"Meet Salman Khan, your child's new teacher. If you haven't heard of Khan, rest assured that your son or daughter is in good hands. He has four degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard. He got a perfect score on the math portion of his SAT."
an interesting writeup on on the basics of Khan Academy- including a couple of example teachers & classrooms. Also includes interview excerpts with Salman Khan.
It seems that the gamification of Khan Academy is undermining the "dropping out/back" of the technology after a certain amount of time, but students are learning, so is this good or bad?
This article seems pretty consistent with what we heard today. I think the most interesting aspect of the whole Khan Academy phenomenon is not what he does (make direct instruction videos- People learn to cook that way from Emeril), or how he does it (very few production values), or even that the internet makes him so distributable. The most incredible thing to me is that this one guy who did an end run around the entire establishment of EDUCATION is having this much impact on kids, teachers, and policy makers around the world. He isn't doing anything all that innovative and yet he is having the impact on education that one would think would come from an extraordinary innovator. Why isn't that innovator coming from EDUCATION. I think the big generative questions KA offers us in Education are: Why is this such a big deal? (And I do believe it is), Why didn't we think of it?; and Given all we know about education, shouldn't we be able have a much more substantial effect with much more substantial outcomes with as few resources as KA? If not? What are we doing?
Interesting commentary written by Salman Kahn (Kahn Academy) on his ideas about the correct use of technology in the classroom. He reviews the ways that he feels technology can enhance teaching and learning and the critical role that a teacher plays.