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Hobby programmers are making a big difference right now, helping out Khan Academy by contributing exercises. The whole thing is open source: http://github.com/

by kamens 15y ago

Hobby programmers are making a big difference right now, helping out Khan Academy by contributing exercises. The whole thing is open source: http://github.com/khan/khan-exercises http://github.com/khan/khan-exercises We've had people who claim to have never been professional programmers come in and create impressive exercises that thousands of students are using daily to fill gaps in algebra, trig, calculus, etc.

jpulgarin 15y ago
For example: http://www.khanacademy.org/exercises?exid=derivative_intuition http://www.khanacademy.org/exercises?exid=derivative_intuiti...
- capnrefsmmat 15y ago
  That's brilliant. I may need to start recommending these to my students.
capnrefsmmat 15y ago
Sweet. Does the Khan Academy plan to incorporate interactive simulations into its curriculum? I'd imagine they'd be very valuable in fields like physics, where concepts aren't particularly transparent unless you get to play with them for a while. Here's a couple examples of the sort of thing I mean. Along with another physicist, we've made a complete special relativity simulator (still rather beta, though -- UI needs improvement, and the demos don't have much explanation): http://schroedingers-hat.github.com/jsphys/relativity/relativity.html http://schroedingers-hat.github.com/jsphys/relativity/relati... There's some premade demos, and the goal is to make it embeddable so it can be used along with a video or text to illustrate a point. I've also done a bit of an interactive tutorial on wave interference, where you can play with waves to see the result: http://schroedingers-hat.github.com/jsphys/waves/wave_summation.html http://schroedingers-hat.github.com/jsphys/waves/wave_summat... Eventually I'd like to finish off these simulations and use them to teach, as part of a complete curriculum. There's been some past efforts (with Java applets, for instance), but nothing integrated into a curriculum. Someday...
- kamens 15y ago
  Yes yes yes. We're: A) taking small steps every day to make our exercises more and more interactive (see @jpulgarin's link below) B) thinking about longer-term projects, simulations, whatever you want to call 'em. We welcome anybody to step in and blow the doors off our current exercise framework with a full-fledged simulation of some sort.

by kamens 15y ago

jpulgarin 15y ago

For example: http://www.khanacademy.org/exercises?exid=derivative_intuition http://www.khanacademy.org/exercises?exid=derivative_intuiti...

capnrefsmmat 15y ago
That's brilliant. I may need to start recommending these to my students.

capnrefsmmat 15y ago

Sweet. Does the Khan Academy plan to incorporate interactive simulations into its curriculum? I'd imagine they'd be very valuable in fields like physics, where concepts aren't particularly transparent unless you get to play with them for a while. Here's a couple examples of the sort of thing I mean. Along with another physicist, we've made a complete special relativity simulator (still rather beta, though -- UI needs improvement, and the demos don't have much explanation): http://schroedingers-hat.github.com/jsphys/relativity/relativity.html http://schroedingers-hat.github.com/jsphys/relativity/relati... There's some premade demos, and the goal is to make it embeddable so it can be used along with a video or text to illustrate a point. I've also done a bit of an interactive tutorial on wave interference, where you can play with waves to see the result: http://schroedingers-hat.github.com/jsphys/waves/wave_summation.html http://schroedingers-hat.github.com/jsphys/waves/wave_summat... Eventually I'd like to finish off these simulations and use them to teach, as part of a complete curriculum. There's been some past efforts (with Java applets, for instance), but nothing integrated into a curriculum. Someday...

kamens 15y ago
Yes yes yes. We're: A) taking small steps every day to make our exercises more and more interactive (see @jpulgarin's link below) B) thinking about longer-term projects, simulations, whatever you want to call 'em. We welcome anybody to step in and blow the doors off our current exercise framework with a full-fledged simulation of some sort.