Thursday 10 March 2011

Could This Be the Math Education of the Future

"Salman Khan talks about how and why he created the remarkable Khan Academy, a carefully structured series of educational videos offering complete curricula in math and, now, other subjects. He shows the power of interactive exercises, and calls for teachers to consider flipping the traditional classroom script -- give students video lectures to watch at home, and do "homework" in the classroom with the teacher available to help."


What do math teachers think?
I'm also curious what percentage of schools actually allow teachers to show videos like this in school.  I know my school has them, and most others, blocked.

3 comments:

NicholeJones said...

I appreciate Khan Academy for their effort. Our present education system does not always provide the challenges that can bring out the best from a student. Every American student has the capability to complete their school and hold postsecondary degrees. They have the expertise and talent; online tutoring services like tutorteddy.com helps to bring that out by providing them all essential helps at the most reasonable cost. There are many students in our country, who can’t continue with their studies due to lack of proper guidance and poor financial background. Some of them offer online math scholarship program to help deserving underprivileged American students learning math at free of cost.

Steven Colyer said...

Hi Nicole, you wrote:
Our present education system does not always provide the challenges that can bring out the best from a student.

I'm not a schoolteacher, so could you explain what specifically they are not providing?

They provide textbooks, right? Could that be a problem? What if the teacher wanted to switch from textbooks to on-line given the reality of our present times? Any chance of that switch being implemented?

The times, they be a-changin', Dylan sang.

Anonymous said...

I think Tanton teases out much better challenges than Khan.

Khan's stuff, have you dug through a bunch? It's ok. But it falls into a one-explanation-fits-all trap, albeit at variable speeds.

I would like if my students looked at, either before or after lessons.

However, I can't see them learning nearly as much through the technique he explains in the TED talk as they would with a skilled teacher.