The "How to read documentation" link is dead...
Khan Academy: Computer Science
31–40 of 61 posts
Re: Khan Academy: Computer Science
#32The "How to read documentation" link is dead...
Re: Khan Academy: Computer Science
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
I disagree. We're working towards the goal of having a comprehensive Computer Science curriculum and this is just the first step. I talk more about our reasoning and methodology here: http://ejohn.org/blog/introducing-khan-cs/
I really love what is being done here so far, especially the voice overs and live code editor, but I think it might be helpful to first-time visitors to put some more of that info on the khanacademy.org/cs page as well. Right now, at first glance it just looks like the Khan "Computer Science" curriculum is solely about learning how to make drawings and animations with processing.js. It can be a bit confusing to the f…
This. I appreciate the goal of the program most certainly, but I'm having a little trouble seeing a road map from the current spot to something like the theory of computation or complexity theory. It'd be cool if once the KA people have sort of a direction or loose map of how this is going to work that they could blog about it again.
It's cool, regardless, I'm just personally a bit of stickler for calling things Computer Science. I think the term is overused to the point of losing its original meaning.
Re: Khan Academy: Computer Science
#34Interactive numbers in the UI: seriously awesome. LOVE that they did this. Hopefully we'll get live updates to code in more systems, it's wonderful. Lack of a 'course' to go through: ? I have no idea where to start. Nor can many of these be applied outside of the little editor with the 'tutorial'. Elsewhere, KA has a nice 'do this, then that (or that )' set of branching paths that give you a reasonable path to take.…
I also really enjoyed the interactive numbers - I thought that it'd be overkill and not at all useful, but you're really more likely to try things out if it's dead simple.
Re: Khan Academy: Computer Science
#35The videos for CS are brilliant. I don't think programming videos could possibly be more perfect than this. For example: http://www.khanacademy.org/cs/booleans/839898911 So you can scrub through the lesson and play and pause it, and the instructor can type code into the editor directly causing it to output on your screen in real-time. But the amazing outcome of this is that the viewer can pause the lesson at any time…
Awesome - glad you're enjoying it! One thing to note: If you make changes to the code and then hit play again right now the user's changes are lost (making sure that playback will continue to work). We definitely want to persist those changes in some way, automatically, although in the worst case the user can always make some changes and hit 'Save' and they'll be saved to their own account.
Re: Khan Academy: Computer Science
#36That is really incredible work! I bet Codecademy is happy they already received their $10m round...
Re: Khan Academy: Computer Science
#37The videos for CS are brilliant. I don't think programming videos could possibly be more perfect than this. For example: http://www.khanacademy.org/cs/booleans/839898911 So you can scrub through the lesson and play and pause it, and the instructor can type code into the editor directly causing it to output on your screen in real-time. But the amazing outcome of this is that the viewer can pause the lesson at any time…
It is great, but in my opinion "almost as good" is a big stretch. Having a tutor right next to you is fundamentally different in a number of ways. For one, you can ask any question and likely have it answered immediately.
Of course, the KhanAcademy course actually exists whereas private tutors for all students do not. So my point only stands in an idealized world were we assume cost/time/space are no obstacle.
Re: Khan Academy: Computer Science
#38The videos for CS are brilliant. I don't think programming videos could possibly be more perfect than this. For example: http://www.khanacademy.org/cs/booleans/839898911 So you can scrub through the lesson and play and pause it, and the instructor can type code into the editor directly causing it to output on your screen in real-time. But the amazing outcome of this is that the viewer can pause the lesson at any time…
I think there is some bug here? Clicking on the above link about booleans leads to code about how to draw ellipses.
Re: Khan Academy: Computer Science
#39Methinks "Computer Programming" or "Information Technology" would be a better title for this section than Computer Science. They are more general and applicable to the content.
I disagree. We're working towards the goal of having a comprehensive Computer Science curriculum and this is just the first step. I talk more about our reasoning and methodology here: http://ejohn.org/blog/introducing-khan-cs/
We also do already have some more theoretical material.
For instance, I just published a Turing Machine simulation (http://www.khanacademy.org/cs/turing-machine/938201372) and we have a random walk simulator (http://www.khanacademy.org/cs/random-walk/803118438).
Re: Khan Academy: Computer Science
#40Methinks "Computer Programming" or "Information Technology" would be a better title for this section than Computer Science. They are more general and applicable to the content.
I disagree. We're working towards the goal of having a comprehensive Computer Science curriculum and this is just the first step. I talk more about our reasoning and methodology here: http://ejohn.org/blog/introducing-khan-cs/
Awesome work! But I have to agree with cantankerous. This is more about programming than computer science. If the premise is that a student should learn programming before computer science that's fine, but the curriculum should be labeled as such. The drawing tutorial video highlights this point for me when it makes a false assertion about coordinate systems in "computer science". More than just arguing semantics, this could create false expectations among students of what they are learning compared to university computer science programs.