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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."
So they can demonstrate competency and commitment in acquiring knowledge and meeting objectives via a computer? Hell if it can just gird them to deal with Pearson's wonderful online software then it's a requirement well met, imho.
On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
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.
Two guesses:
1. Someone noticed that kids who took online classes were doing better than average in school. The geniuses in the Idaho state legislature assumed that correlation is the same thing as causation, and thus decided that if EVERYONE took online classes, everyone would do better than they were now.
2. The Idaho legislature spent too much money and/or cut taxes too much. Someone pointed out that teachers cost more money than an internet connection. Someone else suggsted raising taxes to pay for teachers' salaries. That second person was laughed out of the building.
(To clarify, I'm cynical about state legislators, not online classes or specifically the Khan Academy, which could indeed be a big improvement over public school teachers.)
High school is less about learning information than it is about learning how to learn. Learning from an online source is how a lot of people are going to continue their education after school and being able to learn in that environment is important to success. When you don't know how to code something, do you look at the local colleges for classes or do you Google around for a tutorial? I would encourage high schools to make every student take a self directed course of the student's choice, but there's no way they have the teaching manpower to do it effectively. This provides at least a glimpse of what real world (read: after high school/college) learning is about.
There are probably several reasons. One, use of the computer for a course ensures that you must know how to use it. Two, it eases the strain on facilities by requiring fewer in person classes. Three, it enables teachers to use the internet more fully in their class. Fourth, it enables more classes to be taught with the same amount of effort. Fifth, a lot of colleges and universities are going much more toward online classes, so it is useful to get used to them. (In my experience, CS classes have become entirely dependent on online components to their class, though they still require in person attendance as well). Sixth, we are a highly technological society, and we have often mandated the use of technology in education, so this isn't really any different.
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!
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.
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.
Do you know what this is? It's the world's smallest violin, and it's playing just for you.
If students are motivated enough, they can find plenty of online math resources on their own.
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.
Um, High School (at least in the US) is less about learning anything and more about fitting in and trying to be as popular as possible. For those less inclined to popularity, high school is less about learning and more about trying to survive humiliation and degradation day to day in order to hopefully get to college, where one can then be saddled with explosive nondischargable debt in the hopes of conforming to some vague materialistic notion of a middle class existence.
Your insinuation that government-sponsored "education" is anything more than just taxpayer funded mandatory day-care and indoctrination is laughable. Keep reaching for that rainbow, Citizen!
What high school *should* be about is Peano arithmetic, logic and *perhaps* some introduction to te *theory* of integration.
You're operating under the incorrect assumption that the only target audience for math courses in high school is future mathematicians. Most people who take math do so, not because they want pure math as a career (although some might), but rather because math is an essential tool for a vast array of careers, among them: engineering, medicine, architecture, accounting, actuarial work, systems analysis, sciences (physics, chemistry, biology, etc.), I could go on and on... High school math is about providing a foundation for all those careers, as well as for early undergraduate math courses which are also essential for many of the above mentioned fields, as well as for pure math studies.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
Integration, sin(x), statistic, differential equations and this stuff is, what makes mathematics useful in real life. I don't argue that the very core of mathematics consists of axioms, proofs, theories and so on, but for most people mathematics is the part of "math" that is most used.
:)
So in short, no, we can't
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?
I hear that the entire english speaking world is wrong and you're trying to correct 'em.
How's that working out for you?
This is one of the most misguided rants I've seen in awhile.
In all fields there are 2 components (I have yet to see one that doesn't), discreet and experimental. Call them what you want, it doesn't matter.
In discreet of (X), you deal with what perfect conditions might exist of x, and try to figure out the rules that occur from those, this is what you are referencing. The philosophy of a subject.
In experimental, you deal with the practical implementation, this would be accounting of math, or engineers figuring things using Sin(x). This is what happens in the real world.
A good education gives you both tools, but emphasizes the discreet portion of a field for those entering that field. It doesn't help most math majors to know why that the English language evolved from passive to active voice, and why, just that it did. Much like understanding why you can convert from arc integrals to linear integrals is not that beneficial to most engineers, just that you can.
That is bullshit and you know it. That, or you have never studied real mathematics.
Real mathematics is applicable in *all* cognitive processes, and it gives mathematicians a step ahead in *any* science.
Forget about numbers, mathematics is an exercise in proper, formulated thought, and if there's anything applicable in the world, it's the ability to think straight.
Most of the "basics" of real math are taught without a good book, so I am struggling to find a good reference, but something along the lines of Hamilton's "Numbers, Sets and Axioms: The Apparatus of Mathematics" would do.
