I expected marooning students on a deserted planet and never checking up on them to make sure they were ok.
It’s the conventional public schools that would like to use the Ceti Eel method.
For astronomy, they will get a real kick-ass lecture on the Mutara Nebula!
Now McGhee, don’t go giving away the exobiology lecture!
Critics argue that Khan’s videos and software encourage uncreative, repetitive drilling—and leave kids staring at screens instead of interacting with real live teachers. Even Khan will acknowledge that he’s not an educational professional; he’s just a nerd who improvised a cool way to teach people things.
Not being an educational professional (group think) is his advantage. Here we have demonstrated proof with metrics yet that doesn’t even slow down those critics that argue.
I’ll bet his return to the one room schoolhouse concept (revised) is wildly successful as well. It’s a crime what the education system has done to our kids (anti american propaganda mostly.)
…Khan’s videos and software encourage uncreative, repetitive drilling…
Critics talk like that’s a bad thing. Repetitive drilling is not the one true education method, but it is certainly a valuable and useful technique in the educational toolbox. Those who dismiss it as passé are not doing children any favors.
cue jokes about his Wrath for getting problems wrong in 5.. 4.. 3..
“Mine is the superior intelect!”
His trig lessons reveal two-dimensional thinking.
KAAAAHHHHNNNNN!
Some people need to quit criticizing what someone else hit on and recognize that rote system teaching augmented with instruction and letting the student teach himself at his own speed
really does work.
Steven Pinker makes the case that (I’m paraphrasing here) learning math requires the brain to co-opt several of our innate thinking modules in new ways, and that we require lots and lots of practice in order to become proficient with the new skills. It’s much like learning to play a musical instrument, or learning an athletic skill. Unless you’re a prodigy like Gauss or Newton, the only way you learn the deeper meaning of math is to practice it by rote until your brain can make sense of it. This should be familiar to anybody who’s encountered, say, the epsilon-delta limit proofs in calculus 🙂
So who else has found a new addiction today?
wodun,
that’s a Heinlein story, not reality!!
.
.
.
“Critics argue that Khan’s videos and software encourage uncreative, repetitive drilling—and leave kids staring at screens instead of…”
looking at flash cards, or mimeographed Multiplication Table Sheets.
Every kid learns differently, and at a different rate. ANY system that helps all of them a little, or helps a lot in this case seemingly, has got to be a good thing. The teachers are going to buck this trend.
If kids can learn better at home, get what they need to graduate and only need ‘help’ with Homework to hone the skill set, then the Teachers Unions will be in dire straits, kind of like Farriors or Buggy Whip makers 100 years ago!
“Teach to the test” teachers protected by union contracts from any meaningful perfromance feedback are complaining that the Khan Academy approach is going to encourage being “uncreative”?
My irony meter just pegged.
Marooning students on a deserted planet woudl force the students for themselves. Der Schtumpy is right – that bears no resemblance to reality.
I have actually rooted around Khan Academy and it is a great tool. Not fancy, just effective. I know several teachers that use it. Those critical of it are more worried about their own piece of pie than anything else. I’m not surprised Bill Gates is VERY interested in the Genesis of it.
Try learning to play a musical instrument. Practice, practice, practice. Scales and arpegios. Math? The same. Hell, we should think about teaching English that way (at least somewhat). Memorize the spelling of the 300 odd most common words in the language and you spell 2/3rds of all the words you use correctly. Diagram sentences. Learn logic and the falacies.
“Memorize the spelling of the 300 odd most common words in the language and you spell 2/3rds of all the words you use correctly. ”
And reaching merely 1000 words hits 90% of the NYT wordlist IIRC. And 5000 words has a similar improvement.
As my Economics teacher used to tell us in High School: “Repetition is the ugly, ugly stepmother to learning!”
He also taught us things like “in zee upside-down world of economics, zee floor is on zee ceiling, und zee ceiling is on zee floor!”.
And, of course, the fact that I remember the things he said, and was able to apply them 13 years later in an urban economics course, somewhat speaks to the power of repetition and rote methods to learning and retention.
Maybe there aren’t one-size-fits-all-students or one-size-fits-all-subjects educational methods. i imagine that the people who can get around with turn-left-here-turn-right-there driving directions learn a lot differently than folks like me who need to see the map.
Similarly, Mr. Khan kicks off the video by saying, “I want to back up because I forgot to mention a really important fact,” that “the Russian Empire was overthrown by the Bolsheviks.” Unfortunately, he does not explain what a Bolshevik is nor how or why the Bolsheviks overthrew the Russian empire, nor why it matters but no dilly-dallying, just fast forward and bingo, “Hitler invades Poland.” Mr. Khan observes that “from FDR’s point of view, Hitler definitely was in the wrong here.” This observation is so odd, that I have to hit the pause button and take a moment to think about it. In Mr. Khan’s History, whether Hitler should have invaded Poland or not is just a matter of viewpoint, wrong in FDR’s (and probably Poland’s) but okey-dokey in Hitler’s. Everything is a matter of viewpoint, perspective, and cultural positioning, therefore nothing is essentially right or wrong, to be applauded or condemned. Here Mr. Khan stands exposed as possessing a historical perspective steeped in academia’s standard issue, postmodern, left-leaning narrative of cultural relativism, multiculturalism, and moral equivalence.
