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Yes, The Khan Academy is the Future of Education

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Re: Yes, The Khan Academy is the Future of Education

#21

Post by dagw »

psykotic wrote: post #15
solipsist wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You come across patterns like that by doing the tedious work the hard way and looking for short-cuts. The thing is that you come across short-cuts like those on the larger and broader concepts as well. Tinkering around with numbers is great, but perhaps tinkering around with concepts is even better. There would be downsides to the reform. Students may not know that notice 9x = 10x - x as a calculation shortcut, but…

Maybe we're talking past each other. Could you explain your goals with this curriculum? Are you trying to reduce the teaching of mathematics to a bare minimum so people can get on with what you see as more essential subjects? My stance is that mathematics is first of all useful in the small for normal people. Everyday arithmetic, basic accounting, that sort of thing. But beyond that we need to teach mathematics for t…

But beyond that we need to teach mathematics for the same reason we teach art, music and literature.

Perhaps like art and music, we should only be teaching beyond the very basics to those who actively seek it out. We don't require all highshool students to learn how to play the piano, read music, or draw nudes, so why should they all learn how to invert a matrix or find its determinant by hand?

Re: Yes, The Khan Academy is the Future of Education

#22

Post by solipsist »

dagw wrote: post #17
solipsist wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a good question. We need to keep in mind that computers are never going to go backwards in innovation. Once a computer is capable of some calculation, students will never need to have to do it by themselves again. However, they will still need to know how to interact with that calculation and understand the variables/relationships in order to set up the calculation. Where do you draw the line? Instead of just…

Once a computer is capable of some calculation, students will never need to have to do it by themselves again However it is important that they know enough to check if the answer they get is at least reasonable and probably correct. So even if they can't solve the problem exactly they really should know how to show that the answer must be between 1/sqrt(2) and 1, for example, so that they know they made a mistake whe…

Yes, that goes along with understanding the basic relationships and estimation techniques. The exact calculations can be left to the computer, and the humans can check the solutions and determine what went wrong if the answers don't seem to be what they had expected.

Re: Yes, The Khan Academy is the Future of Education

#23

Post by patrickod »

The one thing the Khan academy and other such resources is the inspiration, personal engagement, guidance and other things that teachers and tutors do. Granted for some people these things have little bearing on their learning I think that for the majority of students they can make all the difference. No doubt people here have found their interest in a subject at school or college diminished due to a bad teacher or vice-versa

Re: Yes, The Khan Academy is the Future of Education

#24

Post by Jach »

dwc wrote: post #16

As an autodidact interested in exploring more mathematics, of course I learned about Khan Academy. One look and I was impressed, but that didn't last long. Though the videos are well done all around, there's no clear curriculum to follow. Or if there is a curriculum, it's not obvious. Instead, I have a bazillion videos to choose from. Which videos depend on knowledge in other videos, and which ones can be done in par…

> As an autodidact ... if there is a curriculum, it's not obvious.

Shouldn't you be used to not having a curriculum (and indeed be thriving) if you're really an autodidact?

The structure seems obvious to me. Videos are put in sequences by subject, with pre-requisites coming first. In his physics and finance sequences he frequently calls out a potential video you should watch first to better understand the current concept, otherwise if you know it then it will just trigger the memory anyway. My value from Khan Academy has been from looking at the videos, seeing which ones I already know, and watching the ones I don't know or need review on. I don't need any curriculum; my curriculum is whatever I want or need to learn at the time.

Maybe you want to call the organization of categories unorganized, but if you watch the videos in order of the mega-sequences it's pretty straightforward that it's a similar path you'd find in a textbook. (You don't read chapters of things you already know do you?)

I'll agree with you that Clippy is the future for self-learning. First we need general AI though. (Although Google's simple search is pretty good right now.)

Re: Yes, The Khan Academy is the Future of Education

#25

Post by rick_2047 »

I wonder if Khan Academy takes in external videos (other wise making something functional with google sites is fine with me but wouldn't get nearly as much traction). I have 10min long videos explaining Digital electronics basics. My tech went one step backwards from khan, I just used pen-paper and one webcame. :) Looking into getting my videos reviewed by them, otherwise my deadline would be.... April 1st. (just thought that up now, but people say its good to have a deadline).

Re: Yes, The Khan Academy is the Future of Education

#26

Post by kamens »

dwc wrote: post #16

As an autodidact interested in exploring more mathematics, of course I learned about Khan Academy. One look and I was impressed, but that didn't last long. Though the videos are well done all around, there's no clear curriculum to follow. Or if there is a curriculum, it's not obvious. Instead, I have a bazillion videos to choose from. Which videos depend on knowledge in other videos, and which ones can be done in par…

Completely agreed (on Khan Academy team).

If you check out the video from that article (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hw5k98GV7po), you'll see a lot of the strides we're making in the areas of individual assessment (mathematics only at the moment), guidance (full breakdown of hints for every problem we dynamically generate), alternate explanations where comprehension lacks (list of all relevant videos next to every problem the student encounters), encouragement (badges and other game mechanics), and more.

As you said: it's ambitious, and we're far from the end. But we're making progress every day and seeing extremely positive reactions in all the teachers and students from our pilot programs.

