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United States24701 Posts
I've been hearing for a while (originally from TL and recently from more and more sources) about Khan Academy and how it is a great learning resource that is free to use. There seems to be a lot of hype and love for this service.
What I don't get is why all the fuss? I took a look at it when it was first mentioned to me and thought something along the lines of:
- Hm, free videos explaining things. Cool enough.
- From the sampling I just did, these aren't that bad but aren't particularly good either.
- I see he's greatly expanding his library. All right
Based on what I hear people say about Khan Academy, you'd think my thoughts would have been more along the lines of:
- Wow, look at this comprehensive list of high quality videos!
- Wow, this has all the information I will need on topic X. This is such a great tool!
... and yet I still get the meh feeling when I take a look around the website. I don't plan on going into specifics based on my observations since this isn't intended to be an attack on the service, but rather an opportunity to learn what I'm missing. I'm assuming I'm not completely wrong, but haven't taken a close enough look to get the true picture of Khan Academy.
What is your opinion on Khan Academy. If you are not a fan, why? Is it different from my reasoning so far. If you are a big proponent of it, please explain why clearly so I can understand! If it's a great tool and I am just not aware of it (due to a skewed perception) I'd like to find out. Feel free to link to example of good/bad stuff on the website if that helps.
Thanks, this has been bugging me for a while now and I'd like to get to the bottom of it!
 
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1. I think some of the charm for teachers is that it is a place for their students to find a second explanation of stuff they didn't understand in class, or if they missed a class, there is an easy to find video of a similar lecture. It would be a lot of work for a teacher to have a video of every one of their classes, and Khan has then available in some sort of order.
2. There are practice problems easily accessed so if you want to refresh your memory on something, you don't have to buy a book or do lots of searching online, you can just skim through the video, then do 2-3 problems.
3. For teachers, you can create a group for your class where each kid has a login, and you could assign them a video to watch, or problems to do. This lets them have a break from the textbook, could allow for you to help catch up kids who were sick, or missed class, or other things. You can then track your student's progress online since KA keeps track of stuff they did.
4. A lot of people find Khan's teaching to be very intuitive.
Overall, I don't think that KA provides anything specifically amazing, the teaching is good, the site is alright, the problems are good, everything is good. It's the combination of all these free organized resources that are decent which makes it so popular. Like you said, it is kinda meh, the hype comes from the summation of lots of mehs
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My experience (from the student side) is that since students spend quite a bit of time online nowadays, it's easier for them to just go to a centralized source of videos (and then go on facebook right afterwards and continue to complain about having too much homework) rather than to grab their book and open it up for about the same amount of material but less convenient.
Then again, I personally don't find KA to live up to its hype, nor do I have a terribly great opinion of how people go about learning things at my school, so take it how you will
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depends on where u take your undergrads, mostly. i've been at both a good school and a shitty as fuck one , and khanacademy is a blessing from the gods for the latter
also, it may just be the fact its in video format. young people of this day and age need lots of stimulation. the hardest part about studying is trying to not fall asleep or getting bored and checking facebook and the "quality" of the videos is they are upbeat and significantly more entertaining and involved than a professor droning on and on about a proof(which i don't mind personally) or reading verbatim from a textbook.
Also , teachers often go way too fast and blow past something that is necessary to know for the next problem, or concept so u spend the entire lecture scratching your head and writing down stuff and not really having a clue of what's going on.
With khan, u can simply pause the video, or rewind and rewatch something twice or more till u finally go "OHHH" and move on.
also, what are you comparing this to? mit courseware? there's not that many other video tutorials , esp organized as such. , afaik
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I love Khan Academy because my complete fool of a physics teacher last year failed to teach me anything whatsoever. I still managed to pull off a B in that course with use of Khan Academy and my own study.
Also, how can you not be impressed by the amount of videos? They are all done by one guy I think.
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On September 04 2012 00:55 micronesia wrote:
"Wow, this has all the information I will need on topic X. This is such a great tool!"
... and yet I still get the meh feeling when I take a look around the website.
Yeah because you are not looking for the content of the videos, you are looking at the video itself, that makes you go 'meh'.
