image source: https://www.khanacademy.org/about/blog/post/176235043470/have-you-seen-our-new-look
Salman “Sal” Khan, the founder and chief executive officer of Khan Academy, has played a prominent role in promoting the use of video in education and has a bold vision for the future of education that is learner-centered and learner-directed.
Founded in 2007, Khan Academy is a not-for-profit online learning platform. It offers “practice exercises, instructional videos, and a personalized learning dashboard” (Khan Academy, 2019a, para.1) which teachers can use to supplement in-class material and students can use independently to reinforce their comprehension. It currently includes more than 6500 videos and has over 74 million registered students and over 700,000 registered teachers across 190 countries (Khan Academy, 2019b, video, 0:33).
Weller (2018) listed video as the most significant education technology of 2005 (p. 39), the year YouTube was founded, claiming that “the realization that anyone could make a video and share it easily . . . broadcast democratization” (p. 39). Unfortunately, video in education is often restricted to passive, lecture-style broadcasting, but it has enormous potential that has yet to be fulfilled (p. 39). Khan Academy’s videos are currently restricted to broadcasting, however, the platform includes interactive exercises and networking opportunities, including discussion areas and study groups.
Khan’s vision has considerable merit, despite criticism as an unrealistic utopia (Morrison, 2013, para. 3). He posits self-paced, personalized learning with combined age groups and tutor-teachers and a focus on mastery of content. The future of education needs creative solutions and visionaries to create positive change. Watters (2014) proposes that the future of education technology should be “more progressive and less programmed” (p. 93), encouraging more student-centered, peer learning through networks and less traditional content delivery. Perhaps Khan Academy, and Khan’s bold vision, will have a role in making this a reality.
Relevant Links:
1) https://www.khanacademy.org/
3) https://www.ted.com/talks/salman_khan_let_s_use_video_to_reinvent_education
5) https://www.edsurge.com/news/2019-07-16-sal-khan-test-prep-is-the-last-thing-we-want-to-be
Resources
Khan Academy. (2019a). Khan Academy. Retrieved from https://www.khanacademy.org/about
Khan Academy. (2019b). Celebrate 10 years of Khan Academy. [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Gn5Q1efT4g
Khan Lab School (n.d.). Khan Lab School. Retrieved from https://khanlabschool.org/
Morrison, D. (2013). Can we transform education with Sal Khan’s One World Schoolhouse? Online Learning Insights. Retrieved from https://onlinelearninginsights.wordpress.com/2013/02/10/can-we-transform-education-with-sal-khans-one-world-schoolhouse/
Watters, A. (2014). The future of education: Programmed or programmable. Chapter 10. In The Monsters of Education Technology. Retrieved from https://s3.amazonaws.com/audreywatters/the-monsters-of-education-technology.pdf
Weller, M. (2018). Twenty years of EdTech. EDUCAUSE Review, 53(4). Retrieved from https://er.educause.edu/articles/2018/7/twenty-years-of-edtech
Sherry thank you for an insightful and interesting blog. I can tell you firsthand how significant Khan Academy has been in my life, especially teaching my own kids Mathematics & Science (algebra, fractions, chemistry, physics) when they were in middle school. The efficacy of this platform shows that the schools serving diverse student populations can make use of Khan Academy as a component in their mathematics instruction. Although many aspects of Khan Academy were helpful, teachers did encounter some challenges in classroom use, and some features were underused such as
• Lack of alignment of Khan Academy content with core curriculum
• Organization of the content
How do you think the Academy is dealing with these issues and do you think they are legit challenges to be addressed by the developers?
References
SRI Education’s Khan Academy Project website:
https://www.sri.com/work/projects/research-use-khan-academy-schools
Hi, Tammy. Thank you for your interesting post. I haven’t used Khan Academy (KA) much myself because I am an English teacher and KA doesn’t yet include language acquisition as a subject, but I have used it a bit while tutoring other subjects (including SAP prep at a high school in Panama) and have had colleagues and students who raved about it.
That said, I have heard that one of the biggest complaints of KA is its lack of alignment with curriculum. Unfortunately, that is usually the case when incorporating outside materials into one’s lessons. I have the same problem when incorporating textbooks, software, or other outside materials into my lessons. Unless the source is specifically incorporated into the curriculum (and updates or changes are synchronous), they will rarely align. As curriculum varies around the globe, alignment is simply not feasible. It is, therefore, up to the instructional designer or teacher to take only what is relevant and incorporate it so it enriches students’ learning. Done without sufficient expertise and consideration, adding random content to one’s lessons can unfortunately be a detriment to learning.
What are your thoughts?
Hi Sherry, I enjoyed your blog post. I have heard the name “Khan Academy” before but never looked into it. Sal Khan is a good man wanting to help students in a non profit manor! Have you personally used his platform?
Hi, Susan. Thank you for your post. I don’t have a lot of experience using Khan Academy because the majority of my teaching has been in English language acquisition (and Khan Academy has yet to include language learning in its subject field), but I did incorporate it into my lessons on computer science and SAT prep when I did some tutoring at a high school in Panama. My colleague at the time, a math and physics teacher, raved about Khan Academy and I know his students found it very useful. I am currently reading Khan’s book The One World Schoolhouse (2012) which is about Khan’s vision of the future of education. It’s an easy read about a perhaps utopian-like concept, but it’s often visionaries with grand ideas who instigate real change!