How well does Khan Academy teach?
washingtonpost.com
How well does Khan Academy teach?
1–10 of 119 posts
Re: How well does Khan Academy teach?
#2Fuck that noise. If you don't like it, do it better; all this whining and nit-picking is without value. Khan Academy is innovative and game changing, but you can't innovate by insisting on perfection.
Re: How well does Khan Academy teach?
#3I find the notion that these videos are ineffective baffling. When I found these videos during my university calculus course, they literally saved my grade due to the extremely poor quality of my professor (and TAs). I find Sal to be incredibly effective, no nonsense teacher who at this point has probably taught me 5 or 6 different subjects with efficiency that no professor, nor TA has provided.
As a recent graduate: Thank You, Sal! Keep up the good work.
Re: How well does Khan Academy teach?
#4[deleted]
Re: How well does Khan Academy teach?
#5It's probably a good sign that Khan Academy is getting criticized by some members of mainstream media lately. It shows the growing importance of a great disruptive organization.
Re: How well does Khan Academy teach?
#6"Comparing decimals. Decimal fractions (decimals for short — the numbers to the right of the decimal point) are a notoriously challenging topic in the elementary math curriculum."
Just to point out this is the most ass backwards way to talk about decimal fractions I have ever witnessed, but nothing would stop said Valerie Strauss on pedagogical insufficiency spotting... "decimals for short — the numbers to the right of the decimal point" ?!? Whisky Tango Foxtrot
Edit: downvoted is it because you would also believe decimal fractions are decimals and those are the numbers to the right of the decimal point per article explanation... because being a silent ignorant with a karma finger really fits you.
Re: How well does Khan Academy teach?
#7The main criticism of the article is a bit silly:
Khan will put the video out there and see how people react to it. He perceives this to be a better approach than incorporating results of quality research projects into his instructional decisions. In the age of No Child Left Behind and its mandate for “scientifically based research” as the foundation for classroom instruction, this seems lazy.
Yes, Khan is doing his own scientific research, on the theory that he does a better job than the educational establishment. This might be arrogant (given the quality of educational research I've seen, I don't think it is), but it isn't lazy.
As for the claims that Khan does a worse job than other teachers, no data is provided to back this up. Just vague claims that if he did something different, he might get better results.
Re: How well does Khan Academy teach?
#8I have looked at a few Khan videos and here is my 2 cents. The reason he/videos is effective is not because he is teaching a great content (I mean algebra is algebra). What he excels at is keeping you engaged and interested throughout. This makes tremendous difference to anyone who wants to learn. There are lot of people who know great things but can they teach it to others? Now that is an art that Khan has mastered.
Re: How well does Khan Academy teach?
#9This article is a critique of the traditional aspect of teaching (having a teacher lecture students). This is obviously important, so it's good to have professional educators provide feedback.
However, I thought the aspects that was supposed to be "revolutionary" was detailed tracking and analysis of students and that feedback loop (either back into the system, to the student themselves or to teachers). They seem to completely ignore this.
Khan Academy isn't disruptive because of Salman Khan's lessons. It's disruptive because of the underlying platform, which any teacher (some possibly better than Salman) or any student could take advantage of.
Re: How well does Khan Academy teach?
#10One of the issues I have with Khan Academy is that they are using exactly the same style of teaching as in schools...just ported online. Is that really the best way to go about online education?
I find the AcademicEarth.org method of simply filming classes even worse. Yes, they do allow for what you'd normally call "quality education" to be accessible by anyone online, so that's a pretty big step, but I get this feeling that true disruptive online education is supposed to be something more radical...to make things 10x better for learning, not just replicate the offline learning experience.