Imagine you were thinking: 'Damn, I didn't understand what my teacher taught me today, and I have no idea how to figure it out myself.'
Then you look around Khan Academy. You find videos that explain the topic step by step, while you can repeat each section as often as you want, at any time of the day. And when you're done and you've understood everything, THEN you'll think: "Wow, this has all the information I will need on topic X. This is such a great tool!"
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United States24701 Posts
Thanks guys for your input. I'll respond specifically to a few things you said, but it generally seems like the 'good' thing about KA is that it is such a comprehensive list of videos. The quality of the videos seems second fiddle to this.
It seems to me like the quality of teaching isn't so much good as the comprehensive nature of the website makes it simply better than any online alternatives. Nobody who is really good at teaching in this manner has created a comprehensive list of videos on various subjects, so KA is king.
On September 04 2012 01:14 Trezeguet wrote:
1. I think some of the charm for teachers is that it is a place for their students to find a second explanation of stuff they didn't understand in class, or if they missed a class, there is an easy to find video of a similar lecture. It would be a lot of work for a teacher to have a video of every one of their classes, and Khan has then available in some sort of order.
2. There are practice problems easily accessed so if you want to refresh your memory on something, you don't have to buy a book or do lots of searching online, you can just skim through the video, then do 2-3 problems.
3. For teachers, you can create a group for your class where each kid has a login, and you could assign them a video to watch, or problems to do. This lets them have a break from the textbook, could allow for you to help catch up kids who were sick, or missed class, or other things. You can then track your student's progress online since KA keeps track of stuff they did.
4. A lot of people find Khan's teaching to be very intuitive.
Overall, I don't think that KA provides anything specifically amazing, the teaching is good, the site is alright, the problems are good, everything is good. It's the combination of all these free organized resources that are decent which makes it so popular. Like you said, it is kinda meh, the hype comes from the summation of lots of mehs
I didn't find the teaching to be that good in the samples I looked at, but it probably is just much better than the crap you usually find online. I think your summary at the end of your post might be "it" more or less.
On September 04 2012 01:20 HeavOnEarth wrote:
depends on where u take your undergrads, mostly. i've been at both a good school and a shitty as fuck one , and khanacademy is a blessing from the gods for the latter
also, it may just be the fact its in video format. young people of this day and age need lots of stimulation. the hardest part about studying is trying to not fall asleep or getting bored and checking facebook and the "quality" of the videos is they are upbeat and significantly more entertaining and involved than a professor droning on and on about a proof(which i don't mind personally) or reading verbatim from a textbook.
Also , teachers often go way too fast and blow past something that is necessary to know for the next problem, or concept so u spend the entire lecture scratching your head and writing down stuff and not really having a clue of what's going on.
With khan, u can simply pause the video, or rewind and rewatch something twice or more till u finally go "OHHH" and move on.
also, what are you comparing this to? mit courseware? there's not that many other video tutorials , esp organized as such. , afaik
It sounds like you credit the popularity mostly to the simple fact that it's a comprehensive list of video lessons, rather than any particular special thing.
On September 04 2012 01:39 Thaniri wrote:
Also, how can you not be impressed by the amount of videos? They are all done by one guy I think.
The number of videos is massive, but that doesn't make them good. Again, I'm not saying they are bad necessarily, just that I don't understand the hype.
So what do you guys think... if a competing free service was made that's similar in nature to Khan Academy but has better teaching quality, would you be interested? I'd think some of you would answer "yes, but only once the entire lesson series is completed for my course." That might shed some light on why people like Khan Academy.
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Well, yes. What a stupid follow up question.
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United States24701 Posts
On September 04 2012 02:21 Thaniri wrote:
Well, yes. What a stupid follow up question.
It seems stupid to you, but not everyone would answer the same as you.
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I came for pictures of January cultivating the next generation Storks.
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I think I had the same impression as you did OP.
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I think a lot of the allure of Kahn Academy is solely the amount of content. On a per subject basis there are better individual options, such as university open course ware. However having one site that a lot of different people can point to just by nature makes it larger. Some people might not know where to go for university open course ware, or other similar high quality material. This is of course all in the context of searching for resources for learning a subject, rather than just gaining an overview.
