Khan Academy

Khan Academy

Thumbs up for a plethora of math videos.

The Khan academy is a website that offers 2463 videos to date that explain math concepts from K-12 and beyond.  They do also have some videos for Biology and History.  The program will allow you to view all of the videos without ever having to log in; however, if you want to complete the practice questions and keep track of your progress or your students, you will need to sign up.  In order to sign up you need to have either a Facebook account or a Google account.  If you have either of those then signing in to the site is a very simple process.  

Once a student logs in they will have to add their parent or teacher as their coach.  This is what will allow a teacher to keep track of the students progress.  The coach can then see how much time the student has spent on the program, which exercises the student has completed along with which ones the student has gotten right or wrong with the time it took to complete the exercise.  The student can earn badges from as simple as watching 30 minutes of video to master badges.  As the students work through exercises or watch videos they earn Energy Points which are intended to keep the students motivated to keep working on the site.  

I went through my trial run today and I made my husband sign up and make me his coach.  My husband is a middle years teacher and math coach.  I am sure the last thing that he wanted to do on his summer holidays is to be testing out some math site for me.  But alas, he complied.  As I am writing he is working on math questions on the site and watching videos.  He keeps shouting out every time he earns another badge.  He is getting right into the program and I keep asking him if it is awesome, his reply is "It's o.k.".  When I probed him further he indicated that it is very old school.  For example when it has subtracting a negative number the video explains to just turn it into a positive because they cancel each other out.  Whereas that might be true, there is no explanation as to why.  With our division moving into the Math Makes Sense program where it looks at math problems from a number of different views and it seeks to build a conceptual understanding rather than just procedural.  This is where the Khan Academy falls short. 

 Recommendations for use of Khan Academy:

• When wanting to give students an opportunity for drill and practice.
• For students who find drill and practice rewarding (I would be one of these students, perhaps not so much my husband)
• For students who already have a conceptual understanding of a concept and just need reinforcement.
• A good tool to increase your speed with math facts (there are the speed badges that would help to motivate students)
• Good home use to review and reinforce the procedural component of a concept.
• To get an idea where students are struggling through use of the Dashboard.  
• For distance learning students so that the teacher can monitor the practice questions that are being completed.  

Drawbacks of the Khan Academy:

• Does not provide for conceptual learning.
• Some videos are lacking detail or key concepts are missing from some of the videos.
• The videos aren't high interest and are fairly long to keep the viewers attention. 
• Only multiple choice questions.

Benefits of the Khan Academy:

• Good opportunity for students to practice concepts.
• Very comprehensive list of math videos. 
• The badge and energy points system can be a useful motivator for many students.
• Good question bank.
• Too many question answers where e) none of the above.

Check out others reviews of Khan Academy:

• The Blog on the site gives a lot of perspective other teachers and students using the program.   http://www.khanacademy.org/about/blog
• http://www.theweblogreview.com/review/3491/
• http://www.commonsensemedia.org/website-reviews/khan-academy