Open letter to Sal Khan • Hacker News Board

Re: Open letter to Sal Khan

#111

Post by Trianglemancsd » Sun, Aug 04, 2013, 10:04 PM UTC

ScottBurson wrote: post #106

Trianglemancsd wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open letter writer here. I am so glad to hear that your child finds Khan Academy videos stimulating and thought-provoking. I really do think that's wonderful and I am glad this resource exists for you and your child. I mean this in all sincerity. At the same time, the popular press rhetoric around Mr. Khan is about his revolutionary teaching. The medium (free availability of instructional videos) gets confused with t…

The name is spelled Gardner.

Drat! Good catch. Martin Gardner it is.

Re: Open letter to Sal Khan

#112

Post by g8oz » Sun, Aug 04, 2013, 10:26 PM UTC

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…

Exactly. I have no time for those sniping from the sidelines at the doers of the world.

Re: Open letter to Sal Khan

#113

Post by spicyj » Sun, Aug 04, 2013, 10:27 PM UTC

Zigurd wrote: post #107

Khan academy has an issue tracker. It shows over 16,000 open issues out of a total of about 20,000 issues. Almost 15,000 have a status of "New." Problems like this one should get tracked and resolved through this system, but the system could be stalled.

It's difficult for us to work through all of the submitted issues because most of them are from students who don't understand the problem or have made a mistake in their work, not real issues with the content. We always keep an eye on the number of issues per exercise, and we're lucky to have volunteers who read through the issues and surface the real issues.

Re: Open letter to Sal Khan

#114

Post by Symmetry » Sun, Aug 04, 2013, 10:29 PM UTC

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…

Boring is generally a subjective word and when someone say "these are boring" I interpret that to mean that that's just their opinion. But when says "these are boring" I interpret that as the writer trying to overcome the inherent subjectivity of 'boring' by emphasizing the objective 'are', saying in effect "I found this boring and I expect almost any other reasonable person would too."

Re: Open letter to Sal Khan

#115

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Aug 05, 2013, 12:05 AM UTC

Trianglemancsd wrote: post #92

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…

Open letter writer here. I am so glad to hear that your child finds Khan Academy videos stimulating and thought-provoking. I really do think that's wonderful and I am glad this resource exists for you and your child. I mean this in all sincerity. At the same time, the popular press rhetoric around Mr. Khan is about his revolutionary teaching. The medium (free availability of instructional videos) gets confused with t…

[deleted]

Re: Open letter to Sal Khan

#116

Post by skylake » Mon, Aug 05, 2013, 12:11 AM UTC

Is this decimal thing really a big problem? Don't remember when I learned about decimals, but I feel like the chance of only being exposed to such fundamentals from an online video is very slim. I always thought such resources should be used as a supplement to what is taught in school. When it comes to learning math, limiting your scope to one particular learning material must a bad decision.

Re: Open letter to Sal Khan

#117

Post by foobarqux » Mon, Aug 05, 2013, 12:32 AM UTC

spicyj wrote: post #17

Hi, Ben from Khan Academy here. I just woke up and don't have time for a full response right now but here are a few quick words. Most of our math content creation work these days is driven by our push to cover the new Common Core math standards, which have recently been adopted by 45 states. We're following these standards not only because of their recent popularity but because they are among the best standards we've…

Can you tell me specifically what Khan Academy's objective and how it goes about achieving it? What does KA view its role as in education?

Your "about" page says "Khan Academy is an organization on a mission. We're a not-for-profit with the goal of changing education for the better by providing a free world-class education for anyone anywhere." Is providing free learning materials the extent of what you do?

Do you have a model of learning? What interaction do you have with the those who study learning?

Re: Open letter to Sal Khan

#118

Post by geonz » Mon, Aug 05, 2013, 12:57 AM UTC

justin66 wrote: post #30

bhitov wrote: post #10

The dramatic tone of this article seems disproportionate to its complaint. I can't help but feel that the author has a grudge against Sal Khan which motivates his writing as much as his disapproval of Khan's teaching strategy.

The problem with the article is about 50% due to its tone ("from hell's heart I stab at thee!!!") and 50% due to its lack of the very obvious, constructive criticism. By that I mean if the guy had simply laid out his case, pointed out that this wasn't a new observation, and then suggested KA set up better feedback mechanisms for responding to this sort of thing his criticism would have been just right. Based on the c…

Believe me, constructive criticism has been tried.

I just keep wondering why people keep saying "it's not good criticism" ... and never, ever addressing the points brought up in that criticism.

Re: Open letter to Sal Khan

#119

Post by geonz » Mon, Aug 05, 2013, 12:58 AM UTC

spicyj wrote: post #17

Hi, Ben from Khan Academy here. I just woke up and don't have time for a full response right now but here are a few quick words. Most of our math content creation work these days is driven by our push to cover the new Common Core math standards, which have recently been adopted by 45 states. We're following these standards not only because of their recent popularity but because they are among the best standards we've…

You're making "more interesting" exercises, but...

... the videos that they're based on are consistently and frequently flawed.

Those flaws aren't being addressed.

Why not?

Re: Open letter to Sal Khan

#120

Post by Zigurd » Mon, Aug 05, 2013, 1:11 AM UTC

spicyj wrote: post #113

Zigurd wrote: post #107

Khan academy has an issue tracker. It shows over 16,000 open issues out of a total of about 20,000 issues. Almost 15,000 have a status of "New." Problems like this one should get tracked and resolved through this system, but the system could be stalled.

It's difficult for us to work through all of the submitted issues because most of them are from students who don't understand the problem or have made a mistake in their work, not real issues with the content. We always keep an eye on the number of issues per exercise, and we're lucky to have volunteers who read through the issues and surface the real issues.

You don't have an insurmountable problem. It might take a week or two for one or two individuals to catch you up on filtering out junk submissions and organizing the rest. But a volunteer, unless they are familiar with your priorities, resources, and the nature of valid issues in your systems, probably can't do it.

But that beats dealing with complaints like this pedagogical complaint on an ad hoc basis. If they could track their issue and see progress being made, they wouldn't be yanking your chain. In fact, in my cursory examination, I didn't see content issues being tracked. You must have a few of those.