So to answer your question, I would definitely use any competing resource that offered better quality, if it was complete, I needed it at the time, and I could find it at the time. But since I'm in sciences I'd probably be better off looking MIT ocw.
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I'm trying UReddit at the moment. It seems like a great resource for a small list of courses. The courses are very fast and each can be done in a day. I think I'd only gain something if I were learning something I already had experience in, but there's a lot that formal education can give you.
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It helped me a lot to study for first year university physics. I found that most of the problems we had to solve on exams or otherwise tested for relatively the same understanding, so having the videos explain the concepts to me in a more straightforward manner than my professor or TA was great. It was a good supplement to what I picked up in lecture.
I never tried their actual classroom aspect of their website. Currently going through Coursera and trying out the self taught assignment/lecture combo.
Also this article seems relevant on the topic of online higher education:
http://blog.oreillyschool.com/2011/12/my-thoughts-on-codecademy.html
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obese and micronesia I've definitely had the same experience. Lots of people have recommended it, and I'm not even trying to be arrogant or anything (I'm no intellectual beast), but it really feels like the videos are there for laymen or people who have very little understanding of the subject matter and are not particularly adept at learning. In other words, I also thought that the videos are quite dumbed-down, and that they're not particularly useful for those who want to gain an understanding for topics covered in class. I've tried them a few times and they failed to explain things my teacher didn't try to explain. Definitely a quantity over quality sort of idea, I think.
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On September 04 2012 05:12 shindigs wrote:It helped me a lot to study for first year university physics. I found that most of the problems we had to solve on exams or otherwise tested for relatively the same understanding, so having the videos explain the concepts to me in a more straightforward manner than my professor or TA was great. It was a good supplement to what I picked up in lecture. I never tried their actual classroom aspect of their website. Currently going through Coursera and trying out the self taught assignment/lecture combo. Also this article seems relevant on the topic of online higher education: http://blog.oreillyschool.com/2011/12/my-thoughts-on-codecademy.html
Ahh. Coursera is for multiple Universities. My Uni just recently added some courses for it and just sent me an email so I thought it was just for us.
I think the biggest problem with these courses is that I don't have enough desire to go through them and I can't will myself to.
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True. As long as I'm on the Internet I'll be inclined to browse it and waste time while I'm trying to do work; more so when the coursework is actually online.
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Videos combine the advantages of live lectures and books. Human voice has higher information density than written text and books and videos make review much easier than live lectures.
From what I've seen the videos are pretty decent. Mostly looked at Multivariable Calculus, Linear Algebra and Differential Equations FWIW. Maybe they are worse than most lectures at an above average university but the format means that most people will still get more out of them.
I haven't looked at the exercise platform that much but again the big advantage is the format rather than the content. Self-paced exercises and demanding proficiency is just so much better than what you have in most High Schools where ~50% of the kids are either ahead or behind the pace and don't get much out of problem solving sessions in class.
Basically, I think individualized learning with average pedagogy is better than mass-teaching with great pedagogy.
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On September 04 2012 02:12 micronesia wrote:Thanks guys for your input. I'll respond specifically to a few things you said, but it generally seems like the 'good' thing about KA is that it is such a comprehensive list of videos. The quality of the videos seems second fiddle to this. It seems to me like the quality of teaching isn't so much good as the comprehensive nature of the website makes it simply better than any online alternatives. Nobody who is really good at teaching in this manner has created a comprehensive list of videos on various subjects, so KA is king. Show nested quote +On September 04 2012 01:14 Trezeguet wrote:
1. I think some of the charm for teachers is that it is a place for their students to find a second explanation of stuff they didn't understand in class, or if they missed a class, there is an easy to find video of a similar lecture. It would be a lot of work for a teacher to have a video of every one of their classes, and Khan has then available in some sort of order.
2. There are practice problems easily accessed so if you want to refresh your memory on something, you don't have to buy a book or do lots of searching online, you can just skim through the video, then do 2-3 problems.
