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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

#81

Post by nonethewiser »

jacobolus wrote: post #79
mindwok wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The attacks on Khan here personally irked me. I grew up in a small rural town where math teachers were rare and good ones were nonexistent. I still remember watching Sal Khan's videos on calculus after struggling to get any grip on it from my frustratingly uninterested teacher who was forced into the position after our actual teacher retired. After I saw them I came back with a fire in me because for the first time h…

I don't have a problem with Khan's site existing, but it's disappointing that often answers to requests for learning materials/ideas begin and end with Khan Academy. My personal opinion is that Khan's videos are roughly comparable to an average-quality classroom teacher lecturing about a typical mediocre curriculum. They have some significant advantages compared to (just) a classroom: (1) They set a quality floor – s…

>I don't have a problem with Khan's site existing, but it's disappointing that often answers to requests for learning materials/ideas begin and end with Khan Academy. My personal opinion is that Khan's videos are roughly comparable to an average-quality classroom teacher lecturing about a typical mediocre curriculum.

Its better than average quality classroom teacher in my experience.

And the point is this didn’t exist online at the time. His resources were strictly more. I imagine its still hard to find a single free resource that matches its breadth and quality.

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

#82

Post by blackoil »

jacobolus wrote: post #79
mindwok wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The attacks on Khan here personally irked me. I grew up in a small rural town where math teachers were rare and good ones were nonexistent. I still remember watching Sal Khan's videos on calculus after struggling to get any grip on it from my frustratingly uninterested teacher who was forced into the position after our actual teacher retired. After I saw them I came back with a fire in me because for the first time h…

I don't have a problem with Khan's site existing, but it's disappointing that often answers to requests for learning materials/ideas begin and end with Khan Academy. My personal opinion is that Khan's videos are roughly comparable to an average-quality classroom teacher lecturing about a typical mediocre curriculum. They have some significant advantages compared to (just) a classroom: (1) They set a quality floor – s…

> materials that were much better

Do you have few examples?

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

#83

Post by blackoil »

josephg wrote: post #73
tptacek wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I wish YouTube let you increase the speed of videos past 2x. I play almost everything at 2x now, and I have no problem comprehending videos at that speed. I’d like to try 2.5x or 3x but the ui doesn’t have that option.

You can do it in YT premium.

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

#84

Post by blackoil »

runarberg wrote: post #37
rzz3 wrote: post #30

It feels weird and unfair to focus solely on Kahn here when he’s competing with some random teacher or professor’s droning, confusing, non-interactive lecture that’s less engaging and just as lacking in interactivity or application. I also don’t think he ever purports to be “all you need” to learn. It reminds me of the people who criticize Duolingo because you can’t actually reach perfect fluency through their app--l…

I agree that it is unfair and perhaps even unnecessary to focus solely on Khan here. But I think it must be acknowledged he has caused (intentionally or not) a ton of damage to the state of education. He sparked a movement of “innovation” and “disruption” that managed to push a lot of unproven teaching methods that ran against standard pedagogy which made a lot of entrepreneurs a lot of money. I don‘t think Khan is s…

These platform exists because traditional methods are failing students in education. Some of them are scam but blaming it on Khan is BS.

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

#85

Post by jacobolus »

blackoil wrote: post #82
jacobolus wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have a problem with Khan's site existing, but it's disappointing that often answers to requests for learning materials/ideas begin and end with Khan Academy. My personal opinion is that Khan's videos are roughly comparable to an average-quality classroom teacher lecturing about a typical mediocre curriculum. They have some significant advantages compared to (just) a classroom: (1) They set a quality floor – s…

> materials that were much better Do you have few examples?

Personally I like books, but there are also many, many lecture videos on YouTube, some of them excellent (though I think they could still be better with bigger production teams and higher budgets). For college-level technical subjects, there are also e.g. many MIT lectures on OCW. If you have a specific topic in mind, I urge you to search around. (Making a long list of my own book/website/video recommendations about various topics here seems a bit off topic and out of scope.)

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

#87

Post by samrj12 »

Not sure what actually killed it but Khanmigo seemed to have removed the state of being stuck. Wrestling with a problem you cannot immediately solve is where the learning happens at least for me in programming and math.

Seeking help after a while is obviously fine but when the help is one keystroke away and always available, you take it before the useful part of being stuck has happened. Not ideal for learning tbh

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

#88

Post by PostOnce »

Khan Academy has a problem lately:

Go visit a page like https://www.khanacademy.org/math/linear-algebra and count the number of:

  * cookie banners
  * donation panhandling modals
  * account signup widgets
  * gamification modals to tell you about leveling up
  * etc
It does not communicate that their primary goal is to educate, it feels more like the primary goal is fuelling the bureaucracy behind the charity.

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

#89

Post by vincent-manis »

I have nothing to say on the merits of Khan Academy (I have never looked at it, nor have I known anyone taking a course), but from 35 years of teaching, I know that we mostly learn by doing. It's why university courses have labs, problem sets, and required essays. All else is memorization (not that memorization is inherently bad, part of learning assembly language programming is memorizing the available instructions, while learning French includes memorizing vocabulary).

Educational technology that is focused on delivering “content” is unlikely to be of much value. Technology that induces the learner to experiment, to discover, to discern patterns, and to ask further questions, is going to be much more valuable.

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

#90

Post by rglover »

This seems to be wrestling with the wrong opponent.

> And this is what I think the edtech world keeps getting wrong. The assumption is that if you can deliver the right content, in the right way, at the right time, learning will follow. It won’t.

I think it depends on the goals of the student and what you're trying to learn. Some things are procedural and can be learned by being told, some things require a more hands-on approach to really "get."

If I want to learn how to drive a tractor, I just read the Farmer's Guide to Tractor Drivin' or find a YouTube video (I learned how to drive an excavator and fell trees like this—watch and listen and then go do what they said; hot damn, I learned how to do it).

If I want to learn how to produce a modern masterpiece (or novel invention) in some field or art, I won't find the "how to" in a book or video [1]. That's very much a personal journey that can't be replicated or recalled as a series of steps you tell someone to follow.

The Sal Khan way is prescription-driven and has its place in the world and I don't think it should be dismissed. But that way won't give you the "10,000 hours" level of understanding or experience (and arguably, shouldn't be expected to—even in the shape of an intermediary chatbot).

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvgVA_neH04

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