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Khan Academy: A Powerful Learning Tool

  
  
  

A few months ago, I was searching the Web for a tutorial on basic statistics and stumbled upon Khan Academy, a non-profit group founded by Sal Khan to provide “a free world class education for anyone anywhere.”  I started digging around the website and found myself browsing through a library of over 2,600 educational videos and 200 practice exercises ranging from K-12 math to biology and physics to history and test prep. Assessment exercises are adaptive so users can practice at their own pace and all of the problems can be broken down into single steps.

The website is available to anyone—students, teachers, principals, parents—absolutely free.  Users create their own profile so that Khan Academy can record what they have been learning and whether or not they are achieving their goals.  Points and badges keep students motivated and engaged in their own progress. 

The Gates Foundation has helped to support Khan Academy since 2010.  Bill Gates, in a video clip posted to thegatesnotes.com, identifies Khan as a “pioneer” in the movement to use technology to provide learning tools that so many people can access.  Indeed, his tutorials are viewed almost 100,000 times each day. 

In the last month, however, Khan Academy has received extensive mainstream media press.  On March 9, Khan delivered a TED (Technology, Education, Design) talk, and a couple of days later the 60 Minutes news show featured a segment on Khan Academy.  Since then, Khan has appeared in articles on Edweek, Yahoo, The Huffington Post, and more. 

Check out a few of the hundreds of developmental math videos and let us know what you think!

Comments

As a classroom teacher I can say that Khan Academy is one of the best resources out there. We love it. Our students who don't understand a concept or need a little extra intervention have easy access to a short video clip in whatever concept they need. Thank you Khan Academy!
Posted @ Tuesday, March 27, 2012 2:12 PM by Liz M.
One of the best resources out there?  
What is good math pedagogy? The Khan Academy has *none* of it. It teaches procedures, not concepts. His average lesson, for example: all lecture and chalk (no interaction, nothing visual or concrete). He says I might use the word average non-mathematically, saying “the average voter wants…” or “the average student would like to leave early.” Of course, he really should have said “typical,” not average… that meaning has nothing to do with the concept of “average.” (Do “C” students want to leave early? And the “A” and “F” students don’t?) The closest he comes to mentioning what averages mean is to say that they "sort of represent" a group of numbers. He also refers to a multiplication problem as a sum, and expects students being introduced to averages to do algebra with variables on the bottom of a fraction. 
Okay, I thought, maybe I picked a lemon. I asked people if there were better ones. "The Beauty of Algebra" -- okay, he isn't talking about a procedure... well, except figuring out percents, and he says that to do that I multiply the percent by the number. Oh, really? I don't have to change it to a decimal?  
All the rest of the videos I saw were quick summaries of procedures... and I stopped watching them in disgust when he informed me that 2 x 1 was "two plus itself times one."  
The last time I checked, two plus two was four. 
I think it is an extremely sad commentary that people are lauding it. I don't know about your students, but *mine* deserve better than the fastest slapped-together videos stuck out there. 
Posted @ Friday, April 06, 2012 1:20 PM by Susan Jones
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