While slanted I think it raises an obvious point that educators sometimes forget. Do not put all your efforts into one method of teaching. Procedure and habit is comforting and easy to plan for. But no one teaching strategy will work well with all students, plus many students will get lulled into boredom and disinterest after a while. KA might be one of your introductions to a topic (though it is sort of dull and non-engaging) or it may fall in the middle of teaching the topics. Maybe you can use it for remediation or for enrichment. But if one uses it as the sole learning method I think that is folly.
The old adage is that people who do well in school go back and teach the ways that worked for them. KA might seem perfect to the people that it works for, but until we see that it works for 100% of students we can't sit on our laurels.
Khan Academy: It’s Different This Time
111–120 of 192 posts
Re: Khan Academy: It’s Different This Time
#112The biggest problem with this rant is that it's attacking a strawman version of Khan Academy, pretending that it's only a website with some videos and exercises. It's not. KA is actively developing and testing an in-school curriculum that focuses class and teacher time on intensive small group and individual development of the concepts covered in the videos. The main insight is that one-size-fits-all lectures delivered at one pace represents a payment of a large opportunity cost that hurts both ends of the bell curve. If you offload that responsibility to videos that kids can watch outside of class and/or at their own pace, class time becomes an opportunity for kids to work together to understand the concepts and gives teachers the opportunity to figure out how to best reach each individual child. Khan Academy doesn't replace teachers; it frees them up to actually teach.
Re: Khan Academy: It’s Different This Time
#113To 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" For an example of this -- look at the amount of times the Student-to-Teacher ratio is brought up. Which is such an interesting statistic because it implies that time with a terrible teacher is preferable to having the good teachers handle a few more students.
No. It implies that in general having fewer students makes it easier to be a good teacher. And that being in a smaller class makes it easier to be a successful student. The importance of class size is well-supported by systematic reviews and meta-analyses.
Re: Khan Academy: It’s Different This Time
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
Expect haters when you're doing something disruptive. The term 'disruptive' itself implies you're pissing someone off. I'm sure Henry Ford had people who thought cars were a bad idea. Carry on.
I don't mean to quibble, but you should really replace Henry Ford with Karl Benz. By the time Henry Ford got into the act, cars had already proven their usefulness. Ford's innovation was making cars cheap enough for the average person to afford.
Ford also wouldn't be happy about truly progressive, disruptive innovations like the rise of a strong labor movement.
Re: Khan Academy: It’s Different This Time
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
This. Right here. Upvote it now. I work in a small start-up making educational software, and this is exactly the kind of thing I want to achieve. A couple of months back I read John Holt's famous book 'Why Children Fail' which had a profound effect on me and my work. What he says, and what I agree with due to my own experience and observations is that school can be a fundamentally scary experience for children. Self-…
I used to tutor math at a community college. I did mostly the basics: lots of algebra, very occasionally a little calculus. I learned two things. First, it was usually the assumed knowledge that got them. They'd mess up at calculus because of algebra; or get algebra wrong because they couldn't add. When you don't know the basics, you get the wrong answer even when you do all the new stuff right. The whole thing start…
I tutored some adult basic education for a bit...helping people get their HSE/GED. Some of these people had tried to pass the pretest many times and were stuck at fractions. Over and over they failed the tests. I kept hearing "I just can't get this" or "It makes no sense". One of the other TA's and I were discussing it and we realized that a lot of these people were people who had "been around drugs" in their life. So we decided to handle things this way. We went to them with a problem like "5/8 + 1/4"...to which they would respond "I don't know"...then we said "You have bought weed before right?" "yes" is the response. Well...if you have 7/8 of weed and you add another quarter ounce what do you have. Every time...the got it immediately. The teachers came back to us and asked what we had done differently...we explained. They said they really didn't approve but it was working.
It is all about relating things and explaining in a way that can be easily referenced in your mind.
