Is Khan ready to be a stand-alone math program? Discuss...

[Erin]

Buck is on Khan (again!).  He hates Khan, but he loves it, if that makes sense…  (Our actual math program is Saxon Algebra 2 and we use Khan as filler, time-kill, change of pace, reinforcement, etc.)

 

And I'm wondering--Is Khan to the point of being a stand-alone program?  I can see where in the not-so-distant-past, it wasn't.  It was nothing but a collection of videos, then a collect of videos and skills tests.

But now?  Now it's a full series of skills, directed to specific levels and courses.  There's still no Scope/Sequence type of presentation, but does there have to be?  

What are the thoughts on this?  Is Khan ready to present itself as a viable alternative to TT or Saxon or even the much-venerated AoPS?

[Grantmom]

I don't really like the way the Khan setup has changed.  It used to kind of let you just start at the beginning, and quickly figure out where you needed holes filled or extra practice, and you could progress to where you want to go at your own pace.  I don't know if maybe now I just don't understand how to navigate it anymore, but I don't like the way it is set up now.  I don't like how they put everything under "grades".  So if you want to go back and review fractions, it basically tells you that are doing 4th grade math.  And you can't just move forward more quickly now.  Personally, I find the whole set up to be like school, sort of making you go through a bunch of busywork to actually get to the stuff you really need.  I actually loved it before they made all of these changes.  That being said, I do still love it, and think it can be a great supplement.  I don't think I would want to use it as my only math, but then we don't use just one thing for math.  I like having a variety of resources.

 

 

[Jean in Newcastle]

I use it for our only math for my 7th grader.  If you don't want the grade system, I thought you could still do it under the World of Math.  is that not true anymore?  It's still listed.  

 

I don't know if I can explain this correctly but I see Khan as being circular.  Each skill has four levels - practice, level 1, level 2, and mastery.  You can go systematically through every single skill for every single level except for mastery.  Then you have to do a mastery challenge in order to level up.  But you can also skip  ahead through the mastery challenges as well.  They will ask you questions at each level until you hit mastery.  And even then they will ask you a question that you've previously mastered every now and then to  make sure it really is mastered.  So we always start with a mastery challenge (or two or three) depending on what the program allows.  Then we will hit new skills.  You can choose skills one block at a time in order or you could skip ahead to certain skills that depend on other skills.  If you skip ahead, you can be pretty much guaranteed that the prerequisite skills will start coming up in mastery challenges just to make sure they get marked off eventually.  I have helped dd on a couple of hoops that didn't work well with her learning style because she knew the underlying stuff and going through the hoop by itself was frustrating to her.  (She also had LDs in math so that is a factor as well.)  

 

We have not used Khan beyond Alg 1 so I can't speak directly to the level you are working at.  

I don't really like the way the Khan setup has changed.  

:iagree:

 

And not just changed once, but changed again, and again and again.  We use it for supplemental things, and if I'm not doing a good job of explaining something, it's nice if there's a five minute Sal video on the subject.  But otherwise, it seems like there are substantive changes every few week, and even if it works perfectly for you today, it's a little scary to think that it could completely change tomorrow.

[Grantmom]

Do you have a link for the World of Math?  I see everything divided up by grades.  So even if you click on something, it shows the grade.  It is this whole new Learning Dashboard thing.  To be honest, the way it has evolved makes me think that they really want to make it be appropriate for schools and teachers to use.  They have had schools use it as their only math program, and it let kids work at their own pace.   

[wapiti]

In the past, there were a lot of criticisms of the instruction as leaning too much on procedures and not explaining concepts in depth or not explaining concepts as a mathematician might approach it (in other words, much like typical PS curricula). I would want to know how much of that has improved.

In the past, the user interface (or whatever the correct term would be) was irritating to the point of not being usable. Last I checked a few months ago, while it had changed, once again nothing about using the program was obvious to me. (All my kids have accounts at KA from school, although the school does not assign or really even promote KA as more than a place to get extra practice.)

In no way do I think KA could, or should, be compared with AoPS, probably ever. Different audience, different depth. Eta, of course, KA doesn't need to be AoPS-deep to be stand-alone, but it would need more than it used to have, IMO.

 

eta, on the current state of the interface, see this thread from today... it speaks for itself http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/530201-another-khan-academy-question/

[Jean in Newcastle]

Do you have a link for the World of Math?  I see everything divided up by grades.  So even if you click on something, it shows the grade.  It is this whole new Learning Dashboard thing.  To be honest, the way it has evolved makes me think that they really want to make it be appropriate for schools and teachers to use.  They have had schools use it as their only math program, and it let kids work at their own pace.   

