71–80 of 119 posts
(I'm of the belief that it's possible for a large news company to give equal commentary share to competing interests, but I don't follow the WaPo's education coverage enough to be able to make a judgment in this case)
Colin once again submits an article from the United States popular press, here a co-authored op-ed piece, about mathematics education reform in the United States, one of my main topics of personal research for more than a decade. The regular opinion column to which this guest piece was submitted, the "Answer Sheet" edited by Valerie Strauss, is basically propaganda for the current school system, and has been caught h…
Colin once again submits an article from the United States popular press, here a co-authored op-ed piece, about mathematics education reform in the United States, one of my main topics of personal research for more than a decade. The regular opinion column to which this guest piece was submitted, the "Answer Sheet" edited by Valerie Strauss, is basically propaganda for the current school system, and has been caught h…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thousands (millions?) of teachers prepare mostly the same lessons every day. Whilst some preparation is obviously necessary, I see huge benefits for students and teachers from centralising this. I am looking forward to the future when a video lesson distributed to 20% of children on the Monday can have its feedback aggregated and analysed, with a patched version of the lesson pushed out on Tuesday. For example, imagi…
> teachers prepare mostly the same lessons every day That "mostly" hides a lot. A good teacher will prepare this lesson in a context: context of his pupils, their abilities, their knowledge of other material, etc. Centralized version will have none of that.
I don't see the downside to such a great resource.
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Also, there are many many terrible teachers out there. I had terrible teachers at the elementary and high school level. Teachers who were either incompetent or did not care. Khan Academy is not the problem.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> some of the things these people believe they've learned from the KA, and believe must be right because they (think) they've seen it on KA really worry me What kind of things? Are you suggesting that flesh-and-blood teachers or brick-and-mortar schools are less likely to spread misinformation or leave students with misconceptions? I can tell you a hundred false things I was taught by "real" school, and some of them…
Are you suggesting that flesh-and-blood teachers or brick-and-mortar schools are less likely to spread misinformation or leave students with misconceptions? Possibly, because when you leave school you can realize your misconceptions and learn from other people, as well as pointing out other people's misconceptions. But if everyone uses Khan Academy, everyone will end up with the same misconceptions.
Also, online learning wins in the limiting case where courses have been iterated and feedback / FAQs taken into account. In a brick and mortar institution, "institutional memory" is effectively lost as professors retire or shift interests (if it ever existed in the first place) and their replacements introduce their own slew of idiosyncrasies, poor methodology, and misconceptions. In contrast, an online lecture never suffers this degradation. Sure, new lectures may replace old lectures (presumably at different sites), but both will be available for a time and during that time, students will pick up on inconsistencies. That's not true of brick-and-mortar lectures, where the only source by which a student can verify the material they are presented is the textbook or its alternatives. Combined with the tendency of courses to discourage reading the textbook (it's almost always a less point-efficient use of time to read textbook chapters than to do homework, practice problems, and go to office hours, which provide information better matched to the material that will be tested on), the status quo is a recipe for failure. My experiences confirm that this recipe for failure produces failure (in the pedagogical sense).
The third factor that favors online learning with regard to misconceptions are its twin killer features: the pause button and the rewind button. These reduce self-inflicted misconceptions tenfold.
So, sp322, I think the opposite of what you stated is true. I would welcome a conflicting opinion, because usually when I go on rants similar to the above three paragraphs all I get are nodding heads.
It's kind of an interesting question. Is it better to educate masses with an inferior product that breeds misconception, or fewer people with a better product that limits misconception?
If it breeds misconception, can you really call it education?
If knowing math at a superficial level opens doors for other learning, it's hard to argue that it's NOT a worthy trade-off.
We as math teachers strive for perfection, but the truth is that having a deep understanding of what an equals sign is and how it should function isn't important for most people in their lives. Sure those in math careers will want that depth (and they'll get it, since Khan alone can't prepare them for that career), but everyone else will be fine whether they use the equals sign properly or not.
In a lot of ways it's like prescriptive vs. descriptive linguistics. Are we going to be the equivalent of a grammar nazi and come down hard on everyone we see that uses improper notation? Or can we be satisfied if there is some understanding there, even if it's imperfect or communicated poorly?
Colin once again submits an article from the United States popular press, here a co-authored op-ed piece, about mathematics education reform in the United States, one of my main topics of personal research for more than a decade. The regular opinion column to which this guest piece was submitted, the "Answer Sheet" edited by Valerie Strauss, is basically propaganda for the current school system, and has been caught h…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you took something different from the article than I did. They provide a critique, strongly worded at times, but not totally bashing Khan Academy or the general approach. They specify their concerns, and even offer suggestions on ways it can be improved (specifically, examining existing pedagogy and coordinating with some of the top math and science teachers to generate better content). One of the authors is…
So an article on the Washington Post site based upon a for-profit founder's nit-picking of Khan's materials is representative of the right way to go about improving what Khan himself says is an effort to supplement other educational methods? There's a difference between constructive criticism that's effectively administered vs a publicly-rendered smear attempt that tries to hide behind pedantry.