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Khan Academy launches Khan World School online high school

asuprep.asu.edu

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Re: Khan Academy launches Khan World School online high school

#171

Post by BouffantJoe »

Yajirobe wrote: post #130
umangrathi wrote: post #35

I am looking forward to the day, when quality formal education is available online to all which you may complete at your own pace instead of going with a strict semester and class system. Also, along with offline schools for supporting social learning and helping classes which require offline components like labs, in person support classes, interest based study groups etc.

MIT OCW

I love MIT OpenCourseWare, but they only seem to have video lectures for a small proportion of the courses. Mostly the introductory courses with the larger audiences. I'd love for them to try and get video for more lectures because I don't feel confident enough to try and understand many with the lecture notes alone.

Re: Khan Academy launches Khan World School online high school

#172

Post by daneelsan »

huitzitziltzin wrote: post #104

Very favorable comments all around from the very online crowd who comments here. I’m much more skeptical. I have no doubt this will work well for some students, but as someone who taught online for the better part of two years I can say with certainty that the experience is very different and (for the wide majority of students) worse than being in person. My colleagues and I can attest to both general learning loss (…

There is a difference between online education because there is no other way as there is a pandemic (are the students and the institution ready to switch to online, are the courses even designed to be imparted online, etc.), and online education because it's a choice.

Re: Khan Academy launches Khan World School online high school

#173

Post by Bedon292 »

abrax3141 wrote: post #69

The Kahn Academy is boring online trash dressed up with famous media hype, and this sounds like more of the same. They seem to have anti-learned the lesson from the year* of pandemic online school: So, that was terrible, let’s do more if it and make it sound like a 6 hour straight zoom meeting isn’t everyone’s worst nightmare.

I am not sure about main Khan Academy, but Khan Academy Kids has been a great resource. Completely free educational app with no advertisement in it. It has been hard to find anything else that can compare. Does it go down hill from there?

Re: Khan Academy launches Khan World School online high school

#174

Post by photochemsyn »

padobson wrote: post #169
photochemsyn wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In both online and inperson, a major choke point occurs when students get stuck on a problem and have nowhere to go to get help, or when students don't get useful feedback after submitting their work. This is directly related to the teacher-student ratio, regardless of whether it's online or not. I imagine a huge factor is also parental involvement, when it comes to encouraging students to set aside several hours eac…

This is directly related to the teacher-student ratio, regardless of whether it's online or not. One of Malcolm Gladwell's books made a convincing argument that reducing class size quickly runs into the issue of diminishing returns. A cursory Googling suggests there's plenty of research to back it up[0][1] The effectiveness of in-person learning may have more to do with social interaction and peer motivation. A teach…

In some of these online classes I've heard of >1000 students signing up with one professor and maybe two assistants. In that case, maybe a model would be to recruit the top students (selected early in the course based on their submitted) work) to act as tutors for say groups of 10 or so. Pitch them on the idea with "the best way to learn something is to explain it to someone else."

Re: Khan Academy launches Khan World School online high school

#175

Post by r3trohack3r »

huitzitziltzin wrote: post #104

Very favorable comments all around from the very online crowd who comments here. I’m much more skeptical. I have no doubt this will work well for some students, but as someone who taught online for the better part of two years I can say with certainty that the experience is very different and (for the wide majority of students) worse than being in person. My colleagues and I can attest to both general learning loss (…

> If online works for you, awesome. Enjoy! There are great resources out there. But I don’t think you are in the majority.

I think this is exactly it.

In person never worked for me. I was bored - and being bored I ended up with “discipline issues.” I would never do my homework, never pay attention in class, was always late because I was talking in between sessions, etc. My teachers weren’t a fan, the administrators weren’t fans, parents were upset.

Every year, starting in 2nd grade, at the end of the school year I was given “token” exercises as a way of getting passing grades so I wouldn’t be held back. I’d knock those out and continue on. At the time I was thankful to the instructors for giving me that opportunity. In retrospect I’m fairly confident I know why that happened.

Every year we were administered state achievement exams. The school was evaluated based on the students performance on these tests. While I was failing every subject, I carried the class (scoring at least 10% higher on the exam than the next highest grade) every year. Holding me back would have raised quite a few questions about their curriculum.

Fast forward to 12th grade. I drop out of in-person school and switch to online. My in-person school refuses to release my records (we owed them money) so I was starting 12th grade with no credits. The online program was self paced. I knocked out 3 years of eduction in 3 months. Then turned 18, walked downtown and took the GED instead of finishing the last year.

