"Khan Academy and its donors may preclude better products from coming along: products built by experts that actually can improve how students learn"
So - what was stopping those experts from doing that already?
Khan Academy: It’s Different This Time
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Re: Khan Academy: It’s Different This Time
#22The one concrete criticism I could see in the article (aside from vague handwaving about "pedagogical underpinnings") was about providing a step-by-step series of instructions for solving a problem without real understanding.
But Khan doesn't actually do that. In my experience, he's very good at emphasizing why something works. He encourages people to remember the "why" well enough to work out the actual formulas for themselves, rather than just memorizing the formulas.
Re: Khan Academy: It’s Different This Time
#23I think the best rebuttal to this article would be Sal's TED talk: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gM95HHI4gLk
In particular, he doesn't present the Khan Academy as a full replacement for primary education, but as an enhancement. In the second half of the video, he illustrates the teacher as maximizing the amount of useful interaction between themselves and the students.
Instead of spending class time lecturing and producing examples (things that technology can handle easily, and in some cases better than a human can), teachers use their class time to interact with students individually, helping them better understand the content and meaning behind it. This time becomes even more useful because the application gives statistics on how students are performing, and what directions they're moving in; it arms teachers with better data and more time to use it.
Re: Khan Academy: It’s Different This Time
#24Is it an either/or proposition? Kahn has helped students pass their classes, brush up on subjects they're rusty on, tutor them through a tough unit and pass tests. I fail to see how this is a bad thing.
EDIT: I feel like I should expand on my initial reaction. Education isn't a product that you can sell, market or prepackage to have certain functionality. It's not a car or software. It's a process. You get out of it what you put in. No amount of great teachers, progressive curriculum or charter schooling is going to change the fact that the student still needs to participate.
Shoving students into holes and expecting them to learn this way is stupid. Expanding the ways in which they can engage their education is not. When we encourage people to exercise or eat better we don't expect that they will all do it the same way, why would we expect the same thing from education. I don't think Kahn Academy is the "Future of Education" any more than I think marathon running is the "Future of Fitness", but that doesn't mean it's bad for education.
Re: Khan Academy: It’s Different This Time
#25This guy should probably come out and say Khan Academy is eating his lunch and he is pissed about it. The passive aggressive approach to talking about companies with better lessons and teaching styles gets completely undermined when you realize that this guy is selling math lessons[0] and you conclude that he thinks his stuff is better than Khan's. Yeah, maybe it is, but it looks really pretty weak to write an article like that and not mention the fact that you are selling a competing product. Where's the Chutzpah? Just say "Khan sucks, we are better, here's why".
Of course, the context is missing here in the writing, and Hacker News probably wasn't the intended audience, so maybe it was assumed people would make the assumption that Mathalicous' stuff was the better solution the author was talking about. But so far, the overall response has been pretty poor[1].
[0]http://www.mathalicious.com/sign-up/ [1]https://twitter.com/#!/mathalicious
Re: Khan Academy: It’s Different This Time
#26To address our challenges, we need to do what every other successful country has done: invest in professional development; give teachers more time to collaborate; and provide them with resources that help them not only meet the learning standards, but exceed them. You could have copy/pasted that conclusion without altering a word from the debate about every other educational reform: school choice/vouchers, NCLB, high…
You seem awefully cynical considering that you sell software to teachers (which they themself pay for) so that they can teach their children more efficiently.
I mean I have no love for unions and I am well aware that they have no great love for the students but even so, isn't your point a bit to cynical?
Re: Khan Academy: It’s Different This Time
#27My idea on how to fix High School math. Spend the first 3 years doing nothing but mastering basic algebra.
I've seen from tutoring my siblings that basic algebra skills are what they lack. They concepts of trig and calculus aren't that difficult, it's the algebra that trips them up.
Leave the higher level math, for everyone but the most advanced students, to college. If I was a college math professor I'd rather teach a group of kids who have mastered algebra, than ones who've had a whirlwind tour of everything.
Re: Khan Academy: It’s Different This Time
#28To address our challenges, we need to do what every other successful country has done: invest in professional development; give teachers more time to collaborate; and provide them with resources that help them not only meet the learning standards, but exceed them. You could have copy/pasted that conclusion without altering a word from the debate about every other educational reform: school choice/vouchers, NCLB, high…
> the goal is to employ teachers and education of students is a welcome-but-unnecessary industrial byproduct.
This is pretty much exactly what I was thinking, albeit less eloquently, as I read this article. The entire article, while it made good points, always had an undertone of "Khan Academy is dangerous to me, therefore it's dangerous for everyone."
It could just be a difference of perspective - the author is a teacher and has been trained in a certain way of educating students, so any idea that isn't the way they were taught seems weird, scary, and wrong.
I'm not saying that Khan Academy is entirely the right direction to take - I haven't used it enough to say, and I'm too old to be able to stand in the shoes of its target demographic - but the entire time I read the article, I felt a bias underpinning the entire thing.
Re: Khan Academy: It’s Different This Time
#29Sal didn't start the Academy to change the way children are taught math in school. He made it to fulfill a need he saw in a majority of student -- the same thing the article points out.
That being said, I think Sal's TED talk (mentioned in another comment here) really hits the nail on the head. I do believe that education in its current North American form is flawed. I don't think exams are a proper way of testing anything more than memory retention and ability to perform repetitive tasks (do this, then this, then that, etc).
Khan Academy fills a void within the current education system. Yes the system is flawed, but that's beside the Academy's scope.
Re: Khan Academy: It’s Different This Time
#30I'm in fulltime work, and for years have wished I could go back to university and get another degree. It isn't a qualification I want - I don't need it to get on in my career, for example - but knowledge. Now the internet is bringing me and thousands like me the opportunity to learn at our own pace for free.
I'm currently taking the Khan chemistry course and loving it. When you criticise Khan for not helping kids as much as a real teacher does, I think you miss the bigger picture. It's enabling people of all ages to broaden their knowledge, not just people in formal education.
This, to me, is the real revolution: free lifelong learning.