Tech Talk

A former student of mine informed me of the Khan Academy after reading a post about another website where it’s possible to get great video lessons about math. The Khan Academy is even more extensive and is an organizational effort rather than just one great guy. KA was founded by Salman Khan in order to provide “high quality education to anyone, anywhere.” There are more than 2,400 videos available on a range of subjects that include math, science, test prep and some humanities. Some subjects are obviously better fitted for e-learning than others.

Salman Khan spoke at a TED conference about the Academy and how it can be used in education. In fact, it is being used in a few classrooms in the Los Altos School District in California. During Khan’s TED talk, he showed a knowledge map about math and how these small lessons build on each other until a student gains mastery over a particular area of a subject. A teacher has a dashboard that shows where each student is in their progress. Thus, he can see exactly where a student may be having problems with a concept or algorithm and work directly on that problem with the student on a one-to-one basis. Student can work individually at their own pace.

All of us who have taught know that the one size fits all model of traditional learning just doesn’t work for every student because students learn at different rates, some students don’t want to ask questions in class when they’re stuck because they don’t want to appear “dumb” or because they know that the teacher may never actually get around to their question in a classroom of 25 or 30 or 40 students.

As I write the international school reviews that are on the International Teacher blog, I regularly come across a requirement for prospective teachers that they be able to use a differentiated learning methodology. By using resources like the Khan Academy or Patrick JMT: Just Math Tutorials, teachers can individualize learning in such a way as to make lessons more enjoyable (and easier) for the students and more enjoyable (and easier) for them.

When I was teaching computer classes, I tried to get around this by typing out directions for different applications that I was working on, such as making web pages or PowerPoints or using Word. The idea was basically the same – let each student work at their own pace; I could tell where they were and how they were doing by monitoring which lesson they were on. I encouraged students that were breezing through lessons to help their classmates who were not having such an easy go at it. And this approach was somewhat successful, but several problems existed. Some students had difficulties in reading and following instructions, and some of my written instructions were not as clearly written as they could have been. The videos that the Khan Academy and Patrick JMT use allow students to see how to do something. And seeing for many students is just much easier to get than reading.

All of the lessons are in English which can be a problem for students in non-English speaking countries like Indonesia. Indonesian teachers could get around this by doing voice overs in Indonesian or by creating their own lessons. Another example for why Indonesian teachers might want to create their own lessons comes from when I was team teaching with an Indonesian math teacher, I noticed that she and I had different ways of solving math problems. I’ve noticed the same thing with some of the homework that my kids bring home. So, using the Khan or JMT lessons as a model, a great project for a team of enthusiastic and dedicated Indonesian teachers is to create a library of lessons in Indonesian and offer them for free to all schools in Indonesia.

Khan notes in the conclusion of his TED speech that the goal of the Khan Academy is to create a global one world classroom. That’s a great idea.

Other Considerations
A few years ago, I did a presentation for a group of teachers, principals and students in Mataram, Lombok, about how to use the internet for teaching. In the Q&A after my presentation, several questions focused on what to do if you don’t have internet connections at the school, or what to do if you don’t have computers at the school. The first part is easy enough to deal with. The videos are downloadable and free. So a teacher or student can download these and place them on the school server so that students can access them as they need to. The second issue, what happens if you don’t have computers, is harder to deal with. This problem requires money and efficient, honest administrators to develop a technology plan for a country, state, district and school.

Obviously this becomes a problem of resources. My kids are fortunate enough to go to schools where there is some technology in the schools, and where most parents have enough money that they can afford to buy their kids their own computer for use at home. However, I’m thinking about small village schools, or poor urban schools, where there are no computers at all and where parents don’t have the financial resources to buy their kids computers. Even with the new notebooks just now flooding the market in Singaraja that are selling at around 3 million rupiah, parents that may only be making a million rupiah a month will be hard pressed to purchase a computer. Ideally, the 1:1 laptop programs that many international schools are adopting is an excellent way to implement e-learning so that students can learn at school and at home. Solving this money side of this problem is not going to be so easy unfortunately.