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Sal Khan is MIT's 2012 Commencement speaker

tech.mit.edu

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Re: Sal Khan is MIT's 2012 Commencement speaker

#5

Post by kevinalexbrown »

hmottestad wrote: post #4

"Khan Academy, a popular online educational resource — more popular, even, than MIT’s OpenCourseWare" Khan Academy is to OpenCourseWare as a castle is to a small, below ground, flat.

Except MIT's OpenCourseWare has a lot harder stuff. I'm not saying Khan Academy isn't doing good things - it is, but it's designed for a fundamentally different audience, even if there is some overlap. Kahn Academy is for kids, or to get a basic handle on things. For that it is superb, better than anything out there. OpenCourseWare is in general high-level, sophisticated, and far more in depth. Just because you watched Kahn Academy's presentation on diffeq, for instance, doesn't mean you'd be able to breeze through OpenCourseWare's diffeq.

Edit: BTW I wholeheartedly think Kahn Academy is awesome.

Re: Sal Khan is MIT's 2012 Commencement speaker

#6

Post by ilamont »

cadr wrote: post #2

Nice. One of mine was Carly Fiorina - would have much preferred to have Sal. (The other year was the Car Talk guys - that was fun.)

I, too, would have preferred to have Sal. We had another Fortune 500 CEO -- it wasn't a bad speech, but the speaker was unknown to most of the crowd and is not regarded as an innovator/trailblazer/person who has made as large an impact as Sal has in his field.

Re: Sal Khan is MIT's 2012 Commencement speaker

#7

Post by rdouble »

kevinalexbrown wrote: post #5
hmottestad wrote: post #4

"Khan Academy, a popular online educational resource — more popular, even, than MIT’s OpenCourseWare" Khan Academy is to OpenCourseWare as a castle is to a small, below ground, flat.

Except MIT's OpenCourseWare has a lot harder stuff. I'm not saying Khan Academy isn't doing good things - it is, but it's designed for a fundamentally different audience, even if there is some overlap. Kahn Academy is for kids, or to get a basic handle on things. For that it is superb, better than anything out there. OpenCourseWare is in general high-level, sophisticated, and far more in depth. Just because you watch…

Khan Academy has expanded quite a bit and is not just for kids. The sections on Finance and Banking are better than any of the college lectures available.

Khan Academy material is generally better than a recorded college lecture because it is designed specifically for web video. Even in the good OpenCourseWare lectures, or similar videos from Stanford, at least half the video is wasted time.

I was pretty excited when videos of real classes from respected universities became available online for free. I have watched quite a few from places like MIT and Stanford. One unexpected result I've had is that I have been mostly unimpressed. The lectures were not better than the lectures I went to at the no-name college I attended. My conclusion is that college lectures really aren't an efficient way to disseminate education, and they are even less so when they are recorded on video. I am now much more excited for Khan Academy's expansion into more advanced topics.

Re: Sal Khan is MIT's 2012 Commencement speaker

#8

Post by jacobolus »

hmottestad wrote: post #4

"Khan Academy, a popular online educational resource — more popular, even, than MIT’s OpenCourseWare" Khan Academy is to OpenCourseWare as a castle is to a small, below ground, flat.

Khan academy’s material is mostly useless to me, as someone who has gone through high school and college taking a wide variety of courses, and read up on the basics of many fields; I could probably get something from the finance and organic chemistry sections, if I decided those were important to learn about (though I think I’d start with a book or a set of university lecture videos first).

MIT’s OCW by contrast is a gold mine.

The two are just aimed at entirely different audiences.

Re: Sal Khan is MIT's 2012 Commencement speaker

#9

Post by p2e »

rdouble wrote: post #7
kevinalexbrown wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except MIT's OpenCourseWare has a lot harder stuff. I'm not saying Khan Academy isn't doing good things - it is, but it's designed for a fundamentally different audience, even if there is some overlap. Kahn Academy is for kids, or to get a basic handle on things. For that it is superb, better than anything out there. OpenCourseWare is in general high-level, sophisticated, and far more in depth. Just because you watch…

Khan Academy has expanded quite a bit and is not just for kids. The sections on Finance and Banking are better than any of the college lectures available. Khan Academy material is generally better than a recorded college lecture because it is designed specifically for web video. Even in the good OpenCourseWare lectures, or similar videos from Stanford, at least half the video is wasted time. I was pretty excited when…

"My conclusion is that college lectures really aren't an efficient way to disseminate education, and they are even less so when they are recorded on video."

I'm curious about how you came to the conclusion that lectures are less efficient when they are recorded on video. It seems to me that (for the student which doesn't speak up and engage the instructor in class -- most students?), that a recorded lecture would provide a near identical experience. I would expect that recorded recorded lectures would also allow students to slow down, decompose, repeat, and revisit portions of the lecture in order to better grasp the information at their own pace.

Is it the issue of not being physically surrounded by students or faced by an instructor that you're not keen on? Perhaps a lack of physical accountability to keep students attentive and on-point?

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