Khan Academy Gets 5 Million to Expand Faculty & Platform & to Build a School

http://www.hackeducation.com/2011/11/04/khan-academy-gets-5-million-to-expand-faculty-platform-to-build-a-physical-school/#.TrYurm_MG4Y.hackernews

by apievangelist • 15 years ago

99 31 15 years ago

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hokua5• 15 years ago

Most of good teaching is not about well delivered lectures or clearly explained examples. Cookie cutter youtube lectures are just another resource.

The evidence suggests that its individualized instruction in a structured environment with clear expectations that is best -- of course you cannot scale this, but clever videos are no substitute.

The Khan Academy's audience tend to be good students-those who would thrive in any number of environments. Im not worried about these students.

Its the students who might have been great had they been exposed to a better environment that worry me. For this it takes good teachers and a system that attracts them to the field (which the current system does not).

perokreco• 15 years ago

Khan Academy actually works really well for underachieving students, and especially well for students with learning disabilities. If you watch any of Sal Khan talks, you will see that one of the biggest emphasis of KA is to prevent students from getting stuck and losing interest in a subject. The whole goal is to increase the meaningful time students have to interact with teachers. Having lectures delivered online and then having students actually talk to a teacher and have things explained to them instead of sitting and listening to a one size fits all lecture works much better.

hokua5• 15 years ago

If KA wants to be a nonprofit and do good, thats great. Charity is a good thing.

But dont do it as a startup. What they are doing is not revolutionary, but another resource (albiet valuable). KA does not solve the fundamental problem that smart people dont want to become teachers. In time the hype around KA will fade as the problem in ed persist despite its efforts.

The problems in education are structural. Technology cannot revolutionize a government monopoly. The major players have no incentive to change.

choxi• 15 years ago

i don't know, I think the problems you're pointing out are the ones Kahn particularly wants to address. You should watch his TED talk if you haven't:

http://www.ted.com/talks/salman_khan_let_s_use_video_to_rein...

tokenadult• 15 years ago

The evidence suggests that . . .

Citation, please? I'm reading a very good book about evidence for best practice in education,

http://www.amazon.com/Visible-Learning-Synthesis-Meta-Analys...

recommended to me by a candidate in the current school board race in my school district, and I'd like to check what the research says with any source you recommend.

Do you have any evidence for any of other assertions in your comment? I will look it up if you would kindly provide citations.

kvnn2• 15 years ago

Its strange to me that you state this in reply to a story that mentions the best first-step Khan could take to reaching "students who might have been great had they been exposed to a better environment".

Did you simply forget to add "and I'm stoked that Khan is obviously working to fix school for everyone!"?

That is what I'm seeing.

Be fuckin stoked!

hokua5• 15 years ago

Someone has to first motivate the students to use the KA resources. My point is that let's not pretend that KA solves the fundamental problem.

UK-Al05• 15 years ago

The problem is most lessons are already broadcast only. When you have 30 students in class, it's very hard to take a individual approach. Yes I agree the individual approach is better.

But have you considered that videos, when dealing with a class of 30 is actually more individual.

A individual student can pause, rewind etc for his own needs. Where as in a class he could not do this. You can't rewind a teacher, if anything the teacher could get angry.

If anything this allows more time for tutoring, rather than lecturing. Allowing the teacher more time for one on one work.

kvnn2• 15 years ago

Is anyone from Khan here? Are you guys aware of Sugata Mitra's work?

Mitra has developed and proven a methodology for teaching children in-person using small groups and computers.

Mitra + Khan makes me jump out of my seat.

Here is an incredible introduction to Mitra's work : http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_the_child_driven_educa...

vitrifying• 15 years ago

It seems to me that by cooperating with schools and introducing assessment, Khan risks losing his way. The educational value will not be improved by becoming more schoolish -- schools are the problem.

As hackers know and as Mitra showed, learning is fun. However it ceases to be fun when one is told what to study and pressured to compete for meaningless grades/scores/badges.

(IIRC, Mitra doesn't assess children directly in the sense of giving them grades.)

Also, now that Khan knows that children will be assessed on his video material, I expect that this will skew his future presentations in a bad way.

sylvinus• 15 years ago

Sugata and Sal being two TEDsters, I'm sure they know each other.

spacefungus• 15 years ago

The Khan Academy is such a beautiful idea. I can't wait to see if they try any new, whacky stuff at the brick & mortar school.

I wonder why people aren't trying to shut this down? Seems like "big education" companies would be making moves to squash the success of KA. Why buy a $300 textbook (like I just had to recently) on Meteorology when you can watch some YouTube videos?

It'll be interesting to see if this starts happening...I hope not, but at some point you have to imagine that bigger, older companies will try to step in.

Khan Academy Gets 5 Million to Expand Faculty & Platform & to Build a School

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