

How Khan Academy Is Changing the Rules of Education - spicyj
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/07/ff_khan/all/1

======
tokenadult
For a long, long time it has been possible to organize classes so that
students work at their own pace,

<http://learninfreedom.org/age_grading_bad.html>

and indeed my mother must have learned that way in the rural one-room school
for grades 1 through 8 that she attended during the Great Depression. It's
good that now pervasive technology is helping teachers relearn that children
who occupy the same classroom don't all have to literally be "on the same
page" at the same time. That allows more able (or more motivated) learners to
move ahead of the meager expectations of the United States curriculum,

<http://educationnext.org/teaching-math-to-the-talented/>

an improvement that is long overdue.

"Critics argue that Khan’s videos and software encourage uncreative,
repetitive drilling."

I agree that the Khan Academy exercises currently are just that, exercises,
and have suggested here on HN that the Khan Academy exercise writers do the
hard work of building genuine online problem sets.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2760663>

Fixing the nature of the online exercises and turning them more into problems
would help with one defect noted in the article: "Of course, kids who’ve grown
up on computers are quick to spot the weaknesses in Khan’s system. They
discovered ways to cheat on the drills: In the logarithms unit, for example,
they noticed that the third multiple-choice answer was always the right one."
But as the article points out throughout, what online reporting and pratice
has allowed is for children who are already attending school anyhow to use
their class time to discuss what are actual PROBLEMS for each learner, with
interaction with a live teacher, saving drill for times of the day when the
teacher is not available. That's not a bad improvement at all.

I should mention that in my own family we spend money on the ALEKS program

<http://www.aleks.com/>

for our homeschooled children, and we find that very helpful. It has many of
the same strengths of the Khan Academy program (but is not free, nor does it
have audio explanations) with a more complete syllabus and more challenging
problems. The "knowledge spaces" theory underlying ALEKS

<http://www.aleks.com/about_aleks/Science_Behind_ALEKS.pdf>

is quite interesting and will probably have to be reflected by any complete
K-12 mathematics program anywhere in the world. None of our children actively
enjoy ALEKS, but they acknowledge that it is helpful for learning math, and I
teach about the more cool aspects of math in the in-person math classes I
teach through my local nonprofit organization.

~~~
wisty
Cognitive psychologists (unlike education PhDs, who rarely have a clue) argue
that drills create a solid cognitive foundation for students to apply the
material to other areas. "Deep" problem solving is a good IQ test, but doesn't
improve IQ. "Shallow" problem solving lets students master the elements of the
subject, which does increase their intelligence.

~~~
psykotic
> "Deep" problem solving is a good IQ test, but doesn't improve IQ. "Shallow"
> problem solving lets students master the elements of the subject, which does
> increase their intelligence.

As you have defined the terms here, what you say makes no sense to me. It
seems to imply as a direct corollary that solving deep problems does not make
you any better at deep problems, whereas solving shallow problems does make
you better at deep problems. I can believe the last half so long as it is only
a supplementary form of training (a crude analogy might be of a virtuoso
musician practicing scales), but the first statement beggars belief and is
contrary to all my experience.

~~~
wisty
Professional mathematicians peak in their 20s, just after they stop solving
"shallow" questions, and start poring over "deep" ones. Pianists peak just
before their fingers are unable to physically hit the keys at the rate they
used to. But then, unlike pianists, professional mathematicians have something
of a conceit that playing the same scale a second time is a trivial waste of
time.

Of course, intelligent people are drawn to "deep" problems. Being willing and
able to solve "deep" problems is practically the definition of academic
intelligence. Actually, most people like "deep" problems more than shallow
ones, but only intelligent people have the mastery of the basic techniques
required to takle the deeper problems.

I'll admit this is all very much [citation needed] stuff, though. I'm not
certain.

~~~
kenjackson
_Professional mathematicians peak in their 20s, just after they stop solving
"shallow" questions, and start poring over "deep" ones._

Citation? Wiles proved FLT at age 40. Perelman proved Poincare at age 39.
Richard Hamilton was 50 at the time.

But even with that great mathematicians START doing deep problems early in
life. By the time their 25 they've been doing deep problems for a decade at
least. Terrence Tao, for example, was doing calculus at age 7. He got a gold
at IMO at age 13. These great mathematicians like Tao, Goedel, Neuman have
long gone beyond grill and drill math before age 20. So the notion that they
just recently stopped solving shallow questions is absurd.

~~~
wisty
Lehman's Age and Achievement is the source of that meme. It may be downright
wrong, though.

------
ImperatorLunae
"Critics argue that Khan’s videos and software encourage uncreative,
repetitive drilling—and leave kids staring at screens instead of interacting
with real live teachers."

I don't know where these critics have been, but that description sums up most
of my math instruction in school.

~~~
invalidOrTaken
Amen. My math instructors were great---I can't say the same for the methods
they had to use.

------
edtechdev
I posted a comment there but it never showed up, I guess because it had some
links in it.

I mainly recommended reading some educational research that could help improve
the khan academy's work.

Especially research in math education.

See for example a report by Harold Wenglinsky called 'Does It Compute?" that
found much better learning gains when kids did exploratory math activities and
simulations and spreadsheets and so forth. When they did drill activities,
their performance actually decreased.
<http://www.ets.org/Media/Research/pdf/PICTECHNOLOG.pdf>

Then there are these two books (which are free online), the first of which I'd
recommend everyone interested in creating educational activities read:

How People Learn <http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=9853>

How Students Learn <http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=10126>

In math, it helps to use gestures and embodied analogies and representations
of many concepts. In other areas like science and history that helps, too, but
also students have a lot of strongly persistent misconceptions that have to be
brought out into the open in your videos or text, plus it helps to have
supplementary constructivist learning activities like simulations, games, and
modeling/design tools (including programming).

------
yters
The thing that revolutionized my learning was wanting to create computer
games. Not only does that motivate me to learn math, but it prompts me to
start developing my own theories of reality to test within games.

------
ph0rque
This article got me thinking about the constructivist theory of education...
and I realized that as a self-taught programmer, this theory hasn't worked for
me except in very limited ways. I think constructivism works within a certain
radius of mastered knowledge. No amount of 'fumbling around' is going to allow
me to write a parser, or an operating system. Even for something that I have
(or had) the motivation to do, which is to write a very simple learning game
[0], the lack of knowledge was a show-stopper.

I think constructivism works for tasks that are _just_ outside of your scope
of knowledge. So if I really wanted to create a rails app, I could do that,
since that's what I've been doing.

[0] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1032484>

------
dennisgorelik
"The idea is to invert the normal rhythms of school, so that lectures are
viewed on the kids’ own time and homework is done at school."

That's exactly right - there is no point for human teacher to do what video
can do better.

Human teacher show help students when they stuck during exercise.

------
jgamman
any ideas why this page crashed my ipad browser?

