OT- Khan Academy

[bsrsharma]

MIT has free Open Course Ware

on a variety of topics. Anybody can learn for free what MIT students learn after paying six figure tuition!

http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm

[CA renter]

[quote=eavesdropper][quote=briansd1]Very interesting opinion in WaPo about the future of education.

Since education is getting so expensive, maybe we can cut the cost of education by using the Internet to distribute and replay content.

Today, the Khan Academy Web site boasts 2,300 separate math tutorials, from simple addition to vector calculus, that have been viewed more than 50 million times by more than 2 million students and are in active use in more than a thousand classrooms across the country.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/steven-pearlstein-mark-them-tardy-to-the-revolution/2011/05/24/AG1vKYDH_story.html

[/quote]

I do agree that we need to seriously assess the way in which we are providing education to our students. In reality, the age-old “learn from reading a book” method has really not changed at all, despite the massive changes in media and communication methods. There has always been a reluctance on the part of people (students and adult workers) to read, and their skills in this area have progressively worsened to the point that a significant number of *college* graduates are leaving school with marked literacy deficits.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/24/AR2005122400701.html

http://www.10news.com/news/15274005/detail.html

What we’ve done is to simply reduce the level of difficulty of the material we are teaching, and, when that isn’t enough, we “adjust” students’ grades to mask the lack of achievement.

The second article I linked to above is about a teacher who managed to mask his illiteracy for many years. He was a successful teacher because he took the time to create a visual and oral learning environment. I don’t endorse his deceptions, but I admire what came out of it. While reading is extremely important, all learning in school should not be based on it. I don’t say this because I think that we have to make things easier for students but because I believe that we could successfully teach so much more information to so many more students. And teach them in a way that would stay with them, and help them add to their existing body of knowledge when they were away from the classroom. The fact that we are still limiting our teaching largely to “read it/memorize it” is staggering to me, especially in light of the technology that has already been developed and is readily available.

However, an ESSENTIAL aspect of education that has been largely ignored is parental involvement. If parents don’t involve themselves in their child’s education by enforcing study and homework completion, by meeting with his/her teachers, and, most important, raising their children to be well-behaved and respectful in the classroom environment, no technology change will help. Education should be a privilege, not an automatic right, and way too many parents are using the schools as a babysitter, expecting the staff to teach a child that the parents, themselves, can’t control. If their parents don’t give a damn, the students won’t either.[/quote]

+1,000

[CA renter]

[quote=eavesdropper][quote=briansd1]Very interesting opinion in WaPo about the future of education.

Since education is getting so expensive, maybe we can cut the cost of education by using the Internet to distribute and replay content.

Today, the Khan Academy Web site boasts 2,300 separate math tutorials, from simple addition to vector calculus, that have been viewed more than 50 million times by more than 2 million students and are in active use in more than a thousand classrooms across the country.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/steven-pearlstein-mark-them-tardy-to-the-revolution/2011/05/24/AG1vKYDH_story.html

[/quote]

I do agree that we need to seriously assess the way in which we are providing education to our students. In reality, the age-old “learn from reading a book” method has really not changed at all, despite the massive changes in media and communication methods. There has always been a reluctance on the part of people (students and adult workers) to read, and their skills in this area have progressively worsened to the point that a significant number of *college* graduates are leaving school with marked literacy deficits.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/24/AR2005122400701.html

http://www.10news.com/news/15274005/detail.html

What we’ve done is to simply reduce the level of difficulty of the material we are teaching, and, when that isn’t enough, we “adjust” students’ grades to mask the lack of achievement.

The second article I linked to above is about a teacher who managed to mask his illiteracy for many years. He was a successful teacher because he took the time to create a visual and oral learning environment. I don’t endorse his deceptions, but I admire what came out of it. While reading is extremely important, all learning in school should not be based on it. I don’t say this because I think that we have to make things easier for students but because I believe that we could successfully teach so much more information to so many more students. And teach them in a way that would stay with them, and help them add to their existing body of knowledge when they were away from the classroom. The fact that we are still limiting our teaching largely to “read it/memorize it” is staggering to me, especially in light of the technology that has already been developed and is readily available.

