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Why Sal Khan't: On Learning by Making but Teaching by Telling

punyamishra.com

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Re: Why Sal Khan't: On Learning by Making but Teaching by Telling

#11

Post by blagie »

doug_durham wrote: post #6

The article starts by talking about how interactive learning with Khanmingo failed, and then goes into depth about how watching videos isn’t enough. That’s disappointing. Khanmingo should be superior to passively watching a video because you can interactively dig deeper just like the author says is necessary.

I am responding to the comment, not the article.

The concept of Khanmigo was great. The implementation was basically useless.

It was a great attempt, but the article explains the problem:

"early OpenAI access"

This was literally the world's very first attempt at an agentic tutor, with (initially pre-release) GPT-4. That is worlds away from what's being built with fable or sol-grade models in 2026, or what will be available in 2028.

Re: Why Sal Khan't: On Learning by Making but Teaching by Telling

#12

Post by TheRealPomax »

wafflemaker wrote: post #9

Is the article about something else than how math on Khan Academy was thaught? I remember minimal videos (3-13 min, usually 5-8), and then exercises drilling the techniques until you understand it and don't make mistakes. If you got a perfect score (no mistakes whatsoever), you went a little faster. That's learning by doing, or am I wrong? Or are there no exercises for things other than math?

Sounds like you should read the article if you have questions about what the article is about?

Re: Why Sal Khan't: On Learning by Making but Teaching by Telling

#13

Post by tptacek »

jbstack wrote: post #4
skulk wrote: post #3

Overall, I do agree with the thesis but: > Now… how does Sal Khan want my kid to learn? > Watch a video. I find this a little uncharitable. I learned a lot of math at a young age from Sal Khan's early videos (back when he used to erase by switching to a black pen and scribbling across the entire screen) and, to put it in the author's terms, it served as an easy-to-digest scaffolding on top of which to build a deeper…

Side note, but much as I like Khan Academy overall, I've always struggled with Sal's slow and repetitive speaking style in the videos. "Now you add the five ... [pause] ... add the five ... add the five to the seven ... to the seven..." Running them at 1.5 - 2x helps a bit, but it's still annoying to the point that I find it very distracting.

I originally learned linear algebra from Gilbert Strang's OCW videos, and I was only able to stick with them by 2x'ing the playback rate; at this point, hearing Strang at his normal speaking rate sounds to me like hearing him after a Robitussin bender.

Re: Why Sal Khan't: On Learning by Making but Teaching by Telling

#14

Post by blagie »

fullshark wrote: post #8
skulk wrote: post #3

Overall, I do agree with the thesis but: > Now… how does Sal Khan want my kid to learn? > Watch a video. I find this a little uncharitable. I learned a lot of math at a young age from Sal Khan's early videos (back when he used to erase by switching to a black pen and scribbling across the entire screen) and, to put it in the author's terms, it served as an easy-to-digest scaffolding on top of which to build a deeper…

I don't agree and the hype surrounding his efforts was something much greater than what KahnAcademy actually is (a very useful resource). He sold his vision in "The One World Schoolhouse" which was essentially global learning via all the best videos (and one unified curriculum) you can make and teachers effectively being technicians/teaching assistants. It was the vision that utopian minded technologists craved in th…

It's not a bad idea in concept, but the core problem is what he delivered was:

"essentially global learning via all the Khan videos, in math, by him, and in other subjects, by his team."

Khan Academy is 2010-era state-of-the-art for rote learning and procedural knowledge. That's a helpful resource, but as one world schoolhouse, there is:

- No room for creativity, or much of anything similar from students (outside of the fantastic JavaScript projects).

- No room for outside innovation.

- A personality cult. Any ideas MUST be attributed to Khan.

Re: Why Sal Khan't: On Learning by Making but Teaching by Telling

#15

Post by blagie »

wafflemaker wrote: post #9

Is the article about something else than how math on Khan Academy was thaught? I remember minimal videos (3-13 min, usually 5-8), and then exercises drilling the techniques until you understand it and don't make mistakes. If you got a perfect score (no mistakes whatsoever), you went a little faster. That's learning by doing, or am I wrong? Or are there no exercises for things other than math?

