Khan Academy: the bad

<i>"First, Khan has never lectured."</i> <i>"Second, Khan has never taught."</i><p>Odd, because I'm pretty damned sure that through his <i>lectures</i>, he has <i>taught</i> me a good deal of basic chemistry.<p>Results are the only thing that matters. If and only if people find Khan's material valuable, it will become popular. Guess what? It's pretty damned popular.

"First, Khan has never lectured." "Second, Khan has never taught."<p>This is such BS. When I came to the US on an assistantship, I was assigned to TA an intro to programming course. The problems were: a) I didn't have an undergrad degree in computer science, having taken only 1 course in programming (officially), b) I had never taught, c) my degree was from India, and here I was in a different education system in a different country.<p>But you know what? I got rave reviews from students.<p>It doesn't matter whether you've taught or not. What matters is how well you can explain the subject at hand, and how passionate and patient you are.

When reading this article, the thing that came to mind was his TED talk (<a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/salman_khan_let_s_use_video_to_reinvent_education.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.ted.com/talks/salman_khan_let_s_use_video_to_rein...</a>)<p>I think Salman Khan's biggest point in the talk seems to address this guy's complaint. He's not aiming to replace the teacher, he's aiming to replace the lecture. Students go home, watch his videos at whatever pace suits them, and then they go to school and have the <i>really important</i> interaction with the teacher and other students, which can also happen at the student's desired pace.

The OP seems to forget that the goal of the Khan Academy is not just to produce videos. Of course there's no feedback with a one-way video lesson.<p>If you watch his (excellent) TED talk [1], you'll see that his organization isn't just about video lectures, but rather an all-encompassing suite of tools that allows students to learn at their own pace, repeat lessons that they didn't understand at first, and provides teachers with analytics to target their attention towards those students who need help.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gM95HHI4gLk" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gM95HHI4gLk</a>

When you go to a process critique rather than argue results that's the sign of a weak criticism. The article is more concerned about how he does what he does rather than what he accomplishes. Khan has a system of which the videos are just one part. Teachers are a key part of his program, they are just freed to tackle more salient aspects of teaching, like helping kids get over problems. It's an open source business model. The source is free, use it if you wish, but for service, there could be a fee. Teachers could actually be paid to teach and mentor instead of lecturing and giving tests. It's a successful model elsewhere and worth trying in education. Teachers and others can produce the content and then anyone else can charge a fee for teaching using the infrastructure. There's no reason the lectures can't improve over time, but you have to start somewhere, and he did. And the other parts of the system are still very valid. Inversion of lecture and help time, a test until success testing model, go at your pace, short modules that build on each other, a dashboard helping teachers track progress and proactively solve problems. Why is that a bad approach?

The advantage of the Khan Academy is that the teaching method:<p>- Shows how the work was done in a step by step manner<p>- Cuts the subjects up into short, easily digestible chunks<p>(note that both of these could be attributed to the medium, as screencasts require showing nearly everything unless you want to edit heavily, and YouTube has a length limitation)<p>The poster's points are valid - Khan's videos exist pretty much in a vaccum, and having no active feedback means that people who don't get a concept are sunk.<p>That said, there are solutions - I could imagine a teacher assigning "Watch videos 1-3 on subject X" to a class, then in the class sessions students would have to demonstrate competency and could get help.<p>I don't know anyone who thinks that Khan's work is the end-all solution to teaching problems.

I think that Khan Academy is based on the idea that the curriculum schools currently follow and the way the curriculum is taught is not ideal. So, in that regard, the fact that Salman Khan has no experience in a formal teaching environment could actually be an advantage. Also, I think that Khan receives a significant amount of feedback in the form of Youtube comments, including questions regarding the subject matter he has discussed in a video, so he can actually interact with students.

I dont think the poster has valid points really, at the khan academy a student can follow in his or hers own pace, when they want as they want. That is not something that can be done in a lecture room.<p>Also in a lecture room you cant participate in the lecture 40 times so you really understand... unless you record the lecture, but in the khan academy.. if you need to watch a video 300 times.. goahead

tl;dr<p>Salman Khan is not an insider, and therefore I reject his attempts at disruptive innovation.

"The Khan Academy has a few good things that make the service useful. Unfortunately, the good things about it don’t outweigh the bad ones."<p>Umm - Millions of people are learning. I'd say the good &#62;&#62;&#62; the bad.

