Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Open letter to Sal Khan

christopherdanielson.wordpress.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 146 posts

Re: Open letter to Sal Khan

#71

Post by dictum »

gruseom wrote: post #31
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.

This is not what I'm arguing. There are many different incentives for someone to do something: money, fame, respect from certain groups, the belief that you're doing something good, influence, following the wishes of your relatives/friends/mentors, economic stability or mobility, sense of entrepreneurship or ownership...

Now, everyone is entitled to their opinion and maybe I'm too sensitive to these things, but when someone abandons a lucrative career to start recording videos to help children and adults learn math and other subjects, and his enterprise gets popular because people got something from those videos, I believe this person deserves better than to be effectively fired from what he built.

Sal Khan isn't the best teacher. He's not a substitute for a great teacher. But he did something no teacher, parent or student had done before.

And now anyone can start a website like Khan started, record better videos and create better exercises. Maybe we'll see a Khan Academy-like CMS to help people do that.

It's not that nitpicks and criticism makes people not work on important problems, it's that if you can't even keep control of a project you started, even though it became popular and bigger than you, we're essentially left with money and recognition as the only rewards to do something.

Jane Doe starts a YouTube channel with math lessons, gets some praise and some flak. Jane Q. Public makes a cat photo app, gets some praise and some flak.

The photo app gets moderately successful, gets some VC money. If Jane Q. Public is ousted, at least she has the money, if that makes her happy.

The math lessons channel gets moderately successful and people want Jane Doe off, no money, no recognition, and she fades into obscurity.

Re: Open letter to Sal Khan

#72

Post by makomk »

stiff wrote: post #53
ColinWright wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There is plenty to be criticized about KA, but this has politics written all over it, if the above Freudian slip doesn't convince you, consider the following bits: Behind paywall, but someone at Khan Academy is an NCTM member, right? Right? If not, shoot me a note. We’ll get a copy to you. Or from the other article: Khan could tap into any number of existing networks of exemplary teaching, perhaps from recipients of…

Perhaps a HN-appropriate analogy is in order here. Imagine someone came along who claimed that they could break the expensive stranglehold programmers have on software development and improve on the often mediocre code they produce by teaching anyone to program. Now imagine that it was widely lauded in the press and there was political pressure within the company you worked at to incorporate this new technique - except that the code produced was a bunch of dreck which you had to waste far more time cleaning up than it would've taken to do it right in the first place.

Further, imagine that every time you complained about this a bunch of people with no technical clue jumped on you and claimed you were just out to get the new scheme because it'd "successfully challenged a rusty status quo" and your "job security was at risk" if you didn't.

Of course the teachers are pissed off!

Re: Open letter to Sal Khan

#73

Post by ekm2 »

I fail to see how Sal Khan is not getting everything exactly right.None of my math teachers ever presented math perfectly,but what they gave was enough to get me to graduate top of my college math class.Do not sweat the small stuff,man.

Re: Open letter to Sal Khan

#74

Post by 1O0101ll100O »

Jimmy wrote: post #69
1O0101ll100O wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know it is a hard pill to swallow that such a pedagogical luddite such as Sal Khan is having such a broad and important impact on learning when the professionals are struggling mightily. Maybe, just maybe, he's on to something that despite years of institutional training 'real' teachers are missing. Maybe it's important for a student to be able to interact with a lesson over and over again in order to catch a key p…

>I know it is a hard pill to swallow that such a pedagogical luddite such as Sal Khan is having such a broad and important impact on learning when the professionals are struggling mightily. How are we quantifying Khan Academy's "broad and important impact" on learning? If someone learns from the KA videos, what do they typically accomplish afterwards?

In the space of 18 months ending Feb of this year the site has gone from reaching 1 million to 6 million students per month.

I quantify the value of the product by the demand.

Re: Open letter to Sal Khan

#75

Post by ZeroGravitas »

makomk wrote: post #72
stiff wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is plenty to be criticized about KA, but this has politics written all over it, if the above Freudian slip doesn't convince you, consider the following bits: Behind paywall, but someone at Khan Academy is an NCTM member, right? Right? If not, shoot me a note. We’ll get a copy to you. Or from the other article: Khan could tap into any number of existing networks of exemplary teaching, perhaps from recipients of…

Perhaps a HN-appropriate analogy is in order here. Imagine someone came along who claimed that they could break the expensive stranglehold programmers have on software development and improve on the often mediocre code they produce by teaching anyone to program. Now imagine that it was widely lauded in the press and there was political pressure within the company you worked at to incorporate this new technique - exce…

I think a more appropriate analogy is open source software which got described by the incumbents as an "un-american cancer" and is still being successfully fought off by many who are ripping off our governments and providing appalling service at a shockingly high price.

