The Khan Academyhttp://www.khanacademy.org
With the growing popularity and versatility of YouTube videos, the field of education must change with the latest advancements in technology and evolution of its students. The Khan Academy is an educational resource that demonstrates how traditional teaching/instructional practices can be revolutionized when technology and academia effectively work together. It can be described as an interactive, collaborative, global classroom. This free tutoring service provides online instructional videos, (guided) practice, and learning communities for all types of learners, children and adults alike. Of course, to think of the Khan Academy as merely a tutoring service is a gross underrepresentation of its uses and resources.
As a student resource the Khan Academy provides users with an opportunity to customize their learning experience – with an assortment of instructional videos (each approximately 10 minutes long), interactive challenges (guided practice activities) and assessments, all available online. It even breaks down lessons, and skillsets (hints, step by step instruction, etc.) during practice to help students better understand a concept, and ensure mastery of it. Students, teachers, and parents are able to monitor students’ self-paced and self-directed learning and progress in subjects that “[cover] K-12 math, science topics such as biology, chemistry, and physics, and even reaches into humanities” (finance, history, etc.). What’s more, through students’ personal profiles the Khan Academy provides its own assessment of student progress. The website maps students’ activity, and provides feedback regarding their practice and mastery in different subject areas/skillsets – helping students and teachers determine where their focus should be to improve student understanding of a particular concept.
As a resource for teachers, and administrators the Khan Academy is a supplemental teaching and professional development tool. Schools can use this type of educational resource to provide supplemental instruction to students regarding topics discussed in class, giving students extra practice, and monitoring student understanding of various concepts. As a professional development tool, schools can use this type of a resource to collaborate with other instructors regarding student progress, or ways in which they can differentiate their instruction. Additionally, the methods and tools provided by the Khan Academy can offer ideas and approaches toward curriculum development and reform.
Although this site includes
instruction on a myriad of disciplines, its coverage of the arts and humanities
is limited; however, it is a step in the right direction for the student or
academic of today who works (or learns) in sound bites, and snippets. As society and education moves toward a new
type of functional literacy, one that emphasizes the knowledge and use of
technology, the Khan Academy finds a way to reinforce the humanism in pedagogy
through personalized and differentiated instruction. Salman Khan, founder of the Khan Academy,
suggests that his innovative educational resource models the way he wishes he
was taught as a child. But his use of
technology for the implementation of curriculum and instruction is also indicative
of the way many teachers wish they could teach in this age of accountability,
which in effect is to employ tools and practices that epitomize the individualized
and customizable academic enrichment of all of their students.
No comments:
Post a Comment