By the way...several of these people who could not pass the TABE tests at the time went on to get their GED's because of that one little step with fractions.
Re: Khan Academy: It’s Different This Time
#116For many of us teachers, this is somewhat disconcerting. Gamification is fine when students are trying to save Zelda, but it’s more problematic when math becomes an obstacle, and eighth grade just another “level.” The author is delusional. That's exactly what 8th, or any other grade, is. Get enough points, proceed to the next grade. Score high enough on the leader board, proceed to the college you want.
Part of school is playing the game. But if you reduce education to a game, you are losing something of incredible value. School and education are not always the same thing. And education is not a game. It's purpose is freedom. And it is fundamentally important to the human experience in a way that points and rewards simply aren't.
Re: Khan Academy: It’s Different This Time
#117For many of us teachers, this is somewhat disconcerting. Gamification is fine when students are trying to save Zelda, but it’s more problematic when math becomes an obstacle, and eighth grade just another “level.” The author is delusional. That's exactly what 8th, or any other grade, is. Get enough points, proceed to the next grade. Score high enough on the leader board, proceed to the college you want.
Agreed, this was exactly where I started to get suspicious. Author: "Gamification is bad when applied to eighth grade." I kept looking for the support for that claim, didn't really find any. The IPI study was tossed in, but it dealt with a tangentially related educational program, and seemed to endorse methods focused education over memorization of answers. This article was attacking process focused aspects of Khan,…
Sadly the majority of Khan videos are not process focused but rather focused on memorizing procedures. This is a very big problem in math education traditional and otherwise. Hard to fix, but KA makes no acknowledgement that incorporating good mathematics pedagogy is even important. This is short sighted and could be remedied.
Re: Khan Academy: It’s Different This Time
#118I think this piece would be more effective, or at least somewhat effective, if its author had described a vision for online learning that takes the best of Khan's approach and combines it with, well, something interesting. The author never really explains what that something is. I don't think Khan Academy is perfect. Its gamification techniques will not work for all students. But it is an alternative for some student…
Unfortunately all evidence so far seems to indicate that online approaches to learning, on average, do not work very well. To be clear, meta-analyses continue to reveal that schooling, as it exists now, works as well or better than tech centered or online education. I do not find this surprising, if you do not change the philosophy and pedagogy, no repackaging will overcome the serious inherent flaws in the approach. This is particularly pronounced in math Ed and I encourage anyone to dig into the research on what good teaching and learning of math is characterized by.
Re: Khan Academy: It’s Different This Time
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know that I am a better teacher now than when I first started. Sure, you know that you're a better teacher than when you started. But can you prove it? What can you do that a fresh-out-of-college teacher can't? What can you do better? How can you show that you do your job better? As a programmer, I have a similar problem. But I don't just throw up my hands and say, "Well, some things just can't be quantified." Inst…
What can you do that a fresh-out-of-college teacher can't? I can plan lessons that include activities tailored for the needs of specific students. Training teachers find this hard and tend to plan for the median. I can plan lessons more quickly than a training teacher, thus liberating time for more tailoring. I can use technology to differentiate delivery and to save time. My feedback to each student is more accurate…
It's interesting to me that all of your examples are also very important aspects of being an excellent Dungeon Master. I never made this connection between teaching and DM'ing before.
Re: Khan Academy: It’s Different This Time
#120Khan Academy is a revolution in how lessons are delivered, not necessarily the content of the lessons themselves. The author wants to take learn-math-by-rote to task, and that's fine, but that argument is no more specific to Khan Academy than any other math instruction. Singling out Khan Academy is link-baiting. It's like if I were to bash the Nissan Leaf for not having the latest in, I don't know, tire technology or…
The problem is that KA (and as you point out, many others) believe that lessons are "delivered". This assumes what Paoulo Freire described as the "banking model" of education and it is fundamentally wrong. People do not learn through delivery and people or organizations perpetuating a banking model are misguided and should be challenged.