Self paced education is huge for certain people. Every once in a while I think of all the kids in the world who could achieve so much with their youth, but instead they are strapped to a chair being tortured 7+ hours a day by well intentioned adults.

Re: Khan Academy launches Khan World School online high school

#176

Post by Bedon292 »

alvah wrote: post #10
petesergeant wrote: post #6

where price tho?

https://asuprep.asu.edu/khan-world-school/about-us/ -The tuition for full-time students who are Arizona residents will be paid for by the state at no cost to families. -Students who live in the US, but outside Arizona, will pay $9,900 per year tuition. -Students who live outside the US will pay $12,900 per year. -Tuition for all students does include the opportunity to take two university courses per semester and ear…

Putting the FAQ under About Us definitely confused me a bit. I totally missed where the Tuition was and ended up out at ASU Prep which has slightly lower Tuition.

Re: Khan Academy launches Khan World School online high school

#177

Post by LanceH »

freemint wrote: post #113
huitzitziltzin wrote: post #104

Very favorable comments all around from the very online crowd who comments here. I’m much more skeptical. I have no doubt this will work well for some students, but as someone who taught online for the better part of two years I can say with certainty that the experience is very different and (for the wide majority of students) worse than being in person. My colleagues and I can attest to both general learning loss (…

> In intro classes in our department, mean grades have been a whole standard deviation lower than the long run pre-pandemic average. Have you ever considered that the digital teaching methods you employed are subpar compared to those a dedicated online only teaching platform might have. I don't mean to suggest you did not try.

The bigger effect is that kids getting sent home due to the pandemic weren't being enrolled in online learning. They went on vacation with occasional check-ins online. That's about how I would describe my kids' experience and they were solidly grounded, with supervision at home at a school well prepared technologically.

Most kids had no interest in working without supervision forcing them to work. Now that they're back in school, they are continuing to not work and it's a disaster, with teachers and staff quitting or retiring en masse. Again, this is in a school district that people had been trying to get into for years.

It's really not the coursework delivery style, it's about forcing kids to do what they don't want to do. This force just isn't a component of online learning -- it has little to do with content delivery, imo.

The upside is that those kids that actually want to learn are freed up more than ever before and can actually thrive.

Re: Khan Academy launches Khan World School online high school

#178

Post by Bedon292 »

vardhanw wrote: post #13
jordank wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“The tuition for full-time students who are Arizona residents will be paid for by the state at no cost to families. Students who live in the US, but outside Arizona, will pay $9,900 per year tuition. Students who live outside the US will pay $12,900 per year.”

That's too high if you are considering students from all over the world. Why should it be more for outside US students? OTOH, this looks promising (though I haven't read his 2012 book which spells out the 'vision'), and would be great if this can provide a framework for a democratized online schooling system with the flexibilities and features it provides.

I have also seen Universities in the US to charge higher tuition for foreign students. Not entirely sure why. Mostly seems like it is because they know they can, and those students will pay in full. With no tuition assistance or anything like that.

In this case I am wondering if it could be related to needing additional staff to cover other time zones? Or maybe there are additional administrative paperwork needs for those students?

Re: Khan Academy launches Khan World School online high school

#179

Post by sandworm101 »

mattmcknight wrote: post #143
sandworm101 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In person is obviously better for actual learning. I went to highschool before online was an option. But a few years ago I was talking to a kid who had the option to do classes online, at their own pace . They were free to take final exams whenever they wanted. If I could complete classes like that I would probably have finished highschool in a couple months. I might not have "learned" as much, but who here actually…

School would be vastly improved by the ability to pre-test out of topics or subjects. I actually went to an elementary school that let you do that for math and it was great.

Walking into a classroom and telling the teacher that you have already passed the final exam, that you are done with the class and will no longer be attending their class ... that is basically highschool fantasy.

Re: Khan Academy launches Khan World School online high school

#180

Post by mynegation »

huitzitziltzin wrote: post #104

Very favorable comments all around from the very online crowd who comments here. I’m much more skeptical. I have no doubt this will work well for some students, but as someone who taught online for the better part of two years I can say with certainty that the experience is very different and (for the wide majority of students) worse than being in person. My colleagues and I can attest to both general learning loss (…

Counterpoint to your counterpoint: I think it is wonderful and we need more of these!

It may not work for everyone but the important thing is that it may and will work for someone for whom other options are not available or subpar.

I grew up in a small backwater-ish city and school was useless, outside of socializing. By far, the most important thing I did for my education was enrolling into a distance learning physics and technology school managed by one of the nation's top technical universities. You would receive learning materials and exercises several times during the school year by snail mail (yes, I am that old) and send your answers back for grading.

Whatever I am and the life I have started with this.

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