3. For teachers, you can create a group for your class where each kid has a login, and you could assign them a video to watch, or problems to do. This lets them have a break from the textbook, could allow for you to help catch up kids who were sick, or missed class, or other things. You can then track your student's progress online since KA keeps track of stuff they did.
4. A lot of people find Khan's teaching to be very intuitive.
Overall, I don't think that KA provides anything specifically amazing, the teaching is good, the site is alright, the problems are good, everything is good. It's the combination of all these free organized resources that are decent which makes it so popular. Like you said, it is kinda meh, the hype comes from the summation of lots of mehs I didn't find the teaching to be that good in the samples I looked at, but it probably is just much better than the crap you usually find online. I think your summary at the end of your post might be "it" more or less. Show nested quote +On September 04 2012 01:20 HeavOnEarth wrote:
depends on where u take your undergrads, mostly. i've been at both a good school and a shitty as fuck one , and khanacademy is a blessing from the gods for the latter
also, it may just be the fact its in video format. young people of this day and age need lots of stimulation. the hardest part about studying is trying to not fall asleep or getting bored and checking facebook and the "quality" of the videos is they are upbeat and significantly more entertaining and involved than a professor droning on and on about a proof(which i don't mind personally) or reading verbatim from a textbook.
Also , teachers often go way too fast and blow past something that is necessary to know for the next problem, or concept so u spend the entire lecture scratching your head and writing down stuff and not really having a clue of what's going on.
With khan, u can simply pause the video, or rewind and rewatch something twice or more till u finally go "OHHH" and move on.
also, what are you comparing this to? mit courseware? there's not that many other video tutorials , esp organized as such. , afaik It sounds like you credit the popularity mostly to the simple fact that it's a comprehensive list of video lessons, rather than any particular special thing. Show nested quote +On September 04 2012 01:39 Thaniri wrote:
Also, how can you not be impressed by the amount of videos? They are all done by one guy I think. The number of videos is massive, but that doesn't make them good. Again, I'm not saying they are bad necessarily, just that I don't understand the hype.
So what do you guys think... if a competing free service was made that's similar in nature to Khan Academy but has better teaching quality, would you be interested? I'd think some of you would answer "yes, but only once the entire lesson series is completed for my course." That might shed some light on why people like Khan Academy.
To go along with what you've said, try searching for a specific math explanation on youtube, it is amazing how many views those life leeching videos get.
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I think the Khan Academy videos are like meal shakes. It clearly doesn't compare to your local country club's massive breakfast buffet, but it's way better than 3 bowls of cereal.
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We're in the early stages of a revolution in the way education works. People are excited because Khan Academy seems very new and radical, even though it is not up to the quality of what we are really looking for.
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On September 04 2012 11:41 sam!zdat wrote:
We're in the early stages of a revolution in the way education works. People are excited because Khan Academy seems very new and radical, even though it is not up to the quality of what we are really looking for.
True, with the google grant and all that, this could be the beginning of a revolution in education.
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I think there are a few perks to the idea of the Khan Academy. First, is allows someone to learn at their own pace and at their own time. Second, the videos can be re-watched, paused, etc (unlike a real-time lecture). Third, someone can use these videos without shame because no one else has to know.
For myself, I was terrible at math in college - I got C's in calc 1 and 2. If I needed to suddenly remember how to do calculus, I could go watch these videos and re-teach myself (and probably actually understand) this time around.
Also, if you watch Khan's TED talk, here, he really envisions a completely different style of teaching in the future, which I think is really cool and totally spot on.
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United States24701 Posts
On September 05 2012 00:56 Zaranth wrote:I think there are a few perks to the idea of the Khan Academy. First, is allows someone to learn at their own pace and at their own time. Second, the videos can be re-watched, paused, etc (unlike a real-time lecture). Third, someone can use these videos without shame because no one else has to know. For myself, I was terrible at math in college - I got C's in calc 1 and 2. If I needed to suddenly remember how to do calculus, I could go watch these videos and re-teach myself (and probably actually understand) this time around. Also, if you watch Khan's TED talk, here, he really envisions a completely different style of teaching in the future, which I think is really cool and totally spot on.