Is any random open source project perfect? No. Is open source the answer to everything? No. Is it obviously a better way to do things than the status quo? Yes. Are there people benefitting immensely from even the buggy projects? Yes.

Re: Open letter to Sal Khan

#76

Post by incision »

mkr-hn wrote: post #49
incision wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is English your first language? Saying that "A are B", particularly with emphasis and without a qualifying introduction isn't a typical way of expressing an opinion.

English is my first language, and I'm decent at it. "Boring" is inherently subjective, so stating that it's an opinion would be redundant. I don't usually need to open a statement like that with "It is in my opinion that..." to make it clear that it's an opinion. This is a weird outlier where a few people are taking it to be a statement of fact. At least as many picked up on the fact that it's an opinion without extr…

>"This is a weird outlier where a few people are taking it to be a statement of fact."

I actually agree with you in general, but I don't agree with that bit.

I'd say that kind of interpretation is par for the course, particularly on the Internet. I expect it probably has about the same interpretation spread as sarcasm. Some get it, some don't, many learn to simply avoid it.

It would be nice everyone could understand and respect what all is inherently subjective, both in statement and response. Imagine many wars of politics, religion, culture and choice of smartphone would disappear overnight.

Until that happens, a simple "IMO" goes a long way.

Re: Open letter to Sal Khan

#77

Post by zaphar »

1O0101ll100O wrote: post #74
Jimmy wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I know it is a hard pill to swallow that such a pedagogical luddite such as Sal Khan is having such a broad and important impact on learning when the professionals are struggling mightily. How are we quantifying Khan Academy's "broad and important impact" on learning? If someone learns from the KA videos, what do they typically accomplish afterwards?

In the space of 18 months ending Feb of this year the site has gone from reaching 1 million to 6 million students per month. I quantify the value of the product by the demand.

That is a poor way to quantify the quality of an educational product. While quality can and sometimes does drive demand for a product it's frequently possible for demand to be driven instead by fads, trends, and hype.

If you want to measure the quality of something there are far more reliable metrics to use than demand.

With that said I like Kahn Academy. This is a single issue in a large body of educational materials. This one problem doesn't mean the qualify of the full product is bad just that is has room for improvement.

Re: Open letter to Sal Khan

#78

Post by eropple »

ekm2 wrote: post #73

I fail to see how Sal Khan is not getting everything exactly right .None of my math teachers ever presented math perfectly,but what they gave was enough to get me to graduate top of my college math class.Do not sweat the small stuff,man.

Presenting material in a way that impresses upon students that 0.35 is bigger than 0.4 is not "small stuff".

Re: Open letter to Sal Khan

#79

Post by EllaMentry »

I have no hard facts and figures, just some anecdotal evidence, but this reads like pure politics to me as well.

I have never struggled with mathematics, in fact I pursued it to college, then got infatuated with computer science - but my areas of focus (optimization and algorithm design) tend to overlap - and I find myself reading quite a lot of graduate level texts.

My girlfriend on the other hand has always struggled with mathematics, but wishes to pursue a career in computer science also. I watched her for several weeks struggling and worry about a college entrance exam, reading the obscurely written criteria and trying to read through the suggested resources.

It was only when someone else mentioned Khan Academy that we both went to look at it - I found the content accessible, very well presented (for the most part - a couple of the older videos could have done with an update!) and the accompanied exercises were excellent in reenforcing content - the added gamificaiton really adds to it as well.

My girlfriend passed her exam (> 90%) and was even told she should think about taking the extra level exam later on if she wished to skip a few pre courses.

To see her go from "I have no idea what to do" to "I know I can do this" was a joy - so thank you Khan Academy.

Re: Open letter to Sal Khan

#80

Post by [deleted] »

geonz wrote: post #61
resu_nimda wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What we see in these two girls’ thinking is precisely the problem you set out to solve with Khan Academy. But you aren’t solving the problem, Mr. Khan. You are perpetuating it. > Mr. Khan, you have a team of teacher advisors. If none of them can identify these gaps for you, you need to ask for help from the larger community (and then to reexamine your hiring practices). > Or you could educate yourself (as we requir…

The point that there are gaps that hvae not been addressed? All of them. Do you have any other suggestions as to how the pedagogical flaws could be addressed, since Khan Academy keeps basing all its exercises on these flawed materials?

[deleted]
Post reply on HN