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Khan Academy gurus?


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We've only ever dabbled in Khan previously, but for various reasons, BalletBoy has been using it to practice some math skills. Here's what I'm having trouble understanding. For the "mission," he quickly mastered a lot so he was at a certain percent finished. And then it went down. And then, back up, and then down. And now, it's been weeks, he's down as having mastered tons of new things, and it hasn't budged. I guess I just don't know how to manage this as the teacher. I'm not sure where it ends either. Like, is it even possible to finish a subject mission or will it always add more? How can I have any concept whatsoever of how much longer anything will take him when it fluctuates so much? People look at me like I'm nuts when I try to explain this, so I feel like I must be missing something. Like, how is it possible that he continues to finish and master new tasks on his mission and yet the percent finished won't budge? How do I predict when new things will suddenly be added? Like, a ton of topics that aren't remedial (like, it's not detecting that he didn't master old stuff - this is math above what he was doing) were added to his mission of finishing high school geometry. I'd like to abandon the whole thing just because I can't tell how much he has left, but he likes the interface and he likes it much more than some other things he tried and he was not liking Jacob's, which I'm still doing a little with him and using with his brother.

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Yes, you can finish a subject mission but because it has review built in, after a set amount of time it is going to go down a bit again until you top it up with what appears to be called a quiz now (but was called something else back when we did it). But they also add content at times so it can go down for that reason as well. 

As to how to do it, the whole site has been revamped since we used it so I can’t answer that. 

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Oh wait.  I guess there is a place to click to get it to look like the way I remember it.  So. . .   Mastery Challenges are what serve as reviews and they will rotate over time, giving additional review even after you've supposedly mastered things.

I required all the Mission Foundations to be done before moving on to specific skills within a subject.  I did not require all subsequent topics to be done in order but it does make sense to work from left to right on any topic within a subject because skills within the topic do build on each other. 

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I am assuming he has mastered or leveled up on some skills during mission questions but then missed a similar question during a mastery challenge. You can level up on some skills by getting 3/4 questions correct and level up to “Practiced” then miss that skill’s question the next time it appears and it will go back to category of skills not yet practiced or begun. I’m on my phone and the app doesn’t show this part like on a web browser on the computer.

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I don’t use it that way.  We simply watch the videos, do the practice problems and then take the quiz for the section.  If the quiz score is good, we move on to the next section.  Once we are through a few sections, we start building in a bit of review by taking a day each week or so to work through quizzes for prior sections and doing practice problems for any sections the student might need reinforcement on.  Our missions are very incomplete but the material was still mastered.

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Thanks, everyone.

I do think sometimes it's that he misses a question and has to start over. Which, that alone may make it so that Khan is not the right program for him. He's a kid who is not a very fast worker and who is always going to be the kind to make one or two careless mistakes even when he understands. In a classroom setting, if you missed one problem on a test with 25, it would be fine. You'd not only still pass, you'd still get an A. But on Khan, it seems you have to do the whole thing over again. 25 more problems - or however many it is. That's just never going to work for this kid.

I'm fine with how we're using it this year for Geometry - he wanted to do the practice online instead of in the book, but I'm still teaching and checking in and overseeing a lot. But he wanted to keep using it next year for Algebra II. I need to be more hands off with that since it's not something I feel great about teaching. So it may just not work for us. He doesn't like the interface for TT or Thinkwell. I'll have to see what ends up working.

Edited by Farrar
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I don't know.  Reviews are good.  Dc loves DO, but I don't think the Jacobs geometry is going to be the right choice for this dc, so we're going to try Unlock Math. If you buy the yearly subscription instead of paying monthly, the fee is only a little more than DO's self-correcting fee per 9 mo course.  

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