I just looked at the site.  If you look under subjects and hit "all of math" it takes  you to "World of Math".  I have no idea why they have it labeled as two different things.  

[EndOfOrdinary]

Khan's changes are directly linked to the public school system now using it as they digitize to iPad in the classroom use. They are based upon the tablet and app interface. As much as I understand this, the shift into corporate marketing greatly bothers me. They have not adapted their instruction in any way. They are just repackaging, polishing the marketing, and sending it out again. You can scam the program quickly; it is merely repeat and regurgitate. That is not instruction. That is drill and kill.

 

ETA: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/shantanu-sinha/khan-academy_b_1918342.html

[Erin]

:confused:

I must be looking at a different Khan…  

(Or maybe this is another one of those cases where people use the phrase "drill and kill" differently than we do in educational circles?)  

 

Doing enough to get five (or whatever you have yours set at) in a row correct, then seeing it again once or twice in mastery challenges, doesn't really strike me as drill and kill.  

Instruction is via the videos that are directly linked within each skill set or mastery test, and that article doesn't have anything to do with what your post says.

[Erin]

Hmmm…maybe it'll be difficult to get a good discussion on this as it seems a lot of people don't really know how to navigate it.  Not that it's their fault or anything, I mean, a bad UI is a bad UI.  Just that it's hard to get an honest feel for something when you don't know what's actually supposed to be available!

 

ETA:  Though clearly it's not ready to be a contender unless they make their UI significantly simpler...

[Jean in Newcastle]

Erin - I've spent a lot of time on Khan.  I've gone through quite a bit of the World of Math on my own.  I've sat next to both children while they've done Khan.  I have not found Khan to be something that my particular children can do on their own without me.  With dd, who has some math LDs, Khan has allowed her to be successful while still working on those things that are more difficult for her as many times as she needs.  I sit with her because she needs me to guide her selections so that she doesn't just choose the things she knows she'll do well on (like geometry) and also because she does need a few adaptations.  I use Khan as her stand alone math program in 7th grade.  I do not know if we will use it in later high school years.  With ds, we used it as review going between Alg 1 and Alg 2.  I sat with him because he has ADHD and the computer format made it too easy for him to veer off into other tabs (ie. gaming).  He did not need any adaptations on the actual program.  He did not finish the entire Alg 1 review but did fine on Alg 2.  Occasionally he's used it since to look at certain videos.  But he's also found other sites with math explanations to be helpful as well.  I have not found Khan to be drill and kill at all.  They have gone out of their way to work on teaching concepts using visuals and manipulatives - even on a video format (where you might not expect the manipulative aspect of it).  Sometimes I've found their alternate teaching of concepts without simply going to the standard algorithm difficult because I didn't learn these things that way but I do see the value of having that because we all learn differently and someone might need a different approach for it to really click.  There are a lot of word problems in each skill progression (towards the end of teaching each operation for example).  I do not know how this compares to something like Jacobs or Lial's however because we used Khan as a review at that level and used Jacobs and Lials as the actual course.  Perhaps someone else can speak to that.  

[Erin]

 I have not found Khan to be something that my particular children can do on their own without me.

I've found the same, actually, when it's a skill he's struggling with.  However, Buck seems to be fluent enough in math (or just old enough, maybe) that he knows when he's struggling and when he just needs a few more attempts.   "Mom!  I am NOT getting this circle graphing thing!"  

So then we sit there together, go through the video and discuss, and then through the practice problems.  

Click.  

[EndOfOrdinary]

Perhaps I should explain further as my meaning earlier did not seem to be understood.

 

The article was to describe how Khan has directly attempted to meet the educational market.  That is their major pull at the moment.  The redesign is not any kind of upgrade in their instruction.  It is an upgrade in interface which allows for classroom use to be more significant.  It allows for teachers to directly just plug kids in.  This is the major reason why it is not actually very accessible to joe shmoe.  The entire situation is being redesigned as an aid to the public school classroom.  In that very nature, it can never be stand alone.  It is being redesigned as a supplement for use with the classroom teacher.  That is what the article was about - the last two years and how Khan is courting classroom use and differentiation within the classroom.  In your original post you were describing that Khan has somehow improved over the former version.  That is not the case.  They have repackaged themselves.  These are very different things.

