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How well does Khan Academy teach?

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Re: How well does Khan Academy teach?

#91

Post by yummyfajitas »

jmcqk6 wrote: post #59
yummyfajitas wrote: post #7

The main criticism of the article is a bit silly: Khan will put the video out there and see how people react to it. He perceives this to be a better approach than incorporating results of quality research projects into his instructional decisions. In the age of No Child Left Behind and its mandate for “scientifically based research” as the foundation for classroom instruction, this seems lazy. Yes, Khan is doing his…

Meant to reply to this, but didn't work, so copying and pasting: In the debate about khan academy, there's an important fact that is continuously missed, it's not about effective instruction vs. ineffective instruction; it's about less effective vs. more effective. The khan academy way may be better than trying to learn from the lower X% of math teachers out there. It's highly unlikely that it's going to be better th…

The problem with education in the US is cost - quality is almost as good as it possibly could be (holding the inputs fixed).

In 2010, the US government spent $900B on education. If Khan can reduce the number of teachers needed by even a few percent, that's a HUGE savings.

Re: How well does Khan Academy teach?

#92

Post by novalis »

Jtsummers wrote: post #88
novalis wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am under the impression the author of the article is Valerie Strauss and she is presenting a small piece critique by Christopher Danielson and Michael Paul Goldenberg at the top of her article. If not, there is a problem with the placement of her name at the end of it. As for the abbreviation presented, it is just terrible and is used in article while accusing others of lack of Pedagogical Content Knowledge.

So you believe she speaks about herself using "We" instead of "I"? Her contribution is the first 2 paragraphs, the rest is the critique from Christopher Danielson and Michael Paul Goldenberg. Edit: And please explain, how is the abbreviation terrible, because I've clearly missed something.

"We" may well be used instead of "I" and at the end it reads "By Valerie Strauss". The attribution is placed in a random way all through the article and that threw me.

The abbreviation is terrible because in the article it is used in reference to "the numbers to the right of the decimal point"; "decimals for short".

Re: How well does Khan Academy teach?

#93

Post by polymathist »

tokenadult wrote: post #48

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…

Karl, I'm currently working fulltime on a summer project in the online education space. The differentiator is that for a given topic, there can be multiple teachers and multiple videos each trying to teach it in the best way. http://neoteach.com. I imagine you're very busy, but I'd love to hear feedback from someone who has so much education experience. And from anyone else in this thread, for that matter.

Re: How well does Khan Academy teach?

#94

Post by Jtsummers »

novalis wrote: post #92
Jtsummers wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you believe she speaks about herself using "We" instead of "I"? Her contribution is the first 2 paragraphs, the rest is the critique from Christopher Danielson and Michael Paul Goldenberg. Edit: And please explain, how is the abbreviation terrible, because I've clearly missed something.

"We" may well be used instead of "I" and at the end it reads "By Valerie Strauss". The attribution is placed in a random way all through the article and that threw me. The abbreviation is terrible because in the article it is used in reference to "the numbers to the right of the decimal point"; "decimals for short".

To the first point: The first and second paragraphs are italicized, clearly distinct from the rest. This is intended to show a distinction in voice (authorship). The content of the first two paragraphs are nothing but framing for what follows. You're either being excessively pedantic, or have elected not to read the article to have so much difficulty in recognizing authorship of the 2 parts.

To the second, I still don't see what makes that terrible. It's saying, decimals is short for decimal fractions, and provides a definition for decimal fractions.

Re: How well does Khan Academy teach?

#95

Post by jmcqk6 »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #91
jmcqk6 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meant to reply to this, but didn't work, so copying and pasting: In the debate about khan academy, there's an important fact that is continuously missed, it's not about effective instruction vs. ineffective instruction; it's about less effective vs. more effective. The khan academy way may be better than trying to learn from the lower X% of math teachers out there. It's highly unlikely that it's going to be better th…

The problem with education in the US is cost - quality is almost as good as it possibly could be (holding the inputs fixed). In 2010, the US government spent $900B on education. If Khan can reduce the number of teachers needed by even a few percent, that's a HUGE savings.

in 2010, the US Department of Education budget was $47 billion [1]. That's between 1-2% of the total budget. The problem with education in the US is not cost, and even if it was, the solution is not 'get rid of a few percent of teachers."

Where did you get that $900 billion number?

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_United_States_federal_budg...

Re: How well does Khan Academy teach?

#96

Post by nhp »

It seems to me that most of the unpleasantness in Khan Academy criticisms stem from the fact that, most of these comment concern other peoples' comments on Khan Academy. Revolutionary/Messiah v/s borg/wrath-of-khan/emperor-without-clothes and so on.

This is sad because the actual message, which is valid in some instances and informative in all instances, gets lost in the noise. This is more so, given that people at Khan Academy are responding positively to specific concerns on specific topics.

