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Khan Academy Will Be Ready For Its Close-Up In Idaho
theodp writes "Education officials with Northwest Nazarene University and the J.A. and Kathryn Albertson Foundation say they are arranging to have Khan Academy classes tested in about two dozen public schools next fall in Idaho, where state law now requires high school students to take online courses for two of their 47 graduation credits. 'This is the first time Khan Academy is partnering to tackle the math education of an entire state,' said Khan Academy's Maureen Suhendra. Alas, the Idaho Press-Tribune reports (alas, behind a paywall) that next fall would be too late for film director and producer Davis Guggenheim (Waiting for Superman, An Inconvenient Truth), who will be in Idaho in January filming The Great Teacher Project, a documentary which will highlight positives of education, like the Khan Academy pilot in Idaho. Not to worry. For the film, a few teachers will implement Khan Academy in day-to-day teaching starting in January, before the entire pilot program launches in fall 2013."
Why would they require every student to take online courses?
I don't know why they limited themselves to a few templates in the 'text questions' section, that removes the whole point of having them. While doing them I just had to read the first word, then look at the numbers and calculate the answer.
will they have the stink that other online schools get??
UOFP get's a lot of that and they have real in person class rooms as well.
I'm pretty sure the idea of online courses it that they're cheaper than in-person courses.
As long as these online teaching systems cannot eliminate cheating, the earned credits worthless for attesting a basic education (in contrast to extended learning). As a straightforward exploit, one person can register multiple times with different identities and then blindly copy&paste the answers for the questions. While the cheater will still learn more compared to just failing or not taking the course it is questionable whether this method will allow the cheater to learn the required minimum to earn the credit.
Yeah! I'm sure the Kahn academy is rolling in the dough from this arrangement! Wait- what's that you say? Kahn academy's courses are free? Oh... um... EVIL Government socialists! Get your hands off our (publicly financed, ran, and mandated) education!
Disclaimer: I am a math student.
Can we please stop calling this bullshit "math"? Mathematics is about axioms, rules, logic and proof. It's not about sin(x), integration and Pythagoras' theorem. It's about abstract ideas in a platonic world, and communicating those ideas reliably. This is not something you learn about in high school, although occasionally it is hinted at. What high school *should* be about is Peano arithmetic, logic and *perhaps* some introduction to te *theory* of integration.
None of all that can be found on Khan. Khan offers you the tables you need to *calculate* the integral of some functions. Khan teaches you how to multiply and divide natural numbers. None of all that is something computers cannot do.
It's bad enough that high school does not teach you anything about what real mathematics is, but putting all this crap on a website endorses it, and makes people accept the fact that there is no high school which actually teaches you mathematics. Stop calling the calculations you do in high school "math", because it's nothing more than playing calculator.
My brother is a math teacher who convinced the board of his school system to let him try it in two of his classes. Now the entire school system is moving to Khan for the math program.
The major change in his teaching format is that learning a new concept is now homework (through Khan Academy), rather than him droning on about it in class. Then every morning he gets a report for each student and can see who did well and who didn't. That allows him to concentrate on the students that didn't get the concept in class. Overall he has seen a major improvement in the class as a whole since fewer kids get left without a good understanding of the fundamental concepts.
From Idaho here, and we repealed the Luna laws last election via initiatives. They were a thinly veiled attempt to break the teachers union and lay off a bunch of teachers.
Did the NYT miss the November election? Because last I heard the idea was dead.
Actually, the good citizens of Idaho passed a referendum in November to revoke the state law mentioned in the OP. People realized that the governor and his state secretary of education had no clue what they were doing with their education "reforms" and torpedoed all of them.
I really enjoy the fact that this is a clinical study (although, I use that term very loosely here), yet, a film maker is already making a film "which will highlight positives of education, like the Khan Academy pilot in Idaho." Last time I checked studies and pilots were conducted to figure out if things work. But, like many times before, Khan is assumed to be the answer before anyone even tries it. (P.S. don't cite Los Altos School District, which had the highest test scores in the state *before* adopting the "flipped" classroom. Conincidence that it what the "best" district in the state that happened to be put forward first?)
Interested in academic references/ well researched critiques of the pedagogy of the Khan academy approach. Lots of media coverage about how it's wonderful, revolutionises children's understanding of various school topics, lots of hype.... but I'd be really interested in academic reviews or articles that have tracked children using Khan academy and identifies how well this approach performs compares to other teaching methodologies.
Cheers! really curious to know what sort of research has been carried out to explore the efficacy of the Khan approach, what its strengths are etc. (real research, not just journalist hype). One assumes these educators have done their research if they are committing to it as a means of teaching, so maybe they've written up their investigations?
Since OP forgot it, you can learn more about Khan Academy here: http://khaaan.com/
McCoy: Lieutenant, you are looking at the only Starfleet cadet who ever beat the no-win scenario.
Saavik: How?
Kirk: I reprogrammed the simulation so it was possible to rescue the ship.
Saavik: What?
David Marcus: He cheated.
Kirk: I changed the conditions of the test; got a commendation for original thinking. I don't like to lose.
I find it funny that a subplot for the movie "Wrath of Khan" had to do with "cheating on a test" and now schools are using KhanAcademy in their cirriculum.
Khaaaaaaaaaaaan!
Ok fine, I'll say it...
Khaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnn!!!!!!!!!!!
Disclaimer: I am a math student.
None of all that can be found on Khan.
Whew, And here I was worried that you are an English major....
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
And I was wondering if this academy offers classes in genetic engineering and cryogenics.
What they really need to focus on is making sure the students and teachers have all the resources they need to make this work. What I'm afraid of is this giving the Khan Academy a black eye. Still, having used himself a lot, I think the kids will prefer KA over 19 year old textbooks alone.
This so needs to be repeated. Where are my mod points when I need them?!
will they have the stink that other online schools get??
UOFP get's a lot of that and they have real in person class rooms as well.
They have so many classrooms that it's silly to call Phoenix an online school, unless you also want to include on that list other schools that offer both online and campus based programs, like Berkeley, Georgetown, Brandeis, UNC-Chapel Hill, George Washington University, University of Virginia, etc.
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
One thing our educational system is really lacking is more foreign language requirements. When we get into the job market all of a sudden many employers want people who speak foreign languages and school simply did not equip us for this. School is supposed to equip us for the job market and it's not working. I think a lot more needs to be done in this arena.
Other countries are way better when it comes to their educational system encouraging students to learn foreign languages.
Will the academy be required to fix the errors in its presentations, or will students still need to peruse the comments to discover where Khan went wrong?
I once had a history teacher who spent the first semester orally explaining to us the history lessons that were in the book. I got excellent grades in that class.
Next semester, he was apparently also the basketball coach or something, so rather than teach us everything orally, he told us to read from the book while he did other things at his desk. At that point I started failing the class.
History books are terribly boring, and near impossible to read. You start reading and by the time you reach the end of the page, you realize that while your eyes kept reading the words, your brain got bored and started thinking of other things to pass the time. So then you have to start over, but the same thing happens. Then you just give up. ...or at least that's how it worked for me.
He once asked me what had changed. Being that teachers usually aren't all that up on criticism, I couldn't bring myself to tell him. I just said "I don't know." Note to any teachers who want honest feedback from your students: Put a box somewhere they can sneak a note into when no one is looking. ...and just ignore the bullshit you'll inevitably receive. If you start complaining about what gets put into the box, you'll only deter its use.