 

Khan is exactly drill and kill in that it is regurgitation.  You are given a process, you are asked to complete the process until you can do so without computational error.  There are no concept problems.  There is no explanation of the true concept.  There is no way to measure if the child actively understands or if they can merely parrot.  They are process related much as wapiti described above.  Drill and Kill does not mean the number of problems.  I am familiar with educational speak - I was a public school math teacher.  Drill and Kill means parrot and regurgitation through repetitions of drill.  That is Khan.  You create a student who can crunch numbers left and right, but has no idea how to use those numbers or how to work with them.  It does not matter that the instruction is video, it is the type of instruction which the video is showing.  Process not concept.  It is virtually impossible to explain concept via a video.  It takes actually communicating with a person to get conceptual understanding or it takes quite a lot of words (hits AoPS being described as "too wordy.")  Concept works with the basis of understanding and the foundations of mathematics.  That doesn't happen in five minute blips.  Secondly, if you cannot openly communicate there is no way to make sure the student can put the concept into their own words and apply it to their lives.  The closest you can come is with problems that require actively reworking the conceptual understanding.  Socratic interaction in much the way AoPS or Jousting Armadillos does.  Series of quick problems will not give you that.  It is the very reason your son needs you to sit next to him when he is not intuitively getting something.  He needs an actual person to discuss with him where the issue is, why he is not understanding the concept, and to relay it to him in a way that has actual communication back and forth.  It is the exact reason many kids have really issues and need parents or others to sit next to them to be able to actively use the knowledge as other posters have described. 

 

Khan is pretty.  It is neat.  It is a great supplement and really works very well in classrooms where you have one teacher and a stack of kids.  It works equally well when you have huge discrepancies such as 2e issues.  But in both these instances, what you need are more problems and the ability of students to work independently.  If that is your goal, Khan is great.  But if that is the goal you could just send your kids to Public School.

 

 

[Jean in Newcastle]

Lots of math curricula need a teacher to communicate with the student.  That is my role as a homeschool math teacher.  That seems like a very strange reason to want to reject a program.  Not that I think that Khan is right for every student.  As I said before, I have not used it as a stand alone in high school and don't know if I will.  But we used Jacobs and Lial's as stand alone programs and both required teachers to communicate concepts before allowing the student to practice.  

[EndOfOrdinary]

Jacobs is designed to be used where can teacher communicate with the student, but does not need to.  The book is designed to be independent.  The concepts are laid out in the book, often in multiple different ways.  The book uses different ways to interact with the student: comics, poetry, historical and funny stories.  The concepts are shown with manipulatives, socratic questioning, and practical applications to create a situation much like communication.  That is why it is stand alone. The teacher is great, but it is an add on.  A student can honestly be handed the book and it can work well as long as they understand how to read a math text.

 

I cannot comment on Lials because I do not know the text well enough.  However, from what I have read on the boards it is similar in the stand alone issue because it is not designed to be used with a teacher.  The teacher is helpful, but not necessary.  The president of Khan Academy has been quoted many times to say, "Technology will not replace teachers, but it will empower them to be great mentors to their students."  Khan is actually designed to be used with a teacher.  Whether that teacher is a person, or another text which stands in as the teacher, it is up to the student.  However, it is not designed to be stand alone and is directly being pulled away from a stand alone model.  It is homework help.  It is extra instruction.

[Jean in Newcastle]

I understood the words "stand alone" to mean a program that covers all of a subject, not a program that could be done with no teacher.  So I understood Khan to be stand alone as opposed to being a supplement to something else.  But perhaps I misunderstood what the OP meant?  

[Erin]

That is what the article was about - the last two years and how Khan is courting classroom use and differentiation within the classroom.

 

You DO realize that that article is from 2012, right?  

 

Drill and Kill does not mean the number of problems.  I am familiar with educational speak - I was a public school math teacher.  Drill and Kill means parrot and regurgitation through repetitions of drill.

 

Then you misunderstood the terminology being used. 

"Drill and kill" refers to pages like what my daughter was just doing; 40 problems of the same thing or slight variations on the theme.  ...Think basketball drills, basic training drills, or marching band drills.   "Drill" means to repeat a skill until one does it without thinking.  And repeat and repeat and repeat…that's the "kill."  

 

 

I understood the words "stand alone" to mean a program that covers all of a subject, not a program that could be done with no teacher.  So I understood Khan to be stand alone as opposed to being a supplement to something else.  But perhaps I misunderstood what the OP meant?  

 

Maybe TT is throwing her off?  

I thought I was pretty clear, actually, when I was asking if it was ready to be a contender against Saxon, et.al., but apparently not.  

Most homeschool math series are used with a teacher, this would be no different. 