After that, jump into abstract algebra, real analysis (not calculus - engineers do calculus, mathematicians do analysis) and topology. From there, I'm sure you'll find your own way.
I don't argue that mathematics is ubiquitous in sciences, human interaction, society and the rest of the universe even in its pure form. I just say, what the word means for ordinary people and that we can not force them to change the way they understand it.
I'm from Idaho, this article is misleading. The laws that were to require students to take classes online were overturned by voter initiatives last November.
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!
The majority of people in Idaho live in or around the Boise area you ignorant fuck. We're not all hillbillies. I'm not saying that our legislature doesn't comprise a good portion of ignorant hicks doing what ignorant hicks do, but there are some sensible people here too trying to get somethings changed for the better, especially for our children. It's just really hard to do when you have a republican stranglehold on EVERY conceivable state government outlet.
I got here through a series of tubes
Maybe the schools in your state need to be improved. I basically didnt need to study in Bio 101 a few years ago because I remembered a lot of the info from 9th grade biology. The math class I was required to take for my degree was several notches below the Calculus, trig, and even algebra 2 classes I took in 10th, 11th, and 12th grades. The civics class I took in 10th grade is responsible for a great deal of my working knowledge of how our government works.
Honestly, if more people had paid attention in Civics, we might be in a much better situation politically than we are across the board. Maybe YOU should have paid more attention in highschool.
in order to hopefully get to college, where one can then be saddled with explosive nondischargable deb
Sounds like you could have also learned about fiscal responsibility and cost-benefit in highschool too-- though I will agree most places dont warn you about the dangers of $30k+ tuition, one would think a rudimentary math education could serve as a warning. Most in-state tuition runs less than $6k, which is earnable (after taxes) by waiting tables-- I know because I did it, and ended with 0 college debt. One could attend UVa ($12k / year), Va Tech (~$7k / year), William & Mary (~$6800 /year), or GMU (~$6500 / year) without breaking the bank, and I believe theyre all considered "top universities".
The trick is to go to in-school colleges that you can afford; and if you consider it a "big deal" to go to a certain university that you cannot afford to pay out-of-state for, you could always establish residency there. The trick is also to make your decision with a mind to reality and your ability to pay for tuition; but it seems from the entitlement mentality on slashdot at least that that is a lesson still not learned.
Forget about numbers, mathematics is an exercise in proper, formulated thought, and if there's anything applicable in the world, it's the ability to think straight.
just an fyi, I only have a high school education, so take what I say below with a grain of salt.
Ok, you are looking at mathematics in a way that probably only around 1% of the population does. In my opinion once you get past simple arithmetic you start getting into the philosophy of problem solving, which is what you are talking about.
Some people get a glimpse of that when they take algebra, but very few advance beyond that.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
Apologies those were per-semester rates, except for UVA which was indeed the per-year rate.
So what discipline would you put Calculus and Trigonometry under?
You might as well complain that you dont learn Real Science (tm) in high school, since they never get into advanced biochemistry or quantum physics, or that Orchestra is only "fake" orchestra because they dont churn out NSO candidates. Probably we can throw Civics into the "fake" category too, since you dont learn to litigate or draft bills.
I dont believe it is possible to do Calculus by "rote memorization" except in the very general sense that learning and using rules and patterns is "memorization"-- but then I guess ALL learning must be considered memorization as well.
Quick, as part of an equation I need to calculate area under a curve.... but im not an engineer, so apparently I cant use calculus?
What about calculating limits, are they off-limits to me as well?
Oh sorry, then I take back my swearing :)
Yes I agree.
Khan Academy classes do little, if anything, to teach the student to learn and seek out information in less structured environments. A link to outside information is rare (vs. links to videos and exercises within Khan Academy that are related to the current video or exercise). Searching within Khan Academy for information on a simple concept can be problematic as well - esp. if you don't know exactly what you're looking for.
Although I like Khan Academy and think it could have a role in the classroom, it needs a lot of improvement. If such improvement doesn't happen at a faster pace than it is, Khan Academy is likely to fade into the sunset taking donor's money with them.
The folksy nature of the videos is tiring and the sloppy execution just wastes students' time and confuses them. If a "live" classroom teacher makes an error, as all humans do, it impacts about 30 students for a few minutes and the teacher can correct the error and get immediate feedback from the students about if they are still confused by the original error and clear up the confusion. Worst case, a bit of material gets deferred to the next class for those 30 students due to the delay caused by the error. When a video in Khan Academy makes an error, and then corrects it 30 seconds later, it leaves many viewers (perhaps hundreds of thousands) confused and there's no ability for Sal et al to sense that the students are confused and address that issue. If any significant error is made in a video, the video should be remade or edited as needed - failing to do so smacks of laziness and arrogance and demeans the value of the viewer's time while failing to set an expectation to students of what is expected of a public presentation.
