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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

#121

Post by jacobolus »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #108
jacobolus wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> For college-level technical subjects, there are also e.g. many MIT lectures on OCW. There are? I know an OCW course includes "lecture notes" pdfs. Does it have the lectures too? For example, the course "distributed systems" is available on OCW as 6.824, from spring 2006: https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/6-824-distributed-computer-syste... MIT has renumbered the course, but it's still around: https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6…

Some OCW courses have lecture videos, while others do not.

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

#122

Post by thaumasiotes »

jacobolus wrote: post #121
thaumasiotes wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For college-level technical subjects, there are also e.g. many MIT lectures on OCW. There are? I know an OCW course includes "lecture notes" pdfs. Does it have the lectures too? For example, the course "distributed systems" is available on OCW as 6.824, from spring 2006: https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/6-824-distributed-computer-syste... MIT has renumbered the course, but it's still around: https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6…

Some OCW courses have lecture videos, while others do not.

Is 6.824 one that does, or one that doesn't?

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

#123

Post by tdeck »

tchalla wrote: post #120
tdeck wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's because these "h"es are silent in (most?) dialects of English, so both spellings would result in the same pronunciation. English doesn't really have a 'kh" /x/ sound, or an unaspirated k, or an "ahn", or a "dh" sound. So Kahn and Khan both get read as /kan/, Gandhi and Ghandi both get read as /gandi/. If anything the "h" just seems to hint that the vowel isn't pronounced /æ/. So folks remember that there…

I’m preferring to the spelling; not pronunciation.

People remember spelling based on pronunciation.

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

#124

Post by sota_pop »

This article is a classic straw man. It supposes a simplified and trite intent of KA then goes on to explain why THAT intent is doomed from the start.

I mostly used KA between 2010-2015, and received immense benefit. These were the years it was MOSTLY “just videos”. Having revisited more recently, I found the gamification, quizzes, etc. simply distracting.

My understanding is that he started KA as a private YouTube channel to tutor his own family members, made it public, and it grew in popularity organically.

I haven’t used khanmigo, but given the climate and evolution of LLMs over the last 6 years, it is a completely reasonable goal to attempt to employ them in learning (though it sounds like it was not as effective as planned for.. reasons).

KA never pretended to be “all you need” for learning. It was always at least an excellent supplement to a given curriculum, and Sal’s genuine interest in the videos he narrates always sounded (to me) as palpably genuine which also goes a long way. There is a reason most textbook chapters have an initial section called “motivation”. The primary job of a teacher is to incite interest, and potentially direction at strategic points…

As the adage goes: You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.

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

#125

Post by jacobolus »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #122
jacobolus wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some OCW courses have lecture videos, while others do not.

Is 6.824 one that does, or one that doesn't?

From your OCW link, you can see the Spring 2006 version of the course has syllabus, lecture notes, readings, lab assignments, and 2 quizzes available, but no videos. Separately, videos of the 2020 version of the course are on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrw6a1wE39_tb2fErI4-W...

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

#126

Post by sudo_cowsay »

the__alchemist wrote: post #47
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…

Khan Academy is a treasure, and is how I re-learned math in my 20s after not taking it seriously in school. Then moved on to MitX for science [re]fam. I am having my kids learn math with Kahn academy if we don't have anything better by that point.

khan academy is great for learning science too!
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