However, an ESSENTIAL aspect of education that has been largely ignored is parental involvement. If parents don’t involve themselves in their child’s education by enforcing study and homework completion, by meeting with his/her teachers, and, most important, raising their children to be well-behaved and respectful in the classroom environment, no technology change will help. Education should be a privilege, not an automatic right, and way too many parents are using the schools as a babysitter, expecting the staff to teach a child that the parents, themselves, can’t control. If their parents don’t give a damn, the students won’t either.[/quote]

+1,000

[CA renter]

[quote=eavesdropper][quote=briansd1]Very interesting opinion in WaPo about the future of education.

Since education is getting so expensive, maybe we can cut the cost of education by using the Internet to distribute and replay content.

Today, the Khan Academy Web site boasts 2,300 separate math tutorials, from simple addition to vector calculus, that have been viewed more than 50 million times by more than 2 million students and are in active use in more than a thousand classrooms across the country.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/steven-pearlstein-mark-them-tardy-to-the-revolution/2011/05/24/AG1vKYDH_story.html

[/quote]

I do agree that we need to seriously assess the way in which we are providing education to our students. In reality, the age-old “learn from reading a book” method has really not changed at all, despite the massive changes in media and communication methods. There has always been a reluctance on the part of people (students and adult workers) to read, and their skills in this area have progressively worsened to the point that a significant number of *college* graduates are leaving school with marked literacy deficits.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/24/AR2005122400701.html

http://www.10news.com/news/15274005/detail.html

What we’ve done is to simply reduce the level of difficulty of the material we are teaching, and, when that isn’t enough, we “adjust” students’ grades to mask the lack of achievement.

The second article I linked to above is about a teacher who managed to mask his illiteracy for many years. He was a successful teacher because he took the time to create a visual and oral learning environment. I don’t endorse his deceptions, but I admire what came out of it. While reading is extremely important, all learning in school should not be based on it. I don’t say this because I think that we have to make things easier for students but because I believe that we could successfully teach so much more information to so many more students. And teach them in a way that would stay with them, and help them add to their existing body of knowledge when they were away from the classroom. The fact that we are still limiting our teaching largely to “read it/memorize it” is staggering to me, especially in light of the technology that has already been developed and is readily available.

However, an ESSENTIAL aspect of education that has been largely ignored is parental involvement. If parents don’t involve themselves in their child’s education by enforcing study and homework completion, by meeting with his/her teachers, and, most important, raising their children to be well-behaved and respectful in the classroom environment, no technology change will help. Education should be a privilege, not an automatic right, and way too many parents are using the schools as a babysitter, expecting the staff to teach a child that the parents, themselves, can’t control. If their parents don’t give a damn, the students won’t either.[/quote]

+1,000

[CA renter]

[quote=eavesdropper][quote=briansd1]Very interesting opinion in WaPo about the future of education.

Since education is getting so expensive, maybe we can cut the cost of education by using the Internet to distribute and replay content.

Today, the Khan Academy Web site boasts 2,300 separate math tutorials, from simple addition to vector calculus, that have been viewed more than 50 million times by more than 2 million students and are in active use in more than a thousand classrooms across the country.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/steven-pearlstein-mark-them-tardy-to-the-revolution/2011/05/24/AG1vKYDH_story.html

[/quote]

I do agree that we need to seriously assess the way in which we are providing education to our students. In reality, the age-old “learn from reading a book” method has really not changed at all, despite the massive changes in media and communication methods. There has always been a reluctance on the part of people (students and adult workers) to read, and their skills in this area have progressively worsened to the point that a significant number of *college* graduates are leaving school with marked literacy deficits.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/24/AR2005122400701.html

http://www.10news.com/news/15274005/detail.html

What we’ve done is to simply reduce the level of difficulty of the material we are teaching, and, when that isn’t enough, we “adjust” students’ grades to mask the lack of achievement.

