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Khan describes his approach as "flipping the classroom" where kids would watch Khan's lectures at home or during lecture time at school, and then have a teacher

by psbp 13y ago

Khan describes his approach as "flipping the classroom" where kids would watch Khan's lectures at home or during lecture time at school, and then have a teacher who implemented activities and clarified any confusion with the material. I think it's a much preferable approach than one where kids are herded through concepts and tests.

bluecalm 13y ago
And not only kids. I remember from my univ days (comp sci) we have this algorithm and data structures course. Typical lecture (2 hours) went like this: -introduce some completely new (for most of the audience) algorithm or a data structure -start doing advanced analysis of its complexity in various cases (or in case of data structure costs of various operations) The problem with that is that when you encounter something new you usually need some time to get familiar with it, to play around with it for a while to get intuitive grasp of what that thing is and what properties it has. Without it it's very difficult to follow any advanced analysis because you probably don't even fully understand how the thing works for various inputs/doing various operations. As it was, 75% of the lecture was too difficult to follow for most of the audience which showed (most people zoned out and just mindlessly taking notes). It would be much better if home assignment before the lecture was to read some theory and maybe try to implement the algorithm/data structure to see what problems you encounter and then you would come to the lecture with specific questions to answer and understanding what may constitute a hard part. This flipping approach makes a lot of sense to me. It's similar to learning by doing: you first get some very basic understanding and then try to do things and learn along. Traditional approach on the other hand is similar to reading several 500p+ books about OOP and Java and not writing a single line of code along the way.

by psbp 13y ago

bluecalm 13y ago

And not only kids. I remember from my univ days (comp sci) we have this algorithm and data structures course. Typical lecture (2 hours) went like this: -introduce some completely new (for most of the audience) algorithm or a data structure -start doing advanced analysis of its complexity in various cases (or in case of data structure costs of various operations) The problem with that is that when you encounter something new you usually need some time to get familiar with it, to play around with it for a while to get intuitive grasp of what that thing is and what properties it has. Without it it's very difficult to follow any advanced analysis because you probably don't even fully understand how the thing works for various inputs/doing various operations. As it was, 75% of the lecture was too difficult to follow for most of the audience which showed (most people zoned out and just mindlessly taking notes). It would be much better if home assignment before the lecture was to read some theory and maybe try to implement the algorithm/data structure to see what problems you encounter and then you would come to the lecture with specific questions to answer and understanding what may constitute a hard part. This flipping approach makes a lot of sense to me. It's similar to learning by doing: you first get some very basic understanding and then try to do things and learn along. Traditional approach on the other hand is similar to reading several 500p+ books about OOP and Java and not writing a single line of code along the way.