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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
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.
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.
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!
You mean the same cheating that traditional classrooms eliminated... never?
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?
No, not even in the same ballpark as the kind of cheating that goes on in class.
I never truly realized how bad online coursework was until my kid sister was required to do some of them in her high school this year. She was almost downright encouraged to cheat on them just to keep the classes moving. They were allowed (and supposed to) do coursework at home, and the software they used is so stupid about detecting cheating that it's basically worthless. (The software would forbid new tabs from being opened in the current browser fine, but would not stop or detect new windows from being opened).
My sister then showed me the true power of Google, where she could copy the question in its entirety to the clipboard, paste it into Google, and the first 6-7 results would be the exact question on something like Yahoo answers or a variety of other sites, where the answer is easily given.
She's attending a normal high school in San Diego. I was dumbfounded by how this online coursework is conducted.
Looks like they're just trying to offload teaching from teachers to computers. It's sad, really.
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.
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
I'm pretty sure the idea of online courses it that they're cheaper than in-person courses.
"First, disconnect battery cables, ignition wiring harness, air intake hose, remove fan cowling. Drain cooling system and set coolant aside. Place lift hooks into engine lift attachements. Next place support beneath transmission and loosen engine mounting bolts from transmission ..."
Damn, but this is hard to do in a second floor flat.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
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.
Husband of an Idaho teacher. Not specifically an attempt to destroy the unions but was designed to take some of their power away. Lay off teachers? Doubtful. A way of rewarding for doing well? Yes, we received a $3,500 bonus from the pay for performance. How? She is a younger teacher that embraced technology and even with it being her first year she had a higher average GPA in her classes than the others, her class' test scores were higher, and in the math competitions students from her classes dominated their divisions, even stomped other students from the same school. Overall her students enjoyed math more than the other classes in her school. She has been using Khan Academy as supplementary material in her classes and her school already has 1 macbook for every 4 students and will soon be purchasing many more iPads because of a grant she submitted for. They have paid for much of their technology through donations or grants and are on the verge of getting rid of physical text books because of what my wife has shown. People get scared of new things, its a habit of humanity, why not embrace the changes and enjoy them?