The second article I linked to above is about a teacher who managed to mask his illiteracy for many years. He was a successful teacher because he took the time to create a visual and oral learning environment. I don’t endorse his deceptions, but I admire what came out of it. While reading is extremely important, all learning in school should not be based on it. I don’t say this because I think that we have to make things easier for students but because I believe that we could successfully teach so much more information to so many more students. And teach them in a way that would stay with them, and help them add to their existing body of knowledge when they were away from the classroom. The fact that we are still limiting our teaching largely to “read it/memorize it” is staggering to me, especially in light of the technology that has already been developed and is readily available.

However, an ESSENTIAL aspect of education that has been largely ignored is parental involvement. If parents don’t involve themselves in their child’s education by enforcing study and homework completion, by meeting with his/her teachers, and, most important, raising their children to be well-behaved and respectful in the classroom environment, no technology change will help. Education should be a privilege, not an automatic right, and way too many parents are using the schools as a babysitter, expecting the staff to teach a child that the parents, themselves, can’t control. If their parents don’t give a damn, the students won’t either.[/quote]

+1,000

[CA renter]

[quote=eavesdropper][quote=briansd1]Very interesting opinion in WaPo about the future of education.

Since education is getting so expensive, maybe we can cut the cost of education by using the Internet to distribute and replay content.

Today, the Khan Academy Web site boasts 2,300 separate math tutorials, from simple addition to vector calculus, that have been viewed more than 50 million times by more than 2 million students and are in active use in more than a thousand classrooms across the country.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/steven-pearlstein-mark-them-tardy-to-the-revolution/2011/05/24/AG1vKYDH_story.html

[/quote]

I do agree that we need to seriously assess the way in which we are providing education to our students. In reality, the age-old “learn from reading a book” method has really not changed at all, despite the massive changes in media and communication methods. There has always been a reluctance on the part of people (students and adult workers) to read, and their skills in this area have progressively worsened to the point that a significant number of *college* graduates are leaving school with marked literacy deficits.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/24/AR2005122400701.html

http://www.10news.com/news/15274005/detail.html

What we’ve done is to simply reduce the level of difficulty of the material we are teaching, and, when that isn’t enough, we “adjust” students’ grades to mask the lack of achievement.

The second article I linked to above is about a teacher who managed to mask his illiteracy for many years. He was a successful teacher because he took the time to create a visual and oral learning environment. I don’t endorse his deceptions, but I admire what came out of it. While reading is extremely important, all learning in school should not be based on it. I don’t say this because I think that we have to make things easier for students but because I believe that we could successfully teach so much more information to so many more students. And teach them in a way that would stay with them, and help them add to their existing body of knowledge when they were away from the classroom. The fact that we are still limiting our teaching largely to “read it/memorize it” is staggering to me, especially in light of the technology that has already been developed and is readily available.

However, an ESSENTIAL aspect of education that has been largely ignored is parental involvement. If parents don’t involve themselves in their child’s education by enforcing study and homework completion, by meeting with his/her teachers, and, most important, raising their children to be well-behaved and respectful in the classroom environment, no technology change will help. Education should be a privilege, not an automatic right, and way too many parents are using the schools as a babysitter, expecting the staff to teach a child that the parents, themselves, can’t control. If their parents don’t give a damn, the students won’t either.[/quote]

+1,000

[equalizer]

Businessweek wrote a piece on him last week.

“Math was something Khan, then 28, understood. It was one of his majors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, along with computer science and electrical engineering. He had gone on to get a master’s in computer science and electrical engineering, also at MIT, and then an MBA from Harvard. He was working in Boston at the time for Daniel Wohl, who ran a hedge fund called Wohl Capital Management. Khan, an analyst, was the only employee.

Less than five years later, Khan’s sideline has turned into more than just his profession. He’s now a quasi-religious figure in a country desperate for a math Moses. His free website, dubbed the Khan Academy, may well be the most popular educational site in the world. Last month about 2 million students visited. MIT’s OpenCourseWare site, by comparison, has been around since 2001 and averages 1 million visits each month. He has posted more than 2,300 videos, beginning with simple addition and going all the way to subjects such as Green’s theorem, normally found in a college calculus syllabus. He’s adding videos on accounting, the credit crisis, the French Revolution, and the SAT and GMAT, among other things. He masters the subjects himself and then teaches them. As of the end of April, he claims to have served up more than 54 million individual lessons.”

