I wasn't a delighted fan of Khan Academy. Every time I wanted to watch, I found an uncorrected error in his video, or a mess on the blackboard. But at least it allowed you to look up a technique for how to compute something.
Salman Khan became a darling of the ed establishment, which only made sense if they were sure they could co-opt his product.
Well, yesterday, I looked at Khan Academy. And the only redeeming feature it had, that it let you just look up whatever technique you needed to see, is gone. Now you must sign in. Now it tells you how to do the whole third grade Common Core standards, it seems, and you can work your way through.
I haven't had time to look to the Wayback Machine, so maybe it's still accessible there. But really, is what's offered now any different than what IXL and ALEKS and the rest of them claim to do?
Am I missing something? Wasn't there once a whole set of Singapore math problems he was supposedly doing and tracking for you? Is that gone, too?
I keep trying to warn schools that parents are going to revolt against this kind of big-data nonsense. They don't believe me. But I think Khan's complete change into yet another of the same-old-same-old will be another nail in that coffin.
I think you can still view the individual videos on YouTube. The most recent videos on the YouTube channel were uploaded just a couple of days ago. Not as easy, though, for you do have to know exactly what you're searching for.
ReplyDeleteJust go to "Subjects" up in the header. Seemed like it was possible to get to various places one might want to go. (I clicked through to the start of a video, but didn't bother playing it.)
ReplyDeleteIf you just need to look up a method for computing something, I think it is a lot more efficient to look it up in a book, or on a text based website. Videos are so inefficient for that kind of thing. SafariOnline is a great resource for that kind of thing. You pay a monthly fee and get access to all the O'Reilly books plus a bunch more from other publishers. You can search across all the books for what you need.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I hated Khan Academy. The videos were slow, and often confusing.
The subjects lead you to Grade 3, say. And Grade 3 is broken down by strand, largely. Not exactly fine grained. The items listed are by CC standard.
ReplyDeleteI know that there aren't a whole lot of better ways to organize things on a path to mastery, but this isn't going to produce mastery.
oh, boy
ReplyDeletethat's awful!
I agree completely --- I wasn't a fan, and I found a mistake on an SAT video .... but I could FIND stuff
and for the price of 'free' it was great
This is a great post thanks for sharing it
ReplyDelete