whole blog posting sounds like a departure from what the summary lead me to believe. I don't think anyone would be shocked or surprised to hear that teachers are using this as an augmenting tool and as for them being "bullish" I don't really see it. They are cautiously optimistic about this pilot program and say that it has resulted in good things inside the classroom.
My work here is dung.
I am a middle aged, self-taught programmer/technologist who dropped out of math way, way too early. There's a ceiling to my ladder of growth in this, and that ceiling is math. I'm making my way through all the math videos on Khan--been at it for a half year or so-- and am starting to see cracks in the ceiling. He's an excellent teacher and there's a vast math playlist there. All this talk about KA's role in replacing/supplementing formal education obscures the concrete reality of there now being an unprecedented resource on-line for learning and self-empowerment. Also, little noted is just how good a teacher Khan really is. He's clear, humble, knowledgeable and very much into providing the intuition in addition to the mechanics. I thank G-d for Khan Academy everyday.
It doesn't. In california, the teachers union (along with other unions) operates like the mafia. Tax dollars come in and are funneled directly to the unions via the public school districts. The unions in turn use their voting bloc and monetary support for the democratic party to cement control.
They have a stranglehold on education dollars and they control the legislature. Nothing even vaguely threatening to the current union system will get to the floor for debate much less come to a vote. The losers are the taxpayers and the students.
As someone who donates money to a friend who works as a teacher just so she can afford extra paper for her students, you're full of shit.
In california, the teachers union (along with other unions) operates like the mafia. Tax dollars come in and are funneled directly to the unions via the public school districts.
You know that's all public record, right? Why don't you request those balance sheets and publish it in the newspaper if it's true? The answer is because it's not, the unions are funded by union dues paid by the teachers ... of course, you don't know what's really going on or how really poor most schools and teachers are, you're just regurgitating talking points against unions that Glenn Beck or someone fed you.
It also isn't nearly as good as a real teacher at inspiring students, and when a student doesn't get it, a video can't think of an alternate way to explain the same issue, or find an analogy the student understands.
This hatred of teachers becomes a downward spiral. We hate them, so we won't raise their pay, so fewer good people are inclined to take up the job -- who needs the hatred and the low pay? -- and so the quality gets worse, and down it goes.
Khan Academy is great, but it's only assistive technology, not a substitute for the real thing.
I piss off bigots.
but it can be better then big lecture classes where it's about the same with out the DVR control's.
E-learning does work. It works well in developing countries too, where local teachers may be weak and lack even the most basic skills. However research consistently shows that having a real teacher is superior (for a variety of reasons) to just relying on some static videos or interactive tutorials on a computer. Interestingly, training teachers in developing countries is still much cheaper and sustainable than deploying e-learning technology (ie. computers). Bill Gates has many technology initiatives in developing countries, but dig a little deeper, they have accomplished little (well, aside from getting some schools free Microsoft products).
In North America, Teachers are consistently one of the least respected, poorest paid professionals, yet they work some of the longest hours (out of altruism) of anyone. Those teachers who don't burn out after their first few years, and continue to make it a career are the true heroes.
Maybe you should ask your friend for some tutoring in reading comprehension. The unions =/= the teachers. You see, the teachers are individuals. The union is the group. Yes, McDonalds made billions last year, but that doesn't mean you want to work for them.
In North America, Teachers are consistently one of the least respected, poorest paid professionals, yet they work some of the longest hours (out of altruism) of anyone. Those teachers who don't burn out after their first few years, and continue to make it a career are the true heroes.
Does anyone really think teaching is that much different than any knowledge driven task?
I mean, programming tools certainly write better software, and search tools certainly provide a better coverage of a subject than individuals. Teaching someone is not about presenting the knowledge and reasons, not even if if it includes a rigorous explanation. Teaching is about taking someone from some lower level of understanding and knowledge and bringing them to a higher level of understanding and knowledge. There are literally multiple ways that subtraction can be taught, or multiplication for that matter, and while any individual likely has a belief that one method is superior, easier, simpler or even conceptually clearer, they all deviate from the concept in some way. One who understands the concept can understand how each method reflects and models the concept, and a good teacher can use the differences to help a student better understand the concept and learn it. No program can understand the concept, and even a skilled individual who is capable of explaining the concept with each of the various methods can't predetermine which method may be best for an individual student.
Previously I had read that many Teachers believed the best use of the videos were to give the lectures and introductions as homework to allow them more time to give the individual assistance and help students with the finer points and understanding. If this notes the benefits of the example it would likely be due to giving the Teachers a point of focus for mus-understandings and a place to focus on further and alternative instruction.
More like a programmer looking at automatically generated code and realizing that if the order of required steps is done differently the amount of required work would be decreased, like filtering before sorting, if the filtering won't change the results.
It's all explained here:
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7420278n&tag=contentBody;storyMediaBox
I loathe watching videos. Hate hate hate. Videos are not effective for general learning. And I know, some people "have different learning styles", but everybody and their brother thinks that it's a good idea to make invariably-shitty videos about things that people want to learn. I want to read something with pictures. I don't want to watch a damn video.
I question those who would target the very group of people that we entrust the giving of knowledge to our children with. And a malignant educator does not represent the thousands of educators. It is easy to cast doubt, put to cast light appears to be a little beyond the reach of some that have the courage to impose their opinions based on proud ignorance upon the public. I've read about such people that cause public debate by first telling a big lie, and then repeating it. I've also noticed that certain people about 70 years and older are very concerned about some of the more materialist types that call themselves Conservative.