The first two points seem completely vacuous to me.<p>Khan has never lectured? So what? I know plenty of people who have lectured every day for decades and they're still no good at it. It doesn't seem like (professional) experience lecturing is necessary to be an effective teacher.<p>Khan has never taught, so he hasn't needed to deal with the difficulties of the classroom? Yes, and to think that's a problem is to deny the premise of The Khan Academy - that if people are allowed to learn autonomously, the problems of the classroom go away. That argument basically reduces to "No, they don't". That's hardly reasoned.<p>For me the greatest benefit of The Khan Academy is the fact that Khan is a great teacher. We know there are teachers who are more engaging and stimulating than their peers and we know there's very few of them. I see The Khan Academy as an exercise in scaling great teaching. The institutional effects are very interesting and important, but secondary to me.

As videos on the internet, Khan is actually fine. The videos are largely informative, and I like watching them. But classroom implementations are a whole different ballgame.<p>If you want to actually improve the education kids are getting, there are a huge number of moving parts you have to address. In this sense, as a classroom implementation tool, Khan is just getting started. There's nothing to judge yet!<p>I've spoken with them a bit, and they're still trying to decide on the direction they want to take, how much they want to get involved in what they call "change management" in the classroom, i.e. making sure the tool gets used effectively. In my opinion, this is essential, but it takes manpower, and that's not something they can offer for free.<p>Of course, that requires having an understanding of how such a tool should be used, and as has been said, they're not teachers. The importance of them not having any classroom educational expertise is that they don't actually have a clear idea of how the tool would be used effectively. I work as an on-site PD specialist for Reasoning Mind, my job is to help teachers use this kind of technology. Khan learned a lot from their pilot in Los Altos, but they weren't being used as the primary curriculum there.<p>They're looking to be a full curriculum, what they call a "textbook replacement system". Doing that kind of thing effectively in communities that aren't as well-off (economically and teacher-quality-wise) as Los Altos is really, really hard. It takes a huge amount of work on the "change mgmt" side, high quality material, a ton of training for the teachers in the new classroom paradigm. This isn't the first foray into 100% differentiated classrooms, it's just the first one to go viral.<p>In sum, take a step back guys. Give them a chance to grow into a mature organization.

As many other readers here I disagree with that statement as it stands. Saying that a new idea is not valid because it is not like the old idea is wrong in itself.<p>But when I look behind this little logical error, I find a quite valuable analysis. Before I really thought K.A. might be the "university killer". Now I see it more as opening up the spectrum of ways, we can teach and learn.

While I think Peter Saveliev's immediate conclusions regarding Khan are incorrect, I do wonder: will Khan be bringing on more instructors to record videos outside his fields of expertise?<p>The Academy has already started a revolution in education. Wouldn't it benefit from more/better instructors, better production values, etc?<p>Also, I'd love to see Khan Academy-sponsored videos on the humanities. Of course, I'm not sure how liberal arts content could fit into the automated testing of the new exercise dashboard.

This entire post makes no sense. It's like the author says that Khan Academy is bad, because it doesn't copy the usual lecture format completely. It's different, boo.<p>And then there's the part where he doesn't realize that Khan Academy is supplemental, and not a replacement.

Another critic of Khan Academy:<p><a href="http://andrewducker.livejournal.com/2332277.html" rel="nofollow">http://andrewducker.livejournal.com/2332277.html</a>

I think (I'm a mathematician and I have lectured and taught in the University) the poster has valid points... but will be trashed in the comments (here and elsewhere).

Sorry, I couldn't get past the word "tuturing". It is, after all, a critique on Khan's educational abilities. So embarrassing!

I always understood Khan Academy as complementary to conventional classes.<p>To cover all topics of high school and college curricula doesn't necessarily mean supplanting high school and college or redefining education. If that is the case, I think the OP has a point. I don't think it is the case, though. No reason to worry.

&#62; If the student in the “audience” is struggling, he is free to turn the video off and try something else.<p>That's what his guided exercises are for <a href="http://www.khanacademy.org/exercises?exid=linear_equations_1" rel="nofollow">http://www.khanacademy.org/exercises?exid=linear_equations_1</a>

I might not be the best solution in the long-term, but it's certainly a start in the right direction.<p>Teaching is roughly the same as it was 50 years ago. We're yet to harness the power of computational revolution and Khan Academy shows the way.

No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.

Yeah. Tell that to my kids who are learning Algebra from Sal, and are learning it quite well.

As a student, I'm particular interested in learning the basics of any given domain. With the basics, I'm given enough knowledge to go out and explore that particular domain - this is how I learn and Khan Academy is AWESOME for this method.

Khan Academy doesn't have to be bad for the thing you are doing to be good.

I think the article misses the big point of Kahn's enterprise - finding an alternative model for delivering education which can scale well.<p>It isn't meant to replace a top quality teacher at a highly selective institution teaching an elite group of students. It's intended to make decent education available on a large scale and accessible to learners in highly diverse and non-traditional situations, e.g. home schoolers, adult learners, and intellectually gifted individuals.<p>It still suffers from many of the issues that the factory model has because it is still the factory model - just different and hopefully improved.