Khan Academy has so much potential to be disruptive yet it feels squandered. Why's it taking so long? What's the money being used for?
Khan Academy: Computer Science
21–30 of 188 posts
Re: Khan Academy: Computer Science
#22I've never used a Khan Academy video but that's out of pure negligence on my part, not skepticism. That said, I have always wondered how effective video is as a teaching tool for programming? I guess when I think about it, it's the same delivery tool as an in-person lecture, but in some ways, more effective since you can pause, rewind, etc. See the comments on this article about how to do a Fibonacci recursive exampl…
>I have always wondered how effective video is as a teaching tool for programming? I guess when I think about it, it's the same delivery tool as an in-person lecture, but in some ways, more effective since you can pause, rewind, etc.
It's a lot better than some of in-person lectures I've taken, but maybe that's just me. I've been encouraging my peers to use online videos as a source to learn stuff they have a hard time grasping in class for quite a while. They don't listen, but that's another matter...
Anyways, I'm glad Khan Academy is coming out with this. I was freaking out when I couldn't solve some project Eular questions, and pretty much lost all of confidence in my programming abilities for a while. Online tutorials helped me a lot, and I think I've become a better programmer because of that.
One small nitpick: I haven't seen the videos yet, but it looks like they'll be in python. I'd rather it be C or C++. From what little I know of the language, it's pretty easy to pick up, and doesn't put pressure on the programmer to take care of details like memory management etc. I know for a fact that many algorithms that I've implementer in C++ that take over 100 LOC, I've found solutions online that have the same algorithm in 20-30 LOC. Used to irritate me a lot. :P
Re: Khan Academy: Computer Science
#23Pretty cool! He has to do discrete math / mathematical logic & foundations to fill out the 1st/2nd year of mathematics and most computer science math requirements next.
Does the mountain of other math videos and exercises on the site not already provide that? I'm pretty sure they cover enough. They cover through Calculus and maybe more. Which do you feel is missing?
Re: Khan Academy: Computer Science
#24Khan Academy has so much potential to be disruptive yet it feels squandered. Why's it taking so long? What's the money being used for?
What would you suggest to change that? I love Khan Academy as a learning tool for myself but I wouldn't have the first idea on what to do next with it.
Re: Khan Academy: Computer Science
#25I've never used a Khan Academy video but that's out of pure negligence on my part, not skepticism. That said, I have always wondered how effective video is as a teaching tool for programming? I guess when I think about it, it's the same delivery tool as an in-person lecture, but in some ways, more effective since you can pause, rewind, etc. See the comments on this article about how to do a Fibonacci recursive exampl…
I've had a lot of success with the tutorials at thenewboston.com The instructor there explains everything in a very ELI5 (explain like im 5) manner and tone and it works very well for beginners like me.
Re: Khan Academy: Computer Science
#26That's awesome, but I think it would be much more accessible for newbies if they included download links and installation steps. I have friends who might be interested in this for whom just the installation could be a daunting hurdle.
Agree. To me the biggest hurdle in programming is not the programming itself but the sys-admin effort to setup a development environment.
I know this is a shot in the dark, but if you're a Rails developer, use Heroku. It takes a lot of pain out of an applications deployment.
Re: Khan Academy: Computer Science
#27Isn't Bill Gates creating schools where they primarily use videos in the Khan Academy library?
Re: Khan Academy: Computer Science
#28I've never used a Khan Academy video but that's out of pure negligence on my part, not skepticism. That said, I have always wondered how effective video is as a teaching tool for programming? I guess when I think about it, it's the same delivery tool as an in-person lecture, but in some ways, more effective since you can pause, rewind, etc. See the comments on this article about how to do a Fibonacci recursive exampl…
I remember I first bought a Java book to learn to program when I was around 15-16. I tried for days but couldn't figure out why the first example program wouldn't work, it was because it wasn't System.out.print1n but System.out.println. In the font the code was written in, I couldn't tell. Because of that it wasn't until at least a year later that I didn't try again.
Happened to me while learning C++. endl or end1...so confused.
Re: Khan Academy: Computer Science
#29I've never used a Khan Academy video but that's out of pure negligence on my part, not skepticism. That said, I have always wondered how effective video is as a teaching tool for programming? I guess when I think about it, it's the same delivery tool as an in-person lecture, but in some ways, more effective since you can pause, rewind, etc. See the comments on this article about how to do a Fibonacci recursive exampl…
>I have always wondered how effective video is as a teaching tool for programming? I guess when I think about it, it's the same delivery tool as an in-person lecture, but in some ways, more effective since you can pause, rewind, etc. It's a lot better than some of in-person lectures I've taken, but maybe that's just me. I've been encouraging my peers to use online videos as a source to learn stuff they have a hard ti…
C or C++ are definitely not a good idea. The beginners' brains will be too occupied with curly brackets and semi-colon. There's also the brain-dead notation for types (see function pointers). The poor souls already have a hard time differentiating assignment and comparison, just because of counter-intuitive notation (compared to high school).
As experts, syntax doesn't annoy us. We see past the curly brackets (or the parentheses), because we can quickly see the internal AST that derive from them. Beginners can't.
Now, it would be wonderful to teach them a systems language that forces them to manage their own memory. I think a good candidate would be to keep most of the semantics of C, but simplifying its syntax (and find a solution to simplify includes).
Re: Khan Academy: Computer Science
#30Khan Academy has so much potential to be disruptive yet it feels squandered. Why's it taking so long? What's the money being used for?
I would argue that it is not being squandered and that slowly but surely it is disrupting.
http://www.khanacademy.org/video/npr-story-on-ka-los-altos-p...