Yes, it is. First off, you're not just dealing with the students, you're dealing with (sometimes) batshit-crazy parents, in addition to your own supervisory chain. You're dealing with 25 students in a room, 12 of which have IEPs or 504 documentation, and you may or may not have any in-room support for those kids, depending on the subject area and district. And you're having to deal with students who just won't do the work or are disruptive, you're likely to get little support from the school in terms of disciplining the kid, and often less from the kid's parents.
Most programmers - most professionals - don't have to deal with that many individual people - and aren't expected to both cater to them and produce results - to the same degree as teachers. It's exhausting. And when you look at what charter schools are attempting to get teachers to do (and mind you, the charters often do a crap job of actually supporting their teachers), it's little wonder that a high proportion of charter school teachers quit after one or two years. BTW, the least effective teaching years for a teacher? The first two or three years. If your school has a high percentage of teachers with less than four years of experience, it's not going to be as good. I'm sure some of the /. readers will object to that, but there are a significant number of studies that have shown it over the years.
In addition, there's the pressure that if you can't get through to a kid, they're behind next year, and maybe more the year after that. And trust me, that bothers them. You're constantly battling to get kids to recognize that something is in their long-term benefit. Most goddamn adults can't figure that out.
No, they're glorified babysitters. I (very briefly) dated an education major in college. She was stressed out over a project she had due for one of her classes in which she needed to make a lesson plan for third graders.
So you briefly dated one (lucky her), and from that experience alone, you came with the conclusion they are all glorified babysitters. Flawless logic based on extensive experience in the field. Today is not raining, ergo, it never rains. Modus ponens whoring ftw!!!!!!
Really challenging program there, eh?
I cannot say what challenges said person had (assume that person ever existed), but I have to ask: have you ever made a lesson plan? For 3rd graders? Also, a program is perceived as challenging depending on a variety of factors, and not just on the intrinsic nature of the problem or the person's skills when observed from a vacuum. What this person you dated burdened by other factors that are independent of her skills and the complexity of the task at hand?
That's why the saying in the engineering halls was "If you can't hack it, the College of Education is over that way."
And how long have you been waiting to expout that line? Please let get out of your chest. The more that people partake on such 3rd-grade e-jock mentality, the more a sociopath that person is (or it is a tremendous compensation for something severely missing in one's personal or professional life.)
Don't get me wrong. I used to partake on the same Business/Education bashing when I was in school. We all did (well, except the few who didn't revel in sociopathic/narcissist tendencies.) Fortunately, I grew up to recognize it's just an infantile, narcissist, callous and ultimately useless look-at-me-mine-is-bigger kind of thing. I suggest you grow out of it, too.
Looking back on my own primary school education, which happened in the 70's and 80's, the best education I got was from those teachers who delivered the material well, often relating it to real life things, or concepts that I could understand, and those that took the time to understand who I was, even if I didn't yet. They were the mentors. They helped to change my life for the better. They teased out things they saw and developed them. They are the ones I did contact long after school to say, "thanks."
I can understand teachers -- educators in general getting a bit nervous over something like Kahn Academy. After all, who really needs teachers when kids can just plug in and get smart?
But the thing is, a vast majority of kids won't do that. Some of them can't. Others can, but won't be self-aware and self-directed enough to do that. For most kids, we need teachers at a minimum, and we really need mentors big. A short story:
In High School, I was exposed to Apple ][ computers. There is an Apple //e on my desk that I use regularly to this day. (Electronics, retro programming, writing) We had some programmed instruction material on disks that was supposed to teach us about the computers. Most everybody was new as the computers were only there for a year or two before I showed up.
Basically, the whole idea was to have the teacher shepard the students through the material, answering questions, etc... and most importantly, just make sure they do it. Anyone could do this, given a dry run or two, and some supplementary material to prep on. In fact, as a student, I did exactly that as part of some project.
That's what the teachers fear, and they are right about it too. The thing is, we've been fixated in the US, on test scores and other hard metrics to a point where we totally ignore the real education. Class time is planned down to small increments, test score stakes have been raised right along with requirements in such a way as to dictate what happens in the classroom, and this denies the educator the opportunity to actually educate!
Now, back to that story! These problems were not really manifesting themselves during my time. Some changes could be seen, but for the most part, my High School education was robust, as it happened before we really started the ugly changes. A few of us found out that we could type ctrl-c on the keyboard and break the flow of the BASIC program contained on the disks! Of course, it didn't take long to LIST the program, and then change it, saving it back onto the disk, which we did.
Back then, material would be contained on copied floppies with those floppies distributed each day from the stack. One never really got the same floppy, and students would sometimes carry their own data floppy too, depending on what they were doing. A group of four of us modified that program, with the goal of introducing some jokes in the hopes of the floppy shuffle putting them in the hands of other students! It worked great! The day after we did it, one of us got the modified disk, no fun, but three other students got them too, and the laughter triggered questions leading back to us!
Now, why do we need educators? How does mentoring play out in this digital age where we've got so much information available? This is why:
That teacher, who doubled as the geometry teacher, took us aside and talked about it. He could have disciplined us at that time, really impacting lives, but he didn't. Instead, we got assigned a different track. Our requirement for that year was to learn all we could. We had to decide to do something, state why, then actually do it. If we did that, we got the A grade. If we didn't, we were back in the planned track, just doing the rote exercises, and probably a B grade, because he knew better.
That year changed my life, and that of my four friends! We went from running games to cracking them. We learned binary math the hard way, having just the computer, some photocopied reference material a
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