Khan’s Video Lectures: Educational Failures or Harbingers of Educational Success?

Some blog followers might be interested in “Khan’s Video Lectures: Educational Failures or Harbingers of Educational Success?” [Hake (2012b)]. The abstract reads:

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ABSTRACT: In a “60 Minutes” program of 11 March 2012 titled “Khan Academy: The Future of Education?” http://bit.ly/FPnIFH, Bill Gates said: “There's a website that I’ve just been using with my kids - Khan Academy - this one guy doing some unbelievable 15 minute tutorials.” . . . . Then host Sanjay Gupta exclaimed: “That's right, Bill Gates, one of the smartest and richest men in the world, was using Sal Khan’s free videos to teach his own kids!”

In a post of 16 March “Khan’s Video Lectures on Acceleration and Newton's Second Law" [Hake (2012a)]," I criticized Khan's “unbelievable” video lectures on those subjects as EDUCATIONAL FAILURES. However, they may also be HARBINGERS OF EDUCATIONAL SUCCESS.

MathEdCC’s perceptive Clyde Greeno put the optimistic perspective as follows (paraphrasing and generalizing Clyde’s “math” to “education”):

“. . . .apart from Khan’s presentations, the instructional technology that he has developed can greatly expedite national and personal efforts to improve teaching and learning. . . . Khan was an engineering student who was reared through the American traditional public perceptions of what ‘education’ is and how teaching should be done. . . . . Khan did NOT write the educational scripts . . . . and must not be blamed for their educational flaws. In fact (unlike so many ‘experts’), Khan might still be educable . . . . or responsive to enlightened guidance for improving the quality of his video library . . . . from those who can offer something better than complaints. The ‘harnessing’ challenge is clear: use the same instructional-media technology to do what should be done . . . . perhaps even by educating Kahn.”
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To access the complete 13 kB post please click on http://bit.ly/FPFWXZ.


Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University
Honorary Member, Curmudgeon Lodge of Deventer, The Netherlands
President, PEdants for Definitive Academic References
which Recognize the Invention of the Internet (PEDARRII)

rrhake@earthlink.net
Links to Articles: http://bit.ly/a6M5y0
Links to SDI Labs: http://bit.ly/9nGd3M
Blog: http://bit.ly/9yGsXh
Academia: http://iub.academia.edu/RichardHake
Twitter https://twitter.com/#!/rrhake

“Today with the help of over fifty. . . .[[or is it “fifteen”??]]. . . million dollars, most from the Gates Foundation and Google, Khan has been able to hire, with competitive salaries, some of the most talented engineers and designers in the country. . . . . The team is working to create software they hope will transform the way math is taught in American classrooms.”
From “60 Minutes” http://bit.ly/FPnIFH at 5:30 min – “Khan Academy: The Future of Education?”


REFERENCES [URL’s shortened by http://bit.ly/ and accessed on 18 March 2012.]
Hake, R.R. 2012a. “Re: Khan's Video Lectures on Acceleration and Newton’s Second Law,” on the OPEN! AERA-L archives at http://bit.ly/yPSjFE. Post of 16 Mar 2012 09:11:07-0700 to AERA-L and Net-Gold. The abstract and link to the complete post were also transmitted to several discussion lists and are on my blog “Hake'sEdStuff”" at http://bit.ly/wEdup7 with a provision for comments.

Hake, R.R. 2012b. “Khan’s Video Lectures: Educational Failures or Harbingers of Educational Success?” on the OPEN! AERA-L archives at http://bit.ly/FPFWXZ. Post of 18 Mar 2012 15:23:26 -0700 to AERA-L and Net-Gold. The abstract and link to the complete post are also being transmitted to several discussion lists.