11–20 of 119 posts
I would think it would be easy for the "nit-picking experts" to produce that and it probably would have taken less time than the formal analysis they did. Probably cheaper too.
edit: wording
However, I have had some seriously worrying conversations with people who have some deep, deep misconceptions, and who believe they have been vindicated by some parts of some of the videos. Again, correlation versus causation, etc., but some of the things these people believe they've learned from the KA, and believe must be right because they (think) they've seen it on KA really worry me.
I agree with Sal when he says:
We believe that we are in the early days of
what we are and feedback will only make that
better. I agree with you that no organization
should be upheld as a magic bullet for education
woes.
It's a brilliant body of work, certainly ground-breaking, and potentially revolutionary. But it has its problems, and denying that doesn't help.
I'm certain I read nothing more than snobbery in this article. It reads like "we didn't think of this free online disruptive academy first" or "how dare you do something differently from and outside of Official Academia."
Do you know who the best teachers are? I mean the absolute best, the ones who actually get what the student is struggling with? Other students-- the ones who just got through that particular lesson, the ones that just had the exact same struggle. The students' ability to teach like this declines with experience with the material because it all starts to become second-hand and they forget all the little things they struggled with early on. When an instructor takes note of students teaching students and the hows and whys of that interaction and remembers to cover the same territory in the next class, he becomes the best non-student teacher he can.
My mother is my perfect anecdotal example of this. In her 50s, she's getting a degree. While taking calculus, she also worked in the tutoring lab. After understanding new material, she'd be an absolute godsend for students for about two weeks and then her helpfulness would fall off. (You could also attribute this to all these classes being mostly in sync with at most two weeks of lag - that being the case, she would be less exposed to the reteaching of the material ... and forget those little details.)
I spend a lot of my time in outreach, enhancement, and enrichment activities, and I've now met several people who have taken to watching lots of the Khan videos. Some of them are doing spectacularly well, possibly partly because of them, although correlation versus causation, etc. However, I have had some seriously worrying conversations with people who have some deep, deep misconceptions, and who believe they have b…
tl;dr, with my own interpretation of the article: "although we are not students in today's world, we presume to know and understand the mind of today's student and can tell you from our own learned perspective that Khan just doesn't have what it takes to teach." I'm certain I read nothing more than snobbery in this article. It reads like "we didn't think of this free online disruptive academy first" or "how dare you…
The kid who just "finally got" calculus may not have had the same hurdle as the kid who's currently not getting it. A teacher who's been teaching calculus a long time, has seen all the permutations of "not getting it", and has developed a catalog of tricks and methods to address getting that kid over those hurdles is also invaluable.
Why not have both?
Game, set, match to Mr. Khan.
The question shouldn't be "How well does Khan Academy teach" (well, maybe someday). The important question right now is "Is Khan Academy a better learning tool than most high school and college teachers?". In my experience, the answer overwhelmingly is "yes".
I did have some truly fantastic teachers/professors on the way to a STEM degree, but they were rare. Most were terrible to mediocre, even at a semi-prestigious university. Khan Academy has greatly reinforced my understanding of some subjects, and it's been exceedingly easy to learn some new subjects.
So yes, it doesn't stack up to the top tier teachers and probably never will. But that doesn't matter, because there aren't all that many fantastic teachers and Khan Academy is better than the rest.
I view Kahn Academy as the start to a new type of education that is in its very early stages. Kahn is a smart man who will probably take the criticism and use it to be better his instruction and add supplemental videos etc. I would be shocked if he didn’t add in a 3rd comparing decimals video after this criticism.
Keep up the great work, I know I’m watching.
I spend a lot of my time in outreach, enhancement, and enrichment activities, and I've now met several people who have taken to watching lots of the Khan videos. Some of them are doing spectacularly well, possibly partly because of them, although correlation versus causation, etc. However, I have had some seriously worrying conversations with people who have some deep, deep misconceptions, and who believe they have b…
Khan Academy is interesting to me not really because it's a revolution in learning, but because it's another modality that is better for some people. Some people learn well from written material, and those people have traditionally been the successful autodidacts, working their way through textbooks and tutorials. But perhaps different kinds of materials can cater to other people, with people working their way through a lecture series instead of a textbook. That'll probably have many of the same pros and cons.
If you read the second to last paragraph, they don't suggest that Khan Academy shuts down, or that he stops teaching. They literally just say, "Hey, it'd be nice if he asked some really great teachers to look over his examples before he uses them to make sure he doesn't confuse people." I'm not an expert, but sounds like it couldn't hurt.