Pros
There are many positive aspects to the Khan Academy. It is a great supplement to subjects, especially math, that students are having trouble in. The more times a student is presented a lesson by different approaches, the more likely they are to understand the lesson. This student in the Caribbean was at the bottom of her math class and was recommended the Khan Academy by her mother. She used it to help her pass her Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Exam (CAPE) in Pure Mathematics. The Khan Academy is also an opportunity for students to explore a subject further than their grade level. Todd Borden, a parent and high school teacher, wrote as a guest in the student newspaper of Dos Pueblos High School in Goleta, CA, "I don’t believe it will be possible for teachers, or administrators, or school boards, or state boards, or colleges to tell students what they need to know and when they will learn it anymore."
Teachers can use the Khan Academy in their classroom and track students' progress in the lessons. This would be beneficial to know where each student is in their learning and at which lessons they had the most difficulty.
Khan Academy is great for preschoolers, too. Watch this video of a four-year old using Khan Academy.
Cons
While the Khan Academy has many benefits, it definitely has some weaknesses, too. Tony Bates, a consultant in e-learning and distance education, presents a criticism in his critique of the Khan Academy.
"As someone who struggles with math, the Khan Academy would seem perfect for me. My problem though is I don’t know where to begin. Just jumping at random into a video suddenly makes me aware that I need lots of prior knowledge before I can understand this video, but there’s no help on that. Also, where’s the feedback? If I still don’t understand after watching the video several times and doing the exercises, what do I do?"
In Sal Khan's intro video on the Khan Academy homepage, he states that teachers have told him that they are assigning the videos for homework and have the students work the problems in class that they normally would have assigned for homework. This sounds like a great idea, but it cannot become widespread use until there is equal access to technology for all students. Even if a public school system puts a tablet or laptop in the hands of every student, all students still do not have Internet access at home.
Another downside of using the Khan Academy is that there are glitches in technology that cause it not to work at times. When I first tried to access some of the video lessons, the website was down and it stayed down for almost two hours. As with all technology use in the classroom, it's great when it works but there always needs to be a backup plan.
In conclusion, I believe that the Khan Academy is a useful tool for education. I do not believe it should replace the classroom teacher. There is much to be said about face-to-face learning and discussion for a student with their teacher and their peers. I think it is a good supplement to classroom teaching and would provide excellent remedial help. From it's website, many of the success stories were from adult learners who needed to brush up on their math skills before returning to college. The Khan Academy is another resource for the motivated learner to expand their opportunities in learning with technology.
Sarah, that was an excellent post explaining the pros and cons of Khan Academy. I especially like the video of the little girl adding and using the tools provided on Khan Academy. But, I agree with you when you say that there is much to be said about face-to-face learning and I believe the little girl could have done that same thing if taught that method in the classroom. Khan Academy is useful in education but again I say, in agreement with you, only as a tool.
ReplyDeleteHey Sarah, great job on your review. I love that you included videos! I think that Khan Academy is a great supplement for teachers to use but like you said, limited access to technology will make it unaccessable to some students. I hope that access to technology in our classrooms in the future will be better. I relly believe that we are moving in that direction and we can use sites like this to guide our students. As for Tony Bate's review, it may have been done before Khan Academy set up its math placement test on the opening page. Now a student can go to the test and after taking it Khan Academy will tell them exactly where they need to start. Also, the search field works very good if the student knows the name of the topic or skill that they need to work on. I used this sight extensively for Pre-Cal and Chemistry as an undergrad and I never had a problem finding videos on the exact topics we were using in class. I found it to be a very valuable tool for a college student. With that said, I do think that teachers will need to guide younger students more specifically and hopefully they will be able to do that with a computer in the classroom.
ReplyDelete"Theses problems provide immediate feedback…" These, not Theses.
ReplyDelete"In Sal Khan's intro video on the Khan Academy homepage, he states that teachers have told him that they are assigning the videos for homework and have the students work the problems in class that they normally would have assigned for homework." This is refereed to as flipping the class.
"...all students still do not have Internet access at home." And never will. Does that mean we should never move forward? I don't think so.
"I do not believe it should replace the classroom teacher." Do you think that is its intent? In addition, research conducted by Sugata Mitra and others indicates that children can learn quite successfully without teachers. Take a look Mitra's prize winning TED talk, two other TED talks by Mitra, and the research on Minimally Invasive Education.
Dr. Strange,
DeleteAfter watching the TED talks and reading about Sugata Mitra's hole-in-the-wall experiment, my perspective has changed on how children can learn without a teacher. I found it interesting that the children even learned English in the process of experimenting with the computer. This makes me want to let my own preschool children experiment more with our technology.
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ReplyDelete