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Completely agreed (on Khan Academy team). If you check out the video from that article (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hw5k98GV7po http://www.youtube.com/watch

by kamens 16y ago

Completely agreed (on Khan Academy team). If you check out the video from that article (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hw5k98GV7po http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hw5k98GV7po), you'll see a lot of the strides we're making in the areas of individual assessment (mathematics only at the moment), guidance (full breakdown of hints for every problem we dynamically generate), alternate explanations where comprehension lacks (list of all relevant videos next to every problem the student encounters), encouragement (badges and other game mechanics), and more. As you said: it's ambitious, and we're far from the end. But we're making progress every day and seeing extremely positive reactions in all the teachers and students from our pilot programs.

dwc 16y ago
I do think the videos are excellent, and I'm very encouraged that you're in the process of addressing these other things. If you keep the same commitment to quality that you've done so far then you'll do just fine. Edit: I just watched the video and I am seriously impressed. This is the right direction. I will be trying this out soon.
cwb 16y ago
Indeed. Video lectures can be helpful -- in particular for mechanics and manipulation -- but no reason to be overly excited (there was great hope for educational use of TV in its early days, unless I'm mistaken). A good book is usually more effective/efficient if you have patience to actually study it. What few people seem to get is that we don't need to fix education, we need to fix learning. And for that, we need exercises (as any mathematician would tell you; also see deliberate practice). It turns out digital exercises afford a range of interesting opportunities (both the video and article highlight several) for making learning more effective. Interfaces can change relatively easily so there'll be a bunch of experiments. The exercise model is harder. And more interesting. (I've been trying to figure that out for a while now and discovered a bunch of local minima.) I'm very curious to see how this exercise model works out -- it seems promising from what I can tell. Regardless of how this works out (not to say I think it won't), this development will raise the bar and the expectations -- both of which has been too low for too long. That is incredibly valuable.

by kamens 16y ago

dwc 16y ago

I do think the videos are excellent, and I'm very encouraged that you're in the process of addressing these other things. If you keep the same commitment to quality that you've done so far then you'll do just fine. Edit: I just watched the video and I am seriously impressed. This is the right direction. I will be trying this out soon.

cwb 16y ago

Indeed. Video lectures can be helpful -- in particular for mechanics and manipulation -- but no reason to be overly excited (there was great hope for educational use of TV in its early days, unless I'm mistaken). A good book is usually more effective/efficient if you have patience to actually study it. What few people seem to get is that we don't need to fix education, we need to fix learning. And for that, we need exercises (as any mathematician would tell you; also see deliberate practice). It turns out digital exercises afford a range of interesting opportunities (both the video and article highlight several) for making learning more effective. Interfaces can change relatively easily so there'll be a bunch of experiments. The exercise model is harder. And more interesting. (I've been trying to figure that out for a while now and discovered a bunch of local minima.) I'm very curious to see how this exercise model works out -- it seems promising from what I can tell. Regardless of how this works out (not to say I think it won't), this development will raise the bar and the expectations -- both of which has been too low for too long. That is incredibly valuable.