No doubt, Khan has done something incredible by creating thousands of videos, distributing them online for free, and now designing an analytics dashboard for people to monitor and guide students' movements through the Khan Academy material. And no doubt, lots of people say they've learned a lot by watching the videos. The ability pause, rewind, and replay is often cited as the difference between "getting" the subject matter through classroom instruction and "getting it" via Khan Academy's lecture-demonstrations.
Vicki Davis on 13 Jan 12Looks like Mayor Bloomberg needs to watch the Dan Pink ted talk I shared here a couple of days a go. The higher the stakes and the more complex the problem, the worse effect a large monetary incentive has. Be ready for New York cheating scandals. That is a lot of pressure and will also incent teachers to find students that will do better. It also will put the method that they will use to rate people "highly effective" in the spotlight. This is sure to cause some resentment in the ranks. The easy solution is to throw money at it, but they don't realize that it is also the wrong solution if you look at the research on motivation.
