‘We’re participants in their learning’: A parent’s perspective on Khan Academy
Today’s post comes from MATHletes Challenge mother Geraldine Exton, whose two sones Daragh and Odhran were Limerick County Champions for 2nd year and 6th class, respectively. Both boys were also runners up for the Munster Championship and National Finalists. Geraldine talks a bit about the family’s experience with Khan Academy
We discovered Khan Academy back in 2011. We’d been away for a year and the children had had some experience of other online Maths programmes designed to fill gaps in their knowledge; we heard that this new site was freely available and we decided to investigate. We signed up, firstly our two boys, and eventually our younger daughter as well.
Multilingual Education & Khan Academy
Studies into multilingual education suggest that teaching students a subject in their more comfortable language first, then reinforcing that learning later, in a subsequent language, is a powerful way to ensure that both the concepts and the language are learnt. In the process of overseeing our children’s transition from English- to Irish-language instruction, Khan Academy was a natural choice for us to support their learning.
In the process of overseeing our children’s transition from English- to Irish-language instruction, Khan Academy was a natural choice for us to support their learning.
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MATHletes Challenge: Recognition & Celebration
And then came the Mathletes Challenge. An added game layer, introducing competition and rewarding achievements by publishing the best performing students’ names on leaderboards, injected a frisson of excitement into the daily Maths routines. Suddenly there was a public outlet to recognise all the hard work that …Read More
Inside Khan Academy: Interview with James Tynan
This week, MATHletes visited the Khan Academy headquarters in Mountain View, California, to share learnings with the team about how MATHletes used ‘tournament play’ to generate excitement about Khan Academy. MATHletes sat down with James Tynan, Partnerships and Community lead at Khan Academy to get his thoughts on about what it’s like to work at Khan Academy, how he thinks about digital learning, and how MATHletes Challenge in Ireland is inspiring innovation at Khan Academy!
Huge thanks to Lauren O’Reilly, 5th year student on the Digital Youth Council, for her help on this post.
Interview highlights
…on working at Khan Academy:
“You end up sitting down with these amazing people…like maybe the first employee at Google.”
…on what makes Khan Academy a unique learning experience:
Education has been “informed by the limitations of what’s been possible in the past.What would learning be like if we invented education today?”
“You get instant feedback on whether you’re getting things right or wrong…Khan Academy helps you take control of your own learning”
…on whether online learning is the way forward for all aspects of school:
“in chess, a computer will always beat a human. But a human working together with a computer will beat any human or any computer”
…on what college courses/career prospects he sees for the next generation:
“The next generation will be about combining creativity with technology”
…on why the Mathletes Challenge ties in so well Khan Academy:
“It is about inspiring deep mastery based learning but doing it in a way that is really fun..that is why they tie in so well together.”
Listen to the full interview here’Interview with James Tynan’ on audioBoom
Thanks to Khan Academy for hosting MATHletes for the week and letting us share all the amazing stories from MATHletes students, parents and teachers!
Q&A: using Khan Academy for Adult Irish Education
Mayo Adult Educator Sorcha Moran has a background in Software Engineering, but changed careers after studying some post-graduate courses on Adult Education.
She has been working for Mayo/Sligo/Leitrim Education and Training Board as a tutor in Maths and Computers for the past 6 years. At the ETB they currently teach maths to part-time students at FETAC levels 1-5, and she personally teach levels 3-5. She uses a number of approaches in her maths teaching, including Khan Academy.
MATHletes asked Sorcha 5 questions about how she uses Khan Academy in her teaching. Here is what she told us:
1) Where did you learn about Khan Academy?
I was first introduced to Khan Academy when my daughter took part in MATHletes Challenge 2014. I was watching closely what she was doing, and it was clear to me that Khan Academy had a lot to offer my adult learners also.
2) What makes Khan Academy different from other online resources that you use in your teaching?
First of all, Khan Academy has an interface that appeals to all ages. Most of the Maths resources I come across online have a target audience of young children or exam-year adolescents, so they can be very childish or text-book looking. Khan Academy is a resource that is supportive and gives freedom to the learner at the same time, and it facilitates the theories of Adult Learning (Andragogy) very well.
The learner has full control over what they want to learn and when. They can follow a suggested order, or dip in and out of areas that are relevant to them at the time. It covers all levels from Early Math on so learners have the opportunity to fill their own knowledge gaps. Khan Academy has lots of intuitive/experiential learning which I love. It makes the learning of concepts much more concrete. My learners …Read More
7 ‘newbie’ Khan teacher tips: lessons from a Irish primary classroom
We first met primary teacher Claire Corroon on twitter @PrimaryCPD, and then when she came to our Khan Academy Symposium in September. She runs the site Primary CPD, which provides support, information and inspiration for primary teachers, structured inline with the Irish Primary School Curriculum.
A self-confessed ‘newbie’ to Khan Academy, Westmeath Primary teacher Claire Corroon tried out the site as part of the MATHletes last spring. After a bit dabbling here and there, she decided she was ready to get ‘stuck in’ this school year.
Well now she’s stuck!
Claire has her 3rd class at St. Etchens NS, Kinnegad, Co Westmeath up and running on Khan Academy, and has been learning loads to share with other Irish primary teachers.
Claire wrote a great blogpost on the Primary CPD site about her learning experience as self-described KA ‘newbie’, where she gives her observations on the benefits and limitations of Khan Academy, and compares the platform to other popular maths software and websites.
We love to hear the positive experiences that Irish teachers like Claire have had with Khan Academy, but her honest assessment and critical feedback are equally important as we try to improve the Challenge and the support we can offer teachers. You know your classrooms best. At MATHletes, we are strong believers in the idea that we don’t know what we don’t know, so we need you students, parents, and teachers in the MATHletes community to tell us what we should be thinking about!
Claire gives 7 great tips for Irish Primary teachers to get started, tailor content appropriately, and create extra incentives to motivate students:
Register yourself
Get permission forms
Use the KA teacher resources
Select an appropriate mission for students
Make recommendations to focus students
Motivate students with class challenges
Encourage students to try the KA computer programming tutorials
Check out her full blogpost post here.
You can follow Claire on twitter @PrimaryCPD, …Read More