And unlike for-profit companies, all his work, from the most boring video to the best, are available to be criticized. We only see a few clippings from, most likely, the very best videos from for-profit companies.

I hope the real critics and the real skeptics, i.e., those who would like to make Khan Academy a success, will continue to bring their specific concerns to the table; and just not all the distracting noise.

(Now, it is strange that the authors while pointing out the exaggerated praise for Khan Academy, fail to point out the abuse that Khan had to endure. Even stranger is that some commentators dismiss the abuse as "satire".)

Re: How well does Khan Academy teach?

#97

Post by tokenadult »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #91
jmcqk6 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meant to reply to this, but didn't work, so copying and pasting: In the debate about khan academy, there's an important fact that is continuously missed, it's not about effective instruction vs. ineffective instruction; it's about less effective vs. more effective. The khan academy way may be better than trying to learn from the lower X% of math teachers out there. It's highly unlikely that it's going to be better th…

The problem with education in the US is cost - quality is almost as good as it possibly could be (holding the inputs fixed). In 2010, the US government spent $900B on education. If Khan can reduce the number of teachers needed by even a few percent, that's a HUGE savings.

In 2010, the US government spent $900B on education. If Khan can reduce the number of teachers needed by even a few percent, that's a HUGE savings.

Fully agreed with the conclusion. Staff compensation (including SUBSTANTIAL nonsalary compensation) is a big part of the budget of any school. Making the work of teachers more efficient (in the economics sense of "efficient") helps free up money for other worthy purposes.

Another comment to your comment doubted the figure, I think because you wrote "US government spent" when you perhaps meant "all levels of government in the United States spent" so much money on education. Most spending on schools in the United States is from state taxes (as in my state) or from local taxes (as in some other states), as I'm sure you already know but which may be news to onlookers from other countries.

"The U.S. has more than 14,000 public school districts and spends more than $500 billion on public elementary and secondary education each year (combined spending of federal, state, and local governments)."

http://www.census.gov/did/www/schooldistricts/

"United States

(Billions of dollars. Detail may not add to total due to rounding)

Total Federal State Local

593.7 74.0 258.2 261.4"

http://www2.census.gov/govs/school/10f33pub.pdf

Re: How well does Khan Academy teach?

#98

Post by praxulus »

mtgx wrote: post #10

One of the issues I have with Khan Academy is that they are using exactly the same style of teaching as in schools...just ported online. Is that really the best way to go about online education? I find the AcademicEarth.org method of simply filming classes even worse. Yes, they do allow for what you'd normally call "quality education" to be accessible by anyone online, so that's a pretty big step, but I get this feel…

Lectures aren't great, which is why he wants kids to do that at home on their own time (and at their own pace), and use the school day to work on problems and get more individualized help.

Re: How well does Khan Academy teach?

#99

Post by novalis »

Jtsummers wrote: post #94
novalis wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We" may well be used instead of "I" and at the end it reads "By Valerie Strauss". The attribution is placed in a random way all through the article and that threw me. The abbreviation is terrible because in the article it is used in reference to "the numbers to the right of the decimal point"; "decimals for short".

To the first point: The first and second paragraphs are italicized, clearly distinct from the rest. This is intended to show a distinction in voice (authorship). The content of the first two paragraphs are nothing but framing for what follows. You're either being excessively pedantic, or have elected not to read the article to have so much difficulty in recognizing authorship of the 2 parts. To the second, I still do…

Article starts with: "How well does Khan Academy teach? By Valerie Strauss", then "By Christopher Danielson and Michael Paul Goldenberg" on top of their contribution. At the end of the article there is a : "By Valerie Strauss". So attribution is displayed twice before text blocks and once after text blocks, if you don't see the failure in that, I am so sorry. I don't know how pedantic it is to confuse voices when they are attributed in two different ways when it is clear that the second way is the most common, but I will leave it to you to quantify it, not that I care for it. But do keep up the winding, you will be on to something, sometime soon.

Second: "Comparing decimals. Decimal fractions (decimals for short — the numbers to the right of the decimal point) are a notoriously challenging topic in the elementary math curriculum."

For the last time, decimals are NOT the numbers to the right of the decimal point like stated. "decimals" is being used for a subpar abbreviation of decimal fractions AND the left side numbers to the decimal point are a part of it, unlike what said authors state. Someone with pedagogical concerns should be awake when stating stuff like this and if you don't see the mess that is, that is your own problem. I have stated this already.

Re: How well does Khan Academy teach?

#100

Post by saraid216 »

yock wrote: post #61
tokenadult wrote: post #48

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…

I'd be interested to know (and, apologies if you've opined on it before) what you think of Lockhart's Lament. http://www.maa.org/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf His seems to advocate that children should be taught to explore math problems and make discoveries rather than memorize and practice given truths. My layperson's read of your comment finds some commonality between your positions.

It's worth recognizing that Lockhart didn't write that with the intention of producing change. It was meant as a rant.
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