I have to say that the examples he gives are pretty damning.
I expected marooning students on a deserted planet and never checking up on them to make sure they were ok.
It’s the conventional public schools that would like to use the Ceti Eel method.
For astronomy, they will get a real kick-ass lecture on the Mutara Nebula!
Now McGhee, don’t go giving away the exobiology lecture!
Critics argue that Khan’s videos and software encourage uncreative, repetitive drilling—and leave kids staring at screens instead of interacting with real live teachers. Even Khan will acknowledge that he’s not an educational professional; he’s just a nerd who improvised a cool way to teach people things.
Not being an educational professional (group think) is his advantage. Here we have demonstrated proof with metrics yet that doesn’t even slow down those critics that argue.
I’ll bet his return to the one room schoolhouse concept (revised) is wildly successful as well. It’s a crime what the education system has done to our kids (anti american propaganda mostly.)
Critics talk like that’s a bad thing. Repetitive drilling is not the one true education method, but it is certainly a valuable and useful technique in the educational toolbox. Those who dismiss it as passé are not doing children any favors.
cue jokes about his Wrath for getting problems wrong in 5.. 4.. 3..
“Mine is the superior intelect!”
His trig lessons reveal two-dimensional thinking.
KAAAAHHHHNNNNN!
Some people need to quit criticizing what someone else hit on and recognize that rote system teaching augmented with instruction and letting the student teach himself at his own speed
really does work.
Steven Pinker makes the case that (I’m paraphrasing here) learning math requires the brain to co-opt several of our innate thinking modules in new ways, and that we require lots and lots of practice in order to become proficient with the new skills. It’s much like learning to play a musical instrument, or learning an athletic skill. Unless you’re a prodigy like Gauss or Newton, the only way you learn the deeper meaning of math is to practice it by rote until your brain can make sense of it. This should be familiar to anybody who’s encountered, say, the epsilon-delta limit proofs in calculus 🙂
So who else has found a new addiction today?
wodun,
that’s a Heinlein story, not reality!!
.
.
.
“Critics argue that Khan’s videos and software encourage uncreative, repetitive drilling—and leave kids staring at screens instead of…”
looking at flash cards, or mimeographed Multiplication Table Sheets.
Every kid learns differently, and at a different rate. ANY system that helps all of them a little, or helps a lot in this case seemingly, has got to be a good thing. The teachers are going to buck this trend.
If kids can learn better at home, get what they need to graduate and only need ‘help’ with Homework to hone the skill set, then the Teachers Unions will be in dire straits, kind of like Farriors or Buggy Whip makers 100 years ago!
“Teach to the test” teachers protected by union contracts from any meaningful perfromance feedback are complaining that the Khan Academy approach is going to encourage being “uncreative”?
My irony meter just pegged.
Marooning students on a deserted planet woudl force the students for themselves. Der Schtumpy is right – that bears no resemblance to reality.
I have actually rooted around Khan Academy and it is a great tool. Not fancy, just effective. I know several teachers that use it. Those critical of it are more worried about their own piece of pie than anything else. I’m not surprised Bill Gates is VERY interested in the Genesis of it.
Try learning to play a musical instrument. Practice, practice, practice. Scales and arpegios. Math? The same. Hell, we should think about teaching English that way (at least somewhat). Memorize the spelling of the 300 odd most common words in the language and you spell 2/3rds of all the words you use correctly. Diagram sentences. Learn logic and the falacies.
“Memorize the spelling of the 300 odd most common words in the language and you spell 2/3rds of all the words you use correctly. ”
And reaching merely 1000 words hits 90% of the NYT wordlist IIRC. And 5000 words has a similar improvement.
As my Economics teacher used to tell us in High School: “Repetition is the ugly, ugly stepmother to learning!”
He also taught us things like “in zee upside-down world of economics, zee floor is on zee ceiling, und zee ceiling is on zee floor!”.
And, of course, the fact that I remember the things he said, and was able to apply them 13 years later in an urban economics course, somewhat speaks to the power of repetition and rote methods to learning and retention.
Maybe there aren’t one-size-fits-all-students or one-size-fits-all-subjects educational methods. i imagine that the people who can get around with turn-left-here-turn-right-there driving directions learn a lot differently than folks like me who need to see the map.
David Clemens, writing at the National Association of Scholars website, has some harsh words for the Khan Academy.
I have to say that the examples he gives are pretty damning.