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

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

#61

Post by dprkh »

jbstack wrote: post #56
teiferer wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I very much agree and it saddens me often when I see folks dial it up to 1.5x or 2x "because it is boring otherwise". They might think they just get as much, only in half the time, but I'd hypothesize that they retain less because the mind needs some time to digest. Similar with the trend to auto-cut pauses that speakers make, just to cram in more text into a youtube video. Destroys not just the pacing but any chance…

I don't think you can make blanket statements. Consider: 1. Teacher 1 speaks at 100 words per minute. 2. Teacher 2 speaks at 50 words per minute, for the exact same content as Teacher 1. You're not really losing anything by playing Teacher 1 at normal speed vs Teacher 2 at 2x speed. For every learner, there will be an optimal teaching speed for a given topic. This may mean listening to some audio at normal speed, som…

It's not about the rate of speaking but rather about what is actually being spoken. I am currently going through the Neetcode DSA course and it's just obnoxious. His video on Union Find, a 15 LoC algorithm, is 20 minutes.

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

#62

Post by Lerc »

I'm not a fan when schadenfreude indulges in someone failing to make the world a better place.

I think there is a simple reason why AI tutors are not terribly successful.

AI is just not good enough yet, they are only just now capable of performing tasks, getting them to do those tasks involves a degree of careful guidance and the ability to handle frustration calmly and rationally.

Those things require a high motivation to have the task done.

They are not the properties you want in a tutor, a few students have the drive to learn in conditions that are not ideal. They are a small minority.

What you need is a AI that has a deep enough understanding of the ideas behind the metals it teaches and is engaging witty and charismatic enough to get that information across to a student.

When it has those abilities there will be a lot of parents that won't want it to have access to their kids.

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

#63

Post by hduto »

K.A. has always helped me immensely. Often I will add a video as a 2nd "I do" before our "we do." If there is extra time after small groups we typically answer the math unit questions as a class. Students are thrilled to come up in front of the class to defend thier reasoning before finally seeing if thier choice was correct.

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

#65

Post by tbonza »

As someone who has earned over 3 million points on Khan Academy over a 3-4 year span about ten years ago, I am very appreciative of my experience. What I appreciated most is when Sal would derive formulas such as the quotient rule in Calculus from the power rule by using negative exponents. Deriving formulas rather than memorizing them opened up a new perspective for me.

This article appears to focus on the chat bot which I have not used and was not part of my experience. At the time, I had a subscription to Wolfram Alpha that was helpful if I got stuck on an intermediary step.

The high level of goal of the post which is directed at asking good questions raises a point that seems valid to me.

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

#66

Post by dyarosla »

> What he has never had is pedagogical knowledge: an understanding of how people learn

As anyone who’s met Sal will attest, this characterization is incredibly off the mark.

The author extrapolated from the product as opposed to understanding the person and how the product came to be the way it is.

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

#67

Post by dctoedt »

sva_ wrote: post #64
dctoedt wrote: post #48

Comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49411243 by @dabedee is dead from downvoting but shouldn't be.

You know you can vouch for a comment right?

No, I didn't know that. Just did so — thanks for the tip.

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

#68

Post by bonoboTP »

The AI voice of this article irked me. Pangram says 44% of it is AI, for the chunk I was reading.

For generic trope-y content like this, the voice can't be left this AI-ish. It has to be about something really interesting for this AI tone to be bearable.

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

#69

Post by only-one1701 »

sudo_cowsay wrote: post #35
jbstack wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

While it depends entirely on personal opinion, I believe that it helps significantly. It helps build up the problem/solution from the ground up and he goes through each step out loud to help a student understand. I get that some people hate it and think it is so childish for such simple steps. For other people, it helps a lot. Learning on KA works best if started aat a young age and done consistently (you get used to…

YMMV but I found the style very helpful

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

#70

Post by narmiouh »

This articles core argument appears to be that a live instruction is better than a video because there can be feedback at the moment of confusion while a video can't. But that depends on student's impulse being triggered and I'm not sure if its any better or in some cases can be worse if the teachers content is not as thorough as Khan's or anyone else's video - as these benefit from a worldwide audiences feedback on correcting any confusing or unclear parts.

In the classrooms I see through my kids, the teacher is doing roughly what a Khan video does: walking through a worked procedure at the front of the room. If a video fails to provoke the "wait, why does that work?" moment, then a teacher following the same flow likely fails in exactly the same way as the author claims and missing the opportunity for hands'on learning. A video actually allows the learner to go back and review content if anything was unclear, and presumably any interactive AI agent can help with the feedback part even though the teacher in the video isn't.

I also wish the piece had stayed with Khanmigo, where nobody has a good theory yet on where the ai tutoring loop actually breaks and why people fail to engage it and that putting it in their face may not work, why exactly personalization at that scale hasn't produced the gains it promised.

Also irked by the title built on a pun on Khan's name, sets up an awkward framing that kind of lets me know it may not be unbiased.

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