Re: Yes, The Khan Academy is the Future of Education

#27

Post by dwc »

Jach wrote: post #24
dwc wrote: post #16

As an autodidact interested in exploring more mathematics, of course I learned about Khan Academy. One look and I was impressed, but that didn't last long. Though the videos are well done all around, there's no clear curriculum to follow. Or if there is a curriculum, it's not obvious. Instead, I have a bazillion videos to choose from. Which videos depend on knowledge in other videos, and which ones can be done in par…

> As an autodidact ... if there is a curriculum, it's not obvious. Shouldn't you be used to not having a curriculum (and indeed be thriving) if you're really an autodidact? The structure seems obvious to me. Videos are put in sequences by subject, with pre-requisites coming first. In his physics and finance sequences he frequently calls out a potential video you should watch first to better understand the current con…

As an autodidact interested in far more than I can learn in my lifetime I'm always on the lookout for the easiest path to learning. After struggling to find an acceptably easy path with Khan I dug up some alternate videos that gave me more direction. Am I really an autodidact? It just seemed the most concise word for my self-driven learning. If I don't fit the definition then I should go find a new word. :)

> Clippy

Ha ha! Yes. But I don't think we need defer this until we have strong, general AI. There are steps that can be taken now, with more coming in the near future. None of these will be "the" solution, but they'll be way ahead of where we are now.

Example: currently schools have "remedial" programs in various subjects. A student having trouble with math is assigned to the remedial math program, but not other remedial programs. Ok, now extend that idea by making it more fine-grained, both by topic and proficiency. Algebra would have several areas, each with separate proficiency levels. Design curricula for each area/proficiency, and a reasonable assessment method for placement. Collect feedback on time taken and right/wrong to improve curricula and assessment. No AI, but way better than what we have. It's not at all practical in classrooms, but it's very practical on computers if it's done on a large enough scale to warrant the cost of producing such a system.

And thanks to you and others, I will probably revisit Khan Academy soon.

Re: Yes, The Khan Academy is the Future of Education

#28

Post by nvarsj »

solipsist wrote: post #5

I haven't exactly been as amazed by the Khan Academy as everyone else has. After watching a few videos, I decided that we need to focus more on the material that we are teaching - rather than the methods we go about doing it. They will obviously go hand by hand, but in my opinion the material that we are teaching is our biggest weakness and therefore needs the most reform. A video that everyone should take the time t…

"do you need to learn how the engine of a car works before you can drive it?"

No, but you'd be a much better driver if you did.

Understanding the basics of a science, especially math, is extremely important to fully grasp the higher level topics. I don't believe one can conceptually understand a topic without understanding the fundamentals that it builds upon.

Unfortunately I see philosophies as you describe in my local school system (Chicago Public Schools), especially in poverty stricken neighborhoods. High school kids are given scientific calculators and taught algebra/pre-calc when they can't even add or multiply single digit numbers. Similarly, there are pushes to move more "computer learning" into grade school, despite extremely poor reading and math proficiency.

I can draw parallels in my job as well - it's remarkable how poor most programmers' basic math skills are. Someone who can do the chain rule is regarded as a genius. With only a strong grasp of fundamentals, I feel that many engineers could be substantially more successful.

Re: Yes, The Khan Academy is the Future of Education

#29

Post by blakeweb »

enry_straker wrote: post #14
kkleiner wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article doesn't mention MIT, but it does mention other efforts such as Mathletics. What makes Khan Academy and Mathletics stand out from MIT is that they are MUCH more than just a collection of videos. Khan and Mathletics increasingly represent entire ecosystems with points systems, competitions, tracking of your performance, and so on. That is why Khan exemplifies the future of education vs simple collections of…

MIT's Open CourseWare project or OCW can hardly be described as a simple collection of videos. Each and every course at MIT has put up all their educational documents including slides, exercises, tests, audio, video, schedules etc for free. Many courses also include video and other multimedia artefacts. The key differentiator is that these are aimed at under-grad and grad students and are simple conversion of what ha…

> Each and every course at MIT has put up all their educational documents including slides, exercises, tests, audio, video, schedules etc for free. Many courses also include video and other multimedia artefacts.

Just to prevent readers from taking that statement literally, only a small minority of courses offer all these materials. (e.g., see [1]--you can see by the icons on the left which materials are available for which courses.) Most only offer lecture notes, and even those are generally very incomplete.

What MIT has done with OCW is outstanding, and I personally have learned a lot from many courses already, but they still have quite a ways to go to meet such a comprehensive claim. More funding and enthusiasm for the effort is still very much needed.

[1]: http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mathematics/

Re: Yes, The Khan Academy is the Future of Education

#30

Post by dwc »

kamens wrote: post #26
dwc wrote: post #16

As an autodidact interested in exploring more mathematics, of course I learned about Khan Academy. One look and I was impressed, but that didn't last long. Though the videos are well done all around, there's no clear curriculum to follow. Or if there is a curriculum, it's not obvious. Instead, I have a bazillion videos to choose from. Which videos depend on knowledge in other videos, and which ones can be done in par…

Completely agreed (on Khan Academy team). If you check out the video from that article ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hw5k98GV7po ), you'll see a lot of the strides we're making in the areas of individual assessment (mathematics only at the moment), guidance (full breakdown of hints for every problem we dynamically generate), alternate explanations where comprehension lacks (list of all relevant videos next to ever…

I do think the videos are excellent, and I'm very encouraged that you're in the process of addressing these other things. If you keep the same commitment to quality that you've done so far then you'll do just fine.

Edit: I just watched the video and I am seriously impressed. This is the right direction. I will be trying this out soon.

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