I am looking at the Kahn discussion from the outside since I have been out of the classroom for several years. I admit my first look was one of dissapointment as it does appear to be procedural. It does a good job of procedural, however. They seem to get the math right. Were it riddled with errors, it would deserve severs criticism.
I am once again impressed by P.J.'s take on this and it got me to thinking about print paterials that are similar.
I am willing to bet, if I beleived in betting, that most of you who are over thirty posses(ed) copies of Schaum's outline for something. Calculus was a big seller. There was not much more than worked out examples, but many students found tham very helpful. I suppose they still exist. They served a purpose. I think there was a similar product for novels, Cliff's Notes, I think. Cliff's Notes presented a summary of books like War and Peace in thirty pages. This was certainly not the same as reading War and Peace, but it did help some students wade through the novel and keep track of who was who and what was going on. Scahum's did the same thing for math and science. No one that I know ever used one as a replacement for a textbook, but thousands of students learned important procedures from them.
Am I too far from being accurate to say that Kahn Academy presentations are a digital version of Cliff's Notes/ Schaum's outline, or am I missing something important?
By the way, I found Scham's usefull as a source of worked out examples. I could give my students one of their problems to work without having to create one and work it out to makes sure it "worked out nice".
Yeah, I think the big difference is that nobody (or almost nobody) would suggest that you should learn math from a Schaum's outline; they would say you should use them for a little review or some extra practice. On the other hand, there seem to be many people suggesting that Khan Academy should essentially be the curriculum.
ReplyDeleteI am in complete agreement with Joshua!
ReplyDeleteI have started to create some videos about a month ago, originally doing some questions from the textbook that kids were having trouble with during their exam revision. My recent videos (eg on Percent Operations) are intended to be a supplement to what we do in class.
ReplyDeleteI am hoping that my videos will be used by students who didn’t quite ‘get it’ in class, and by those that benefit from seeing something a 2nd (or 3rd or ...) time, and by students who missed one or more lessons, and by students when they are revising for the end-of-term exam. And by parents who would like to help their kids but are a bit rusty on the maths.
The nature of such videos is for them to be worked examples similar to questions in the textbook exercise sets. Though down the track I would like to start making some videos that are more open-ended and investigative in their approach.
So the original article (and this one) is spot-on when stating that such videos don’t replace the teacher, but supplement what teachers do.
My videos can be found at: http://bit.ly/rexboggs
I am still working on improving my presentation (and have a long way to go), so feel free to view a few and give me some suggestions. I can be reached by email at rexboggs5@optusnet.com.au
Rex Boggs