But yeah, I disagreed with the author's premise a lot, and unfortunately he brought in a lot of poorly related arguments along the way. Part of the excitement of KA isn't that it's the first online learning solutions, but it's the first half-decent one. Hell, at my first year of university, everyone had to take an online course on alcohol safety, but it was crap. I've taken two other courses online before, too, both crap. One of the essential things that Khan has gotten right is the issue of attention. The 10-minute lectures on specific subjects work very well, even if by accident, because right now, you can easily supplement your learning with them. Didn't like Ms. Frizzle's coverage of u-substitution in calculus? Watch him walk you through just that subject. He's brought well-articulated explanations to the web in an easy-to-digest format. And it sets a free baseline for anyone to learn a subject. At the moment, its strongest subject is easily mathematics, which can guide a student all the way to just past high school mathematics. In fact, mathematics isn't actually crippled too much by the uncreative exercise framework. My personal experience has been that math teachers assigned many problems of a similar format to get the technique down, and then sprinkled word problems on top to get students to think once they had the computational algorithms down. But one thing I did enjoy about the article it was at least critical of Sal and pointed out that the KA still has a long way to go. KA put out the exercises last year, but now they need to improve them to make them less monotonous. They recorded lectures on organic chemistry, but now they should improve them with a lecturer has more expertise on the subject. Almost every bit of the website has a large room for improvement. I definitely would agree that the academy could benefit from a wider background of disciplines. It can't expand in the way people hope, if it only excels at one field of its larger collection. Interestingly, one of the commenters noted that Sal is actually making plans to expand the KA into a larger educational platform, allowing others to design courses for the website.
This is how I would use KA. When you are learning something new, it's helpful to have more than one person explain it to you. Due to our instinct for pattern recognition, I believe this approach helps build a stronger conceptual foundation. IMO the author is right that KA is no panacea, and it seems that in the US, both the GOP and Dems are looking to do more with less in education, so we should be wary. However, saying: "Khan Academy may be one of the most dangerous phenomenon in education today." is hyperbolic. Looking for quick fixes in education and ignoring the fundamentals is dangerous. But KA is a damn fine tool in the toolbox. Personally, I don't think 'flipping the classroom' and having kids watch the lectures as homework will work. A large number of parents won't keep their end of the bargain, and most kids will do everything they can to avoid watching the videos.
Spot on. A quick search reviews many a math teacher concerned, not exactly with Khan Academy, but the way it's being promoted. http://fnoschese.wordpress.com/2011/05/10/khan-academy-my-fi... Also, while it may be okay for diletant learning, it may not work so well for strict classroom curriculum. http://localtechrepair.blogspot.com/2011/10/cheating-khan-ac... FTR, I liked the French Revolution videos.
It will need some work revamping and may take years but I think the "flipping" of a classroom is the direction we are headed in. I love the idea of tutorials at home and one on one with a teacher in classroom. btw, my wife is a doctor and did the majority of her lectures in first year med school from home. It was great, she would even speed up the playback so that a 1 hour lecture only took 40 minutes. Many professors pushed back against allowing this. No one likes change, especially when it impacts your ego.
Google cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Hf-1BZk...
Amazingly Khan seems to have a great idea of what students get hung up on, maybe it because it goes in 10 min bits, not shoving a ton down the students throat at one time. I think the real threat of Khan is that students might not need to buy $100+ text books, and ultimately might not need to spend 300+ for classes.