 

 

To clear any confusion:  "Stand alone math program" merely refers to bumping Khan up out of its current status as "supplement" and into full "math program."  How it's utilized is then up to the parent and student, just like with any other program.   :)

 

[Chrysalis Academy]

My reservations about using Khan as main math, rather than as supplemental review, come from my own experience using it.  I find it pretty easy to game and to pass levels without really understanding the problems.  I find it easy to just work on stuff I already know vs. learn new things.  Now, I'm a grownup and I do (usually!  ;) ) have the self-discipline to force myself to really understand or to forge ahead into something hard, but it's too easy even for me to play on it for awhile, doing mastery challenges and just clicking "I haven't learned that yet" for hard stuff if I don't really feel like engaging.  So I worry that a kid who is sent off to do Khan on their own for math could end up logging a lot of time and not actually learning much from it.

 

Jean and Erin's kids would not fall into that category, clearly: they are using Khan as a teaching tool, sitting with their kids, guiding them through it.  I think that's great.  I just worry about kids who are using it on their own without this kind of guidance - whether homeschool kids or ps kids.  I do think it's a system you can game for a long time pretty easily.  Obviously it will only hurt you in the long run to do that, but kids may not be equipped to realize that and make a better decision on their own.

[Jean in Newcastle]

Rose, as you've noted, that gaming aspect is why I've sat next to my children.  I think it is good to be aware of possible weaknesses of any program so that we can use it the right way.  If someone is motivated enough to get out of work, they can look at the answers in the TE or the odd answers in the back of Jacobs!  

[Erin]

And why, if we use it several days in a row and I'm not seated beside him the whole time, I require a specific amount of progress.  It's fairly hard to scam going from 12% to 19%, KWIM?

[Jean in Newcastle]

Also - if you are signed up as a coach, you do see their progress even to the point of being able to see what they worked on, what they got right and what they missed.  Matroyshka has been doing a wonderful job explaining how the coach's page works on another thread.  I don't tend to need that as much since I'm sitting right there but you can keep tabs.  

[Trilliums]

Younger son relied heavily on Khan for Alg 1.  It started as a supplement but became more and more central to his math learning as the year progressed,  He used it quite independently.  He does get math concepts quickly but struggles some with computation.  It was really a good fit for him though.  He went on to take honors math (geometry-alg 2 and now precalc) at the public school and is doing well.  His teachers always comment on his strong problem solving skills and unique approach to problems.  

 

This was 3 years ago though, so perhaps right before some major changes took place.  Last time I took a peek at KA it seemed dramatically changed and more complicated.  

[Wildiris]

I've been playing around Khan Academy with DD(gr.6) for a few days. We are using Khan Academy as a supplement to Singapore Math because DD needs more practice. I do not think I would use Khan Academy as my one resource for math or even as a my primary resource for math. I sat with DD for a while, then let her work alone with the thought that she would progress systematically through the topics. What she did was skip around entering topics out of sequence. Not a good strategy for learning math. However, I do think the videos are valuable and their brevity perfect for bite-size instruction.

 

I do not understand what the problem is with math drill. Personally, I think math drill is very useful and does not mean that kids do not understand the underlying concepts. Math drills cement math facts.

[Erin]

Unfortunately, it can also bore kids into insanity.  ;)  See above about my daughter's 40 problems of decimal multiplication and division.

 She had it nailed after the first five.  She certainly didn't need 35 more.  

[ocelotmom]

I've been playing around Khan Academy with DD(gr.6) for a few days. We are using Khan Academy as a supplement to Singapore Math because DD needs more practice. I do not think I would use Khan Academy as my one resource for math or even as a my primary resource for math. I sat with DD for a while, then let her work alone with the thought that she would progress systematically through the topics. What she did was skip around entering topics out of sequence. Not a good strategy for learning math. However, I do think the videos are valuable and their brevity perfect for bite-size instruction.

 

I do not understand what the problem is with math drill. Personally, I think math drill is very useful and does not mean that kids do not understand the underlying concepts. Math drills cement math facts.

 

Was *she* skipping around, or was the program skipping around?

 

In the default mode, It's spiral. It presents one topic, and then moves on to the next, which is likely to be a completely different topic, after you've successfully practiced the first one. Each topic goes through multiple rounds of practice before it's considered mastered (and mastered subjects still come up for review from time to time).

 

If you click on "View full list of x grade content" link at the top of the student page, you get a sequential version.

[Grantmom]

See, this is the way it used to be, but now what I see, no matter whether I click on World of Math or not, it just gives the grade levels sequence.

[Wildiris]

Was *she* skipping around, or was the program skipping around?

 

In the default mode, It's spiral. It presents one topic, and then moves on to the next, which is likely to be a completely different topic, after you've successfully practiced the first one. Each topic goes through multiple rounds of practice before it's considered mastered (and mastered subjects still come up for review from time to time).

 

If you click on "View full list of x grade content" link at the top of the student page, you get a sequential version.

Humm.....Not sure. I thought she was skipping around on her own, but it may well have been the program. thanks  :001_smile: