As a grad student I've TA'd several first-year courses and run into what is produced by, what independent studies tend to agree, is one of the best high-school systems in one of the best provinces in one of the best countries in the world for math and physics education. To be blunt, students are frequently taught things that are just plain wrong. Not short-cuts or half-truths. Not nit-picks like the slope mentioned in the article. Things that they should never have been taught at all. Whether it's bad text-books or teachers who majored in psychology being roped into teaching math, even one of the best high-school systems in the world doesn't get it right all the time.
I haven't viewed any videos from Khan academy, but I think a public repository of lectures that are rigorously checked for correctness can only be a good thing. Is that what Khan's academy really is though? Teachers are trained to engage young minds. Is it realistic to expect flawlessly correct lessons from someone with this background after just two weeks of immersion in a given topic, especially when reference materials (e.g. highschool textbooks) are so often riddled with mistakes? If you're teaching math or physics, why not collaborate with a mathematician or physicist? Let Khan's teachers handle how to structure lessons and provide engagement while experts in their field provide the material. There are plenty of experts out there who would jump at the chance to help, if only to save themselves from headaches when teaching first-year courses!
I also think people often overlook the fact that Khan Academy isn't really meant to be a revolution for the worlds privileged students. What KA really does is provide access to learning materials to people all over the world who do not have access to good teachers. People like to point out that recorded lectures do not provide the interactive element that real teachers do, and that's absolutely true. However, there is no substitute for homework. To learn math, one must do math. No amount of interactiveness can change that. If KA provides good exercises along with its lectures then it could indeed provide disadvantaged (but motivated) students with a road to academic success anywhere in the world.
Care to give examples of the wrong stuff being taught?
Anyway, I agree with you on KA. My big thing is, and I think Khan is an awesome, amazing, but when we get down to brass tacks does KA help students really "get it done?" I don't know.
I feel like there's always all this talk about Khan Academy and how great it is and all of this. But if you get down to it and watch the videos for hours, not just talk about watching them, how much is it helping? Maybe it is but I've showed it to a lot of people and have tried, and this is just my anecdote, to get people to learn via KA and their results haven't been amazing or anything.
But there's no reason it can't improve and get better. I just get this feeling that we have all collective gone "OMGZ MATH VIDEOS!!!!!!!" and haven't done a critical examination.
It's not designed to be a replacement for traditional teaching though. It's an additional supplement. In hiS TED talk Khan gives details of how teachers are using it as homework, freeing up class time for more interactive discussion. It seemed like an interesting pattern to me but I have no experience with it do I can't comment on how effective it is.
> Care to give examples of the wrong stuff being taught?
That glass is liquid and old panes of it are thicker on the bottom because it flowed. (The definition of a 'solid' is a bit technical, but panes of glass do not flow.)
That raindrops have a 'raindrop' shape. (No. Wrong. Not possible to salvage this one, as it is entirely incorrect.)
Also a good argument to counter the "why is it thicker at the bottem then?" point - if you were incapable of producing perfectly flat glass, just as they were back then, and you wanted to put this glass into a window - which side would you have pointing up?
> I was made aware of the fallacy of the glass flows myth many years ago by the late great glass chemist, Nick Labino. Nick offered this simple analogy, "...if the windows found in early Colonial American homes were thicker at the bottom than the top because of "flow" then the glass found in Egyptian Tombs should be a puddle."
> Many years ago, Dr. Chuck Kurkjian told me that an acquaintance of his had estimated how fast—actually, how slowly—glasses would flow. The calculation showed that if a plate of glass a meter tall and a centimeter thick was placed in an upright position at room temperature, the time required for the glass to flow down so as to thicken 10 angstrom units at the bottom (a change the size of only a few atoms) would theoretically be about the same as the age of the universe: close to ten billion years.
Which is obviously completely reasonable in retrospect.
I guess my point was that it's just as likely for a teacher to accidentally feed you misinformation as it is for KA. More likely even, given that KA is transparent and open for scrutinization.
I haven't viewed any videos from Khan academy, but I think a public repository of lectures that are rigorously checked for correctness can only be a good thing. Is that what Khan's academy really is though? Teachers are trained to engage young minds. Is it realistic to expect flawlessly correct lessons from someone with this background after just two weeks of immersion in a given topic, especially when reference materials (e.g. highschool textbooks) are so often riddled with mistakes? If you're teaching math or physics, why not collaborate with a mathematician or physicist? Let Khan's teachers handle how to structure lessons and provide engagement while experts in their field provide the material. There are plenty of experts out there who would jump at the chance to help, if only to save themselves from headaches when teaching first-year courses!
I also think people often overlook the fact that Khan Academy isn't really meant to be a revolution for the worlds privileged students. What KA really does is provide access to learning materials to people all over the world who do not have access to good teachers. People like to point out that recorded lectures do not provide the interactive element that real teachers do, and that's absolutely true. However, there is no substitute for homework. To learn math, one must do math. No amount of interactiveness can change that. If KA provides good exercises along with its lectures then it could indeed provide disadvantaged (but motivated) students with a road to academic success anywhere in the world.