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Open letter to Sal Khan

christopherdanielson.wordpress.com

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Re: Open letter to Sal Khan

#31

Post by gruseom »

dictum wrote: post #4

From a comment: >I don’t want to fix KA. I don’t think it is possible to do so given Sal Khan. Sal Khan should not be the voice on his videos. He should not be the person putting together the actual content of his videos. And, I suspect, he should not be making any important decisions about either content or delivery of instruction, from the pedagogical side of the operation. I’m sure he’s a competent business/financ…

Trolls on the internet cause the best minds not to work on important problems? That can't be right. It's almost a self-contradiction.

Re: Open letter to Sal Khan

#32

Post by tptacek »

VMG wrote: post #3

> In short, these videos and their accompanying exercises are useless. That's a bit harsh

He's saying they got the topic wrong; that when you teach decimals, the meat of the topic is the rules that apply when you have different numbers of digits after the decimal point. His language is imprecise (the video might be useful for something besides teaching decimal math), but the gist is clear.

Re: Open letter to Sal Khan

#33

Post by tptacek »

dictum wrote: post #4

From a comment: >I don’t want to fix KA. I don’t think it is possible to do so given Sal Khan. Sal Khan should not be the voice on his videos. He should not be the person putting together the actual content of his videos. And, I suspect, he should not be making any important decisions about either content or delivery of instruction, from the pedagogical side of the operation. I’m sure he’s a competent business/financ…

Despite what your comment says, it is not actually the case that people build cat picture apps because they'd be criticized for trying to build something more meaningful.

Re: Open letter to Sal Khan

#34

Post by ColinWright »

manishsharan wrote: post #29

Dear Open letter writer, I am a parent of a 10 year old who likes Maths; my choices in fostering and encouraging this trait were to (A) enroll her in a really expense private school, (b) enroll ins Kumon (its a canadian after school private tutoring type of service) (c) private tutors -- which I can't afford. Please note that her teachers have shown no inclination to help advance her learning beyond the curriculum. S…

I think that's fantastic, and I wish you all the very best. I think it's wonderful and amazing in equal parts when a parent takes the time to work with their child to reach their full potential. You are to be applauded - all too often I've had to deal with children who had amazing potential go completely unrealized.

But please, please take care with some of the Khan material. This letter highlights one specific place where the method of instruction can lead to major misunderstandings down the line. Undoing misconceptions can be incredibly time-consuming, and ultimately border on impossible. I just hope upon hope that over time the material is improved so it matches their ideals, and continues to enable parents like you.

Re: Open letter to Sal Khan

#35

Post by adamzerner »

padolsey wrote: post #23
adamzerner wrote: post #2

Someone should read how to disagree ( http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html ). He is criticizing something that Sal probably got wrong. Sal could probably do a better job of using findings in educational research to make his videos and exercises better. But the author seems to be implying that KhanAcademy as a whole is of poor quality. I think he's using a DH5 to argue something that requires a DH6. I think Sal doe…

OP seems to be hovering around DH5/DH6. I don't see the problem.

He's (at least) implicitly saying that KhanAcademy sucks. I didn't really read it too too carefully, but that's the sense I get from it. He seems to be pissed about an error that Sal made, and is jumping to conclusions saying that KhanAcademy sucks. To make that claim, you'd have say what it means to suck, and why KhanAcademy does so (DH6).

Re: Open letter to Sal Khan

#36

Post by incision »

Talk about missing the forest for the trees.

This person has a valid point, a relatively minute one that is being made in an overly-dramatic and annoyingly self-important way.

KA is great, far better than anything I was exposed to in traditional education. I'm currently using it to refresh and prepare for pursuit of a late CS degree.

Re: Open letter to Sal Khan

#37

Post by ColinWright »

Many of the comments here boil down to:

    At least he's doing something - let him get
    on with it.  If you think you can do better,
    then do so.
To some extent, I agree with that.

However ...

In the past I've been faced with students who have a serious mental block about some operation, or some process, or some concept, and upon digging deeper into what they believe and why, I have usually come across a moment in their past where someone has taught something badly.

The KA videos are generally great, especially because they teach things differently, and therefore provide an alternate approach, or an alternate viewpoint, and thus provide the opportunity to bolster existing instruction.

They are especially brilliant at providing access for those who are otherwise disenfranchised.

However ...

In some cases they give examples or exercises that experienced teachers know are fraught with the potential for misunderstanding.

I know there are some fantastic people on the KA staff, I have full confidence that problems like this will be sorted out over time, and I desperately wish this letter had been better phrased. But I suspect it wouldn't have got this level of attention had the writer written a respectful note pointing out that recent research advises against the methods being used.

Re: Open letter to Sal Khan

#38

Post by cbhl »

One thing that bothers me is that the author suggests that the decimal place value exercise is broken because all of the numbers are represented as the same size.

The "representing numbers" exercise uses the 1-10-100 blocks that the poster alludes to using here, but I think the bigger issue is that in the real world, decimal quantities are not always sized proportionally to the value they represent. Money is a good example of this -- a US $100 bill is the same size as a US $1 bill and students need to be able to recognize the difference without seeing an object that's 100x bigger.

Re: Open letter to Sal Khan

#39

Post by MikeCapone »

stiff wrote: post #27

This is the exact same kind of shit that got thrown at every person ever who successfully challenged a rusty status quo, especially when job security was at risk. Quoting the original piece in Washington Post: We have great respect for the stated goal of Khan Academy — “A free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere.” Yet, we have some serious concerns about the quality of the instruction providing this education…

This. From what I know, teaching is broken in the U.S. (and probably in many other places), and the way incentives and the balance of power is set up, what matters for most decisions on how things work is what is best for teachers, not what is best for students (the documentary Waiting for Superman shows a lot of this).

So it's not surprising to see teachers fighting back and trying to discredit KA, because success for them would mean a loss of status quo for teachers. If you get 99 things right and 1 thing wrong, those who feel threatened by you will minimize those 99 things and blow that 1 thing out of proportion.

Re: Open letter to Sal Khan

#40

Post by ColinWright »

stiff wrote: post #27

This is the exact same kind of shit that got thrown at every person ever who successfully challenged a rusty status quo, especially when job security was at risk. Quoting the original piece in Washington Post: We have great respect for the stated goal of Khan Academy — “A free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere.” Yet, we have some serious concerns about the quality of the instruction providing this education…

Look at it another way. You train for years. You spend more years, perhaps decades, working in a classroom. You read the research, you know just how hard it is to get kids to understand decimals. You work and work to find the right way for each child to understand this concept that trips up so many.

Then someone else comes along, teaches it badly, and gets lauded for doing wonderful things.

Well, it's true that KA is doing fantastic things, but I also have some reservations about some of the things that are said and done. Elsewhere it's been suggested that work is underway to help others contribute their direct working knowledge to help improve them, and I hope that happens. KA can be improved, should be improved.

Must be improved.

There are places where the way it explains things is in direct contradiction to solid research in pedagogy. I'm sure there are more people being helped by KA than hindered, but I look forward to seeing it acknowledge and absorb modern research.

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