He won’t sell out to McGraw-Hill and Pearson, who know how to con the naive (to be polite) public school textbook officials.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_22/b4230072816925.htm

[equalizer]

Businessweek wrote a piece on him last week.

“Math was something Khan, then 28, understood. It was one of his majors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, along with computer science and electrical engineering. He had gone on to get a master’s in computer science and electrical engineering, also at MIT, and then an MBA from Harvard. He was working in Boston at the time for Daniel Wohl, who ran a hedge fund called Wohl Capital Management. Khan, an analyst, was the only employee.

Less than five years later, Khan’s sideline has turned into more than just his profession. He’s now a quasi-religious figure in a country desperate for a math Moses. His free website, dubbed the Khan Academy, may well be the most popular educational site in the world. Last month about 2 million students visited. MIT’s OpenCourseWare site, by comparison, has been around since 2001 and averages 1 million visits each month. He has posted more than 2,300 videos, beginning with simple addition and going all the way to subjects such as Green’s theorem, normally found in a college calculus syllabus. He’s adding videos on accounting, the credit crisis, the French Revolution, and the SAT and GMAT, among other things. He masters the subjects himself and then teaches them. As of the end of April, he claims to have served up more than 54 million individual lessons.”

He won’t sell out to McGraw-Hill and Pearson, who know how to con the naive (to be polite) public school textbook officials.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_22/b4230072816925.htm

[equalizer]

Businessweek wrote a piece on him last week.

“Math was something Khan, then 28, understood. It was one of his majors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, along with computer science and electrical engineering. He had gone on to get a master’s in computer science and electrical engineering, also at MIT, and then an MBA from Harvard. He was working in Boston at the time for Daniel Wohl, who ran a hedge fund called Wohl Capital Management. Khan, an analyst, was the only employee.

Less than five years later, Khan’s sideline has turned into more than just his profession. He’s now a quasi-religious figure in a country desperate for a math Moses. His free website, dubbed the Khan Academy, may well be the most popular educational site in the world. Last month about 2 million students visited. MIT’s OpenCourseWare site, by comparison, has been around since 2001 and averages 1 million visits each month. He has posted more than 2,300 videos, beginning with simple addition and going all the way to subjects such as Green’s theorem, normally found in a college calculus syllabus. He’s adding videos on accounting, the credit crisis, the French Revolution, and the SAT and GMAT, among other things. He masters the subjects himself and then teaches them. As of the end of April, he claims to have served up more than 54 million individual lessons.”

He won’t sell out to McGraw-Hill and Pearson, who know how to con the naive (to be polite) public school textbook officials.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_22/b4230072816925.htm

[equalizer]

Businessweek wrote a piece on him last week.

“Math was something Khan, then 28, understood. It was one of his majors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, along with computer science and electrical engineering. He had gone on to get a master’s in computer science and electrical engineering, also at MIT, and then an MBA from Harvard. He was working in Boston at the time for Daniel Wohl, who ran a hedge fund called Wohl Capital Management. Khan, an analyst, was the only employee.

Less than five years later, Khan’s sideline has turned into more than just his profession. He’s now a quasi-religious figure in a country desperate for a math Moses. His free website, dubbed the Khan Academy, may well be the most popular educational site in the world. Last month about 2 million students visited. MIT’s OpenCourseWare site, by comparison, has been around since 2001 and averages 1 million visits each month. He has posted more than 2,300 videos, beginning with simple addition and going all the way to subjects such as Green’s theorem, normally found in a college calculus syllabus. He’s adding videos on accounting, the credit crisis, the French Revolution, and the SAT and GMAT, among other things. He masters the subjects himself and then teaches them. As of the end of April, he claims to have served up more than 54 million individual lessons.”

He won’t sell out to McGraw-Hill and Pearson, who know how to con the naive (to be polite) public school textbook officials.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_22/b4230072816925.htm

[equalizer]

Businessweek wrote a piece on him last week.

