> There will be many teachers who will use Kahn's videos in their teaching (or to augment it), and I imagine that over time Kahn will change the way he does things based on his own education about education.
Sal Khan(it' khan, not kahn) himself mentioned he is not looking to replace classrooms. He wants to invert the classroom. Traditional classroom has passive lectures followed up with problem solving which is to be done at home. He says it's better if people can do the passive things at home at their own pace, and use the classroom for problem solving.
The problem with passive lectures in classroom is many a times students are sitting through lectures they don't follow because they don't know the prerequisites; and often times students by themselves aren't able to figure out if they can't make heads and tails of probability problems, what is it that they need to know so that they can understand it. In his talk, Khan demonstrated the software(I haven't used; I might be off) which can track your deficiencies. For example, you are struggling at basic probability. The framework will drop you down to permutation/combination problems. You still are struggling; introduce fundamental principle of counting. You are doing fine now. So explain permutations based on counting principle.
Lacking the prerequisites is one of the problems. We have people who learn at different rate, people who aren't fluent in the language the lecture is delivered in, people who are shy/under-confident to speak up, people who are smart and are bored and feel left out, people who aren't very smart(lack the fundamentals, slow learners...) and are lost and feel left out.
If Khan Academy, or any other self-paced learning resource can solve these problems; coupled with classroom guided problem solving and projects, that will make a huge difference.
Sal Khan(it' khan, not kahn) himself mentioned he is not looking to replace classrooms. He wants to invert the classroom. Traditional classroom has passive lectures followed up with problem solving which is to be done at home. He says it's better if people can do the passive things at home at their own pace, and use the classroom for problem solving.
The problem with passive lectures in classroom is many a times students are sitting through lectures they don't follow because they don't know the prerequisites; and often times students by themselves aren't able to figure out if they can't make heads and tails of probability problems, what is it that they need to know so that they can understand it. In his talk, Khan demonstrated the software(I haven't used; I might be off) which can track your deficiencies. For example, you are struggling at basic probability. The framework will drop you down to permutation/combination problems. You still are struggling; introduce fundamental principle of counting. You are doing fine now. So explain permutations based on counting principle.
Lacking the prerequisites is one of the problems. We have people who learn at different rate, people who aren't fluent in the language the lecture is delivered in, people who are shy/under-confident to speak up, people who are smart and are bored and feel left out, people who aren't very smart(lack the fundamentals, slow learners...) and are lost and feel left out.
If Khan Academy, or any other self-paced learning resource can solve these problems; coupled with classroom guided problem solving and projects, that will make a huge difference.