Production quality is low as well. The simple thing of making the text as Sal scribbles easier to read, even something as simple as abandoning the black background and using slightly wider lines, would help.
It's obvious that the video lessons are not planned well. While the conversational tone and the "handwriting" helps keep attention, it's just painful to watch Sal stumble around deciding (and narrating his on the fly decisions) to "let's make that a different color" while he undoes and rewrites what he just did. I know Sal is very proud of the fact that he doesn't prepare for the videos -- but it comes off as arrogant (perhaps because it is arrogant).
And, of course, we all know about the sloppiness. Is (2 - -3) "subtracting a minus 3 from 2" or "subtracting a negative 3 from 2? Some such things float by in live classroom situations without causing problems, but why not get it right (or at least consistent across all Khan videos) when all you have to do is reshoot or edit a video?
The "coach" role is a joke for use by a teacher who is managing a classroom and responsible for monitoring student progress. If a school is going to invest significant instructional time/money using Khan Academy as a teaching tool, these problems MUST be addressed. The tools are clumsy to use and fail to provide good visibility into student progress in a meaningful way. For example, there's no way to direct students, during class times, to work first/only on exercises or videos that were assigned and this creates problems with focus and allows simple errors, such as when a student picks the wrong video and works on it for ten minutes, to go undetected (I've seen that often). For another example, "Teachers" should be able to set goals for their class and individual students and those goals should be "lockable".
Sal is enjoying his 15 minutes of popular media fame too much and isn't working hard enough to actually improve education.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
You missed it, it's actually here
I got here through a series of tubes
Boise's a great place. Wonderful people. I lived there for 3 years, early in my career.
But drive 40 miles in any direction and you might as well be in Kazakhstan.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I speak more of having an intuitive understanding of why something works.
Not everyone's brain works that way, and its silly to demand that everyone have an intuitive grasp of mathematics.
Very possibly there are ways to improve our system, but you cant expect everyone to love mathematics or have it be second nature to them.
I'd suspect they are more civilized in Kazakhstan than in some of the more rural area's in Idaho. Probably drive better too.
I got here through a series of tubes
*areas. God damnit.
I got here through a series of tubes
And I was wondering if this academy offers classes in genetic engineering and cryogenics.
I have a degree in math and physics and now work as a computer programmer. The most difficult math I've had to deal with is some statistical analysis. What we need to teach our children is critical thinking and analysis, whatever tools they have to work with. Someday people will look to them for an answer, with no cheat sheet or book to refer to. They have to learn to be thorough in their analysis and confident of their conclusions. That is the survival tool kids need.
You sound bitter. Financial Aid debt sucks for sure. If you don't make enough to keep up with your loan repayments, sign up for either Income Based Repayment (if you're below the poverty line) or Income Contingent Repayment (easier to qualify). It does what it says on the tin, and as an added bonus, if you've continuously fail to make a decent wage the loan debt will be forgiven after 30 years.
Are Khan Academy original video sources available for download? If we could crowdsource people using video editing software to simply cut out his "umms" and "ahhhs" I think it would be a good start!
Axioms, proofs, theories, etc.. are lovely and great, but without sin(), stats, diffy q's and the rest, the other stuff is pointless. Do we REALLY want our mathematics education so "heady" and devoid of understanding of existing knowledge that our kids have to reinvent the wheel? What about a balanced approach that teaches both the body of existing mathematical knowledge as well as how to think mathematically? That might take time and resources away from teaching how to take a federally mandated test, but in the long run you'll probably have higher scores.
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.
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
Why does Texas have the oil and Idaho have potatoes?
Idaho had first pick.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Again, Boise is part of the Northwest, no where near the mid-west, you ignorant fuck.
I got here through a series of tubes
I was born and raised in this state. Keep your rural roots, I shed mine years ago thankfully.
I got here through a series of tubes
2. The Idaho legislature spent too much money and/or cut taxes too much. Someone pointed out that teachers cost more money than an internet connection. Someone else suggsted raising taxes to pay for teachers' salaries. That second person was laughed out of the building.
Actually, someone suggested raising taxes to pay for teachers' salaries, and it happened. Once the taxes were raised, the legislature turned around and pointed out you can't earmark a tax for something like teachers' salaries, and spent the money elsewhere in the general budget. This brought things full-circle to 2a, having already foisted 2b on the approving voting public, without teachers seeing a penny.