You are wrong in understanding the article.

Khan: Videos + rote exercises

Learning: Projects, complex problem-solving, exploration, argumentation, etc.

Dewey is worth reading.

Re: Why Sal Khan't: On Learning by Making but Teaching by Telling

#16

Post by dabedee »

Sal could not get to his cousin's house every afternoon to do math with her, so he recorded the sessions. She said she preferred the recordings, because she could rewind them and because he wasn't sitting there watching her not get it. He put them on the internet. Then he spent about fifteen years building an exercise engine, a "mastery" model, and a teacher dashboard around them, and told everyone who would listen that the point was to move the lecture out of the classroom so the classroom could be used for something better.

And the essay's premise is: this man wants your child to watch a video.

Re: Why Sal Khan't: On Learning by Making but Teaching by Telling

#17

Post by gwerbin »

pstuart wrote: post #2

That article is spot on: we learn by doing and experience, not being told the high level outcomes (which is not without value as a guide).

I can't speak for anything that came later, but in the early videos the majority of the benefit was that the presentation was exceptionally clear, and focused on developing one little piece of a subject at a time, it gently paste format that you could easily pause and rewind over and over.

It was never about replacing exercises, it was there to help you do the exercises from your actual coursework, and to serve as a refresher reference for things you might have already studied but forgot some details about.

Also the videos usually consisted of a while of time spent physically writing out and talking through examples.

Re: Why Sal Khan't: On Learning by Making but Teaching by Telling

#18

Post by Nebasuke »

skulk wrote: post #3

Overall, I do agree with the thesis but: > Now… how does Sal Khan want my kid to learn? > Watch a video. I find this a little uncharitable. I learned a lot of math at a young age from Sal Khan's early videos (back when he used to erase by switching to a black pen and scribbling across the entire screen) and, to put it in the author's terms, it served as an easy-to-digest scaffolding on top of which to build a deeper…

The article is indeed uncharitable. Nowhere does the article mention the fact that there are exercises AND that you can explore the website and the different resources in the way you like. You don't even need to watch videos if you don't want to.

You also do not need to linearly follow the topics/videos. You can take a few quizzes from some topic, notice you don't understand something completely yet and instead pick up more trigonometry instead.

I've worked through Khan academy in a way similar to what the author describes as a good flow, but then all within the Khan Academy platform. The platform even allows for discussions and questions.

To me the problem is much more that motivation or a destination is not something that Khan Academy will give you. Then again, so won't most teachers. I much preferred Khan Academy over most of my math teachers, but occasionally I've had teachers who helped me love a subject I barely knew beforehand.

Re: Why Sal Khan't: On Learning by Making but Teaching by Telling

#19

Post by homieg33 »

jbstack wrote: post #4
skulk wrote: post #3

Overall, I do agree with the thesis but: > Now… how does Sal Khan want my kid to learn? > Watch a video. I find this a little uncharitable. I learned a lot of math at a young age from Sal Khan's early videos (back when he used to erase by switching to a black pen and scribbling across the entire screen) and, to put it in the author's terms, it served as an easy-to-digest scaffolding on top of which to build a deeper…

Side note, but much as I like Khan Academy overall, I've always struggled with Sal's slow and repetitive speaking style in the videos. "Now you add the five ... [pause] ... add the five ... add the five to the seven ... to the seven..." Running them at 1.5 - 2x helps a bit, but it's still annoying to the point that I find it very distracting.

This is exactly what my kid said about why he doesn’t like Kahn academy.

Re: Why Sal Khan't: On Learning by Making but Teaching by Telling

#20

Post by vanderZwan »

Whenever this topic comes up I feel the urge to point out that not enough people have read Audrey Watter's "Teaching Machines: The History of Personalized Learning", or her blog. We might stop repeating the same mistakes over and over again if we did.

[0] https://direct.mit.edu/books/book/5138/Teaching-MachinesThe-...

[1] https://2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com/

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