While I like the idea of Khan Academy, there are problems with some of the contents of the lessons. For example, the lesson on Hooke's Law definitely has issues:
What Students Do (And Don't Do) in Khan Academy
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Re: What Students Do (And Don't Do) in Khan Academy
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The professional educator dialect of English is not very approachable for the layman. I think Dan's blog is largely pitched at other professional educators. All professions develop their own technical vocabulary. As an analogy, I recently enjoyed an article about the implementation of the v8 garbage collector by Jay Conrod: http://jayconrod.com/posts/55/a-tour-of-v8-garbage-collectio... Here's a sample paragraph: "…
One sophistry problem is we will "ALL" theoretically take and pass Algebra, so the teacher does not have the luxury of specialized jargon, the teacher MUST be able to present it to the entire general public. A general education teacher is expected to present effectively to the general public as the core of their job, its not a nice to have or wouldn't it be interesting if it were possible. On the other hand, only may…
I didn't mean that teachers get a pass on opaque vocabulary when they're teaching students. I meant that, just like every other profession, they have a technical vocabulary that they use to discuss their own profession with other teachers.
Re: What Students Do (And Don't Do) in Khan Academy
#33Please for the love of maths do not "align" with the common core standards. It would be the saddest, most disheartening thing imaginable* for Khan Academy to become a feeder to the American standardized testing system. The author writes: "If one of Khan Academy’s goals is to prepare students for success in Common Core mathematics, they’re emphasizing the wrong set of skills." I would like nothing better than the acad…
> good at math and passing math tests are orthogonal concepts. What good is being good at math yet being unable to answer any questions about it? Would you get on board an airliner with a pilot who flunked the flight certification tests but assures you that he's really good at flying anyway?
There are different ways to be "good" at math. I have a few friends who are very good at contest type math (e.g. well-ranked on the Putnam) and I also have friends doing math PhDs at top schools. They are mostly not the same people. The contest winners are very quick; they know a lot of tricks and general problem-solving strategies and can think very efficiently about how to apply them and come to a clever solution. The researchers are not necessarily as quick, but they're more patient, willing to spend days or weeks focusing on a single problem and learning/developing the machinery necessary to solve it, and they have more of a pure intellectual curiosity about math -- they approach it as a source of new and interesting questions, rather than just a set of techniques to be learned or problems to be solved. Sure they all did well on the usual standardized tests (SAT, etc), but if you were going to use a test like the Putnam to identify who you wanted to hire as a mathematician, you'd make a lot of poor choices.
That said I basically agree with you that it's not reasonable to call someone "good" at math if they're unable to do simple calculations (with the caveat that lots of great mathematicians screw up simple calculations on a regular basis -- but they're still at least usually better than the average person). But there are certainly people who memorize enough formulas to pass the test, yet never acquire or don't retain any conceptual understanding. In that sense, passing a test is a necessary but definitely not sufficient condition for being good at math.
Re: What Students Do (And Don't Do) in Khan Academy
#34Please for the love of maths do not "align" with the common core standards. It would be the saddest, most disheartening thing imaginable* for Khan Academy to become a feeder to the American standardized testing system. The author writes: "If one of Khan Academy’s goals is to prepare students for success in Common Core mathematics, they’re emphasizing the wrong set of skills." I would like nothing better than the acad…
> good at math and passing math tests are orthogonal concepts. What good is being good at math yet being unable to answer any questions about it? Would you get on board an airliner with a pilot who flunked the flight certification tests but assures you that he's really good at flying anyway?
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Re: What Students Do (And Don't Do) in Khan Academy
#35I visited KA for the first time in a while. It used to drop me into a table of links to videos on various academic topics. Very simple, useful, fast, and the Obviously Right Way (TM) to do it. At least in the default case, and for the casual or first-time visitor.
However just now it required me to signup/login. Signing up asked for PII, which is intrusive and strictly unnecessary for letting me see educational videos. I gave a fake email, along with the other fields. It then complained it couldn't send an email to it. When I pressed their button to fix the email address, it then popped up a window for me to enter it, however it was auto-forcing it down into an obviously stupid position such that it was impossible to hit its Submit button. You can enter a new address but not hit Submit because too close to the screen bottom's edge.
