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.
"Have you been gamified yet? Perhaps not a painful as it sounds, gamification is on its way to becoming THE buzzword of 2011. Social media engagement tools such as badges, points, levels, leaderboards, etc are making their way out of hipster apps to every online engagement you can think of. Yes, it all sounds oddly familiar (green stamps, reward cards, etc.) but of course, it's all NEW NEW NEW, with gurus and pundits claiming that gamification will change the way we live and of course, spend money."
"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."