Thanks for linking to the video.... a few very cool things here.
However, it mostly falls back on the quality of the actual videos, which I am concerned about. Most of all, the approach is very incompatible with certain educational philosophies (for example constructivists) which can potentially be very damaging if this new form of educating students really takes hold. In some cases this is still way better than the current alternatives, though.
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I looked around once for some math help but didn't find the video's particularly helpfull if I can recall correctly. It was about a year ago so things might've changed.
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The universities will adopt this model as an effective form of soft power and it won't matter about the quality of the old Khan Academy, because people will have forgotten about it
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I was having some hard time learning a relatively new software tool today. It was so frustrating that I didn't know who to ask about my problems. The resident expert at my work or the guys who manage the software or some online forums?
I hated when I felt like this in class because lectures went too fast and you didn't want to be that guy stopping the teacher every two minutes in a 100 person class to not get left behind in lecture. God forbid you zoned out. High school was so much better. There was this girl who always asked my physics teacher to stop and repeat concepts. She often chewed gum and texted, but she really wanted to learn and the teacher had the freedom to answer her. Back to University. After class whenever I go to talk to the professor, he'll have run off or ten people will be in front of me. TA's won't fucking reply to your questions till the week of or during the TA session and even during the session you get 4 minutes with them when you need fucking 30.
Video lectures solved the problem of zoning out in lecture because you could go back and watch sections again. But you no longer even had the option of asking the teacher questions with this method.
I'm really jealous of the new generation. They'll get access to personalized education and hopefully tools to combat our horrible education system, and they'll be able to start fresh with something tens of thousands of times better.
I like the ted talk. He mentions that he guarantees mastery. You can't just get a 60% and move on. Build on calc before you understand all of algebra. This is pretty cool. I didn't know khan was a comprehensive education system for at least math.
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an education is always a good thing, especially when its free.
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infinity21
Canada6683 Posts
I've been taking courses at coursera and I think the quality of the education ranges from pretty good to amazing. Although most courses only have time to introduce various topics, it is a good tool to motivate people to dig deeper into a topic by themselves.
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What classes on coursera did you take?
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infinity21
Canada6683 Posts
I've taken machine learning, natural language processing, software as a service, and currently taking web intelligence and big data. I didn't finish NLP due to rl commitments and SaaS due to losing interest but did finish ML.
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On September 05 2012 02:57 micronesia wrote:Show nested quote +On September 05 2012 00:56 Zaranth wrote:I think there are a few perks to the idea of the Khan Academy. First, is allows someone to learn at their own pace and at their own time. Second, the videos can be re-watched, paused, etc (unlike a real-time lecture). Third, someone can use these videos without shame because no one else has to know. For myself, I was terrible at math in college - I got C's in calc 1 and 2. If I needed to suddenly remember how to do calculus, I could go watch these videos and re-teach myself (and probably actually understand) this time around. Also, if you watch Khan's TED talk, here, he really envisions a completely different style of teaching in the future, which I think is really cool and totally spot on. Thanks for linking to the video.... a few very cool things here. However, it mostly falls back on the quality of the actual videos, which I am concerned about. Most of all, the approach is very incompatible with certain educational philosophies (for example constructivists) which can potentially be very damaging if this new form of educating students really takes hold. In some cases this is still way better than the current alternatives, though.
What new form? This lecture/practice style has been the norm for a long time in math education. Of course we would all like to see a more exploration based approach. It's not Khan's approach per se that's incompatible with constructivism but standards/testing based education as a whole.
edit: What Khan Academy does is the same old paradigm in a massively improved format. Having kids patch up their weaknesses before they move on is huge. Ideally you'd want them to understand the material in their own way, but just knowing that your students understand the prerequisits would be a huge improvement for most math teachers.
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What's your main gripe with Khan Academy? Sure, the videos may not be of great quality. Sure, they aren't substitutes for actual classes in school. But to me, the most important thing about it is that it's free. I appreciate and revel in the effort that this man puts in to help the people who want to learn. To answer your follow-up question, yes I would use a superior service to Khan Academy. Why not? Both are free, and when met with this competition, I'm sure Khan Academy would either step it's game up providing a better service for free, or provide a better, perhaps much more high-quality service for a certain amount. That decision would of course be influenced by his motivations behind creating the videos.