I love the orig vision, and the core content (Sal's lectures and his style) but looks like they're now falling down at the simple stuff along the edges of the problem space. Failing over inside the unnecessarily added complexity (GUI/JS shenanigans, control fetish, privacy intrusion, etc), rather than in the essential inescapable parts (text, images, embedded canned video, links, curricula design, effective communication, etc.)
Re: What Students Do (And Don't Do) in Khan Academy
#36I've noticed with most critiques of KA that they set up a straw man of what KA is trying to accomplish, and then they attack that, almost always without giving a better alternative. The fact is KA is a great tool for learning many subjects, and will only continue to improve. The biggest take aways should be: - spaced repetition of subject matter is extremely useful for long term memorization - bite sized, repeatable…
It should be noted that there are huge vested interests who want to tear down Khan academy and similar sites.
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Re: What Students Do (And Don't Do) in Khan Academy
#37The author writes, in the interesting blog post submitted here, "We should wonder why Khan Academy emphasizes this particular work. I have no inside knowledge of Khan Academy’s operations or vision." Actually, here on Hacker News we have had public discussions blessed with direct participation by Khan Academy developers, so I think I have some sense of what Khan Academy intends to do as it continues to develop online…
>mathematics education
That's a pleonasm I think. Anyone care to argue?
Re: What Students Do (And Don't Do) in Khan Academy
#38Please for the love of maths do not "align" with the common core standards. It would be the saddest, most disheartening thing imaginable* for Khan Academy to become a feeder to the American standardized testing system. The author writes: "If one of Khan Academy’s goals is to prepare students for success in Common Core mathematics, they’re emphasizing the wrong set of skills." I would like nothing better than the acad…
Agreed with your sentiments, but Khan is financed by Bill "Common Core" Gates and in May partnered with the College Board (hard core CCSS folks) so look for KA to get closer to CCSS, not further. Money talks and CCSS, as bad as it is pedagogically, has a surface plausibility that fools folks who have never taught. In this sense it is like the New Math of the Sixties, which tried to improve math learning by starting at the most fundamental concepts (eg, set theory in the first grade) when in fact those concepts were worked out over centuries by the brightest minds working on math. They confused the logical starting point with the pedagogical starting point.
The good news is that these catastrophes are dumped even faster than they come into ascendance and CCSS is confirming that trend. We just need to remember this the next time academic geniuses decide we are doing it all wrong and -- instead of offering a little professional development -- decide to offer all new standards, textbooks, and standardized exams.
I too have a soft spot in my heart for bold strokes, I just want them to come from folks who know what they are doing. The CCSS authors did not.
ps. I do not think thesis says what you think it says.
Re: What Students Do (And Don't Do) in Khan Academy
#39Please for the love of maths do not "align" with the common core standards. It would be the saddest, most disheartening thing imaginable* for Khan Academy to become a feeder to the American standardized testing system. The author writes: "If one of Khan Academy’s goals is to prepare students for success in Common Core mathematics, they’re emphasizing the wrong set of skills." I would like nothing better than the acad…
Consider a well designed test of an important curriculum. This means the topics are important for $REASONS, and the test is highly correlated with knowledge of the topics. If a student asks "why is this important", you can reply "$REASONS". And you can "teach to the test" secure in the knowledge that you are teaching useful materials. Now, if you believe the curriculum is poorly designed or the test is poorly correla…
You make a strong logical argument, but it relies critically on the tests being really great. Have you examined the sample questions as well as the standards? And even if the tests are great (they are not) do you have any idea how well this will play out in real classrooms? I ask because, as a veteran teacher, my guess is that CCSS will be great for the top two deciles and a disaster for the rest. The super worst thing is that no one knows because this top-to-bottom overhaul has not been tested/proven anywhere. That is just malpractice, on an enormous scale.
Re: What Students Do (And Don't Do) in Khan Academy
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
in case you missed why your comment didn't add to the conversation: Khan Academy and the article are both not about coding or learning to code. This article is about math.
Khan Academy did start to include a programming portion at some point.
yes, Khan Academy has lessons on a huge number of topics. no, nothing in the posted article has anything to do with "implying that [Khan Academy] will make you proficient at coding"