“Math was something Khan, then 28, understood. It was one of his majors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, along with computer science and electrical engineering. He had gone on to get a master’s in computer science and electrical engineering, also at MIT, and then an MBA from Harvard. He was working in Boston at the time for Daniel Wohl, who ran a hedge fund called Wohl Capital Management. Khan, an analyst, was the only employee.

Less than five years later, Khan’s sideline has turned into more than just his profession. He’s now a quasi-religious figure in a country desperate for a math Moses. His free website, dubbed the Khan Academy, may well be the most popular educational site in the world. Last month about 2 million students visited. MIT’s OpenCourseWare site, by comparison, has been around since 2001 and averages 1 million visits each month. He has posted more than 2,300 videos, beginning with simple addition and going all the way to subjects such as Green’s theorem, normally found in a college calculus syllabus. He’s adding videos on accounting, the credit crisis, the French Revolution, and the SAT and GMAT, among other things. He masters the subjects himself and then teaches them. As of the end of April, he claims to have served up more than 54 million individual lessons.”

He won’t sell out to McGraw-Hill and Pearson, who know how to con the naive (to be polite) public school textbook officials.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_22/b4230072816925.htm

[equalizer]

[quote=bsrsharma]MIT has free Open Course Ware

on a variety of topics. Anybody can learn for free what MIT students learn after paying six figure tuition!

http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm%5B/quote%5D
MIT’s offering is woefully inadequate – most courses lack answer sets, there is no feedback mechanism, chat, user comments.
The name OPEN is in their title, but appears to be in name only, i.e., you have to be MIT material if you hope to get anything out of the class.

It came out with great fanfare 10 years ago, but needs someone like Khan to run the place. Yeah, merge Khan Academy into MIT open course and then I could learn from MIT Architecture class – Basic Structural Design. Note there are no notes, lectures, problems, etc. How the heck am I going to design that big fat Greek support column?
Talk about detrimental reliance.

[equalizer]

[quote=bsrsharma]MIT has free Open Course Ware

on a variety of topics. Anybody can learn for free what MIT students learn after paying six figure tuition!

http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm%5B/quote%5D
MIT’s offering is woefully inadequate – most courses lack answer sets, there is no feedback mechanism, chat, user comments.
The name OPEN is in their title, but appears to be in name only, i.e., you have to be MIT material if you hope to get anything out of the class.

It came out with great fanfare 10 years ago, but needs someone like Khan to run the place. Yeah, merge Khan Academy into MIT open course and then I could learn from MIT Architecture class – Basic Structural Design. Note there are no notes, lectures, problems, etc. How the heck am I going to design that big fat Greek support column?
Talk about detrimental reliance.

[equalizer]

[quote=bsrsharma]MIT has free Open Course Ware

on a variety of topics. Anybody can learn for free what MIT students learn after paying six figure tuition!

http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm%5B/quote%5D
MIT’s offering is woefully inadequate – most courses lack answer sets, there is no feedback mechanism, chat, user comments.
The name OPEN is in their title, but appears to be in name only, i.e., you have to be MIT material if you hope to get anything out of the class.

It came out with great fanfare 10 years ago, but needs someone like Khan to run the place. Yeah, merge Khan Academy into MIT open course and then I could learn from MIT Architecture class – Basic Structural Design. Note there are no notes, lectures, problems, etc. How the heck am I going to design that big fat Greek support column?
Talk about detrimental reliance.

[equalizer]

[quote=bsrsharma]MIT has free Open Course Ware

on a variety of topics. Anybody can learn for free what MIT students learn after paying six figure tuition!

http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm%5B/quote%5D
MIT’s offering is woefully inadequate – most courses lack answer sets, there is no feedback mechanism, chat, user comments.
The name OPEN is in their title, but appears to be in name only, i.e., you have to be MIT material if you hope to get anything out of the class.

It came out with great fanfare 10 years ago, but needs someone like Khan to run the place. Yeah, merge Khan Academy into MIT open course and then I could learn from MIT Architecture class – Basic Structural Design. Note there are no notes, lectures, problems, etc. How the heck am I going to design that big fat Greek support column?
Talk about detrimental reliance.

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