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Friday math movie: Two teachers learn math from Khan Academy

By Murray Bourne, 13 Jul 2012

John Golden and David Coffey are just trying to get a discussion going about Khan Academy, so please don't be too irritated by this video.

Salman Khan has created huge buzz (and been given funding by Bill Gates and Google) for his Khan Academy. Khan is very prolific and has a wide range of talents and interests. His videos have a place (especially for students who have no access to good teachers, or indeed, any teachers).

As Khan says:

With over 3,200 videos on everything from arithmetic to physics, finance, and history and hundreds of skills to practice, we're on a mission to help you learn what you want, when you want, at your own pace.

Is Khan perfect? No. Do Khan videos have value? Yes. Do Golden and Coffey have valid criticisms? Mostly. Is their own video good? No!

Anyway, what do you think about their criticisms of Khan Academy?

They asked bloggers to critique a Khan video and to put up something better. The response was pretty dismal.

Directions: We are looking for at least 101 bloggers to offer a video critique of a Khan Academy video and then share an alternative lesson on that concept. The goal is for all the participants to post the critiques and lessons on August 14th (the day before the deadline for the MTT2K prize). Perhaps the sheer volume of resources will convince the media to acknowledge that while Sal Khan’s approach has its place, teachers still have a great deal to contribute to education. And after that, the media will acknowledge that while the earth is not flat, it is also not a perfect sphere. Since there seems to be a lot of people disputing these basic observations (eyeroll)

There has been a lot of interesting negative reaction to this video on YouTube. It seems there are a lot of Khan fans out there!

See the 4 Comments below.

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Comment Preview

HTML: You can use simple tags like <b>, <a href="...">, etc.

To enter math, you can can either:

  1. Use simple calculator-like input in the following format (surround your math in backticks, or qq on tablet or phone):
    `a^2 = sqrt(b^2 + c^2)`
    (See more on ASCIIMath syntax); or
  2. Use simple LaTeX in the following format. Surround your math with \( and \).
    \( \int g dx = \sqrt{\frac{a}{b}} \)
    (This is standard simple LaTeX.)

NOTE: You can mix both types of math entry in your comment.

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