Some men just want to watch the world learn.
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United States24701 Posts
On September 05 2012 21:09 hypercube wrote:Show nested quote +On September 05 2012 02:57 micronesia wrote:On September 05 2012 00:56 Zaranth wrote:I think there are a few perks to the idea of the Khan Academy. First, is allows someone to learn at their own pace and at their own time. Second, the videos can be re-watched, paused, etc (unlike a real-time lecture). Third, someone can use these videos without shame because no one else has to know. For myself, I was terrible at math in college - I got C's in calc 1 and 2. If I needed to suddenly remember how to do calculus, I could go watch these videos and re-teach myself (and probably actually understand) this time around. Also, if you watch Khan's TED talk, here, he really envisions a completely different style of teaching in the future, which I think is really cool and totally spot on. Thanks for linking to the video.... a few very cool things here. However, it mostly falls back on the quality of the actual videos, which I am concerned about. Most of all, the approach is very incompatible with certain educational philosophies (for example constructivists) which can potentially be very damaging if this new form of educating students really takes hold. In some cases this is still way better than the current alternatives, though. What new form? This lecture/practice style has been the norm for a long time in math education. Of course we would all like to see a more exploration based approach. It's not Khan's approach per se that's incompatible with constructivism but standards/testing based education as a whole. edit: What Khan Academy does is the same old paradigm in a massively improved format. Having kids patch up their weaknesses before they move on is huge. Ideally you'd want them to understand the material in their own way, but just knowing that your students understand the prerequisits would be a huge improvement for most math teachers.
Standards/testing based education is not necessarily incompatible with constructivism. In some math classrooms it is as you say, and in some it is standards based, there is much testing, but initially the material is taught in such a way as to allow students to figure it all out themselves by building on prior knowledge.
On September 05 2012 21:19 Azera wrote:
What's your main gripe with Khan Academy? Sure, the videos may not be of great quality. Sure, they aren't substitutes for actual classes in school. But to me, the most important thing about it is that it's free. It's not that I think Khan Academy is a bad thing, just that I was confused why so many people think it's such a good thing.
There are lots of free learning resources on the internet that people as a whole don't care for which is why I wanted to ask how Khan Academy is different.
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Could you link me to some of these free learning sources?
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Okay so I'm going to be a cynic for awhile
Salman Khan's alma mater include MIT and Harvard. There, you have reputation.
His videos are easily found on YouTube should you google for the topics he has covered. There, you have ease of access.
So now, you combine reputation and ease of access. People will go, "Oh! This guy knows his shit, so he can teach me well! Fuck hitting the books for the test tomorrow! I'll watch this!" They then trick themselves into thinking that they're actually learning something online when they're in reality just dicking around the web.
But his reputation and ease of access is most probably why he's so popular. IMO he gave way to online course websites like Coursera (backed by Princeton and others) and edX (backed by Harvard, MIT, and others).
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The hype is due to the lack of alternative and the increased popularity among teachers.
From what I know, I think it's the first time that online courses are actually integrated in a classroom.
As a side note for the tech people on TL.net, the guy who created jQuery works at Khan academy !
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Lynda's not free but it's got lots of lectures. Some are available to... try out...and some can be found fully free.
http://www.lynda.com/
Why split up the open source education community with edx and coursera? They're just going to be beaten by a third larger competitor if they want to compete with each other. Openclass from Pearson is in production.
Question: When you learn something, how do you remember it. I learned C in University in first year but I am no longer comfortable writing programs with it. If someone asked me to program in C again I could probably pick it up quickly again.
Udacity looks like it's meant to teach you general skills. Teach you how to learn rather than teach you a specific language. Like if you wanted to learn all the tricks to MySQL you'd read a manual and learn inner joins. If you just wanted a content management system you might just need simple inserts, select, updates, and deletes. You might never learn joins.
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EPT
