Group items tagged

"There's an article in this month's Wired Magazine about Khan Academy. The headline speaks volumes - "How Khan Academy Is Changing the Rules of Education" - as do the responses I've seen to the article. As usual, there's plenty of praise for Sal Khan and his one-man-educational-video-making machine. But there's also push-back from some quarters, particularly from educators who are highly skeptical of what Khan Academy delivers and what it stands for."

"From the Washington Post to 60 Minutes, Sal Khan has been hailed a pioneer, while everyone from gleeful journalists to investors have anointed Khan Academy a "revolution in education." It's not. Instead, Khan Academy may be one of the most dangerous phenomenon in education today. Not because of the site itself, but because of what it - or more appropriately, our obsession with it - says about how we as a nation view education, and what we've come to expect."

A really interesting look at the Khan Academy, and more, and the bigger "Flipped Classroom" movement. The article contains a potted history of the Khan development as well as some rebuttals from Gary Stager and Sylvia Martinez. An interesting read for all wanting to know more about Khan.

"It's nice to see Khan getting some critical attention here-it's not particularly useful to anybody to continue to smother the project in unthinking praise; particularly not to the Khan academy itself. Many have complained that Khan's been unreceptive to criticism, and these efforts have cracked the door for a more robust conversation."

"So I'd like to get more specific about what I think is wrong about the Khan Academy approach by writing about things I see as wrong with the way we teach math in the US. No matter if we agree or not about Khan Academy, I'm fairly certain we can agree math learning is not going as well as we'd like (to say the least.) Too many people are convinced by the system that they "hate math", and even students who do well (meaning, can get decent test scores) are often just regurgitating stuff for the test, knowing they can safely forget it shortly afterward."

"It is a common view that "if only someone could break this down and explain it clearly enough, more students would understand." Khan Academy is a great example of this approach with its clear, concise videos on science. However it is debatable whether they really work. Research has shown that these types of videos may be positively received by students. They feel like they are learning and become more confident in their answers, but tests reveal they haven't learned anything."

Khan Academy has just launched this new project designed to engage maths, science and media teachers, as well as young filmmakers. "Pixar In A Box" is an new online curriculum that "analyzes how the studio fuses art, tech, science, engineering, and math to develop top-shelf animated cinema. Created with middle and high school students in mind but available to everyone, Pixar In A Box's interactive exercises, in-depth video lessons, and hands-on activities are an informative addition to Khan Academy's extensive educational resources. The curriculum spans the pipeline of the production process.

StudyEgg is a new tool that can be used to augment already existing educational content on the Internet by adding new learning features. With StudyEgg teachers can create quizzes based on YouTube videos like Khan Academy or any other freely available lesson/material. GradeCam enables teachers to grade assignments instantly with any document camera or webcam, no special tools needed. The data is then displayed, showing the teacher if all students understood the concepts. Tests can be created on the go to check what students have learned instead of testing them days or weeks later. GradeCam then lets users import the data easily into the gradebook service,  Always Prepped combines different educational resources and services like Khan Academy, Edmodo or Study Island and puts all the learning related data of the students into one unified dashboard. Also able to add non-educational data such as social data to the dashboard. For example, if the teacher knows that the parents of a particular student are getting divorced or that a grandparent has died, the teacher is able to add this information to the data set and can see immediately whether the performance in class might somewhat be related to the happenings in the student's personal life.

"It is a common view that "if only someone could break this down and explain it clearly enough, more students would understand." Khan Academy is a great example of this approach with its clear, concise videos on science. However it is debatable whether they really work. Research has shown that these types of videos may be positively received by students. They feel like they are learning and become more confident in their answers, but tests reveal they haven't learned anything. The apparent reason for the discrepancy is misconceptions. Students have existing ideas about scientific phenomena before viewing a video. If the video presents scientific concepts in a clear, well illustrated way, students believe they are learning but they do not engage with the media on a deep enough level to realize that what was is presented differs from their prior knowledge. There is hope, however. Presenting students' common misconceptions in a video alongside the scientific concepts has been shown to increase learning by increasing the amount of mental effort students expend while watching it."

I was preparing a presentation for differentiating mathematics using technology recently, and ended up editing a TED talk by Salman Khan. What struck me was Khan's idea that technology can humanise the classroom - which, as Khan acknowledges, is in some ways counterintuitive. Indeed, when I talk to teachers about technology in the classroom, they have visions of a very inhuman scenario, where students have their eyes glued to the screens, interacting with noone. I'd argue that many things that currently happen in traditional classrooms are dehumanizing; however, we don't see them this way because that's how classrooms have always been. I'd also argue that technology can humanize these experiences. Here are four things I've invested time and effort into that have humanized the classroom.

Two teachers sit down to learn about math teaching from a man who is Bill Gates' favorite teacher. Our primary purpose with this video was to get a conversation started. We realized that the satire would put some people off but many teachers have tried to engage Khan Academy in a reasonable discussion and present their case to the media about issues with this approach with little to show for it.

"The four tools mentioned are free and available for smartphones, tablets and laptop/desktop computers.This means that anyone can use them to create or complete work or connect with others. These are dynamic and comprehensive tools that can improve teaching and learning in the classroom. The tools discussed are: Edmodo, Curriculet; ClassDojo; Khan Academy.

"Google is working on an online course solution. Same story with Khan Academy, Coursera, Udacity, and … you? If you run a website that uses WordPress, you can now easily (relatively) build your very own online school. The new WordPress plugin from WooThemes (a popular WordPress premium theme provider) lets you start up your own online school with ease. It's as simple as installing a WordPress plugin. The actual content and other school-y stuff is, of course, up to you. But the technical stuff is taken care of by this new plugin."

leran almost anything... for free Shared by Will Richardson and PLPconnectu

"Popular efforts to improve education are focusing on the wrong problem. Millions of dollars and hours of innovation are being spent on improving how we deliver content in an era when content matters less and how we interact with it matters more."