Monthly Archives: February 2015

Teachers & tutors at work on Khan Academy at our KA Symposium at eircom in September 2014
With the help of pioneering teachers and our friends at the ATECI Education Centres  and PDST, who have offered dozens of workshops for and by teachers, Khan Academy is becoming increasingly popular in Ireland.
Click here for the Khan Academy / Irish Curriculum MapThe number of teachers using Khan Academy in Ireland increased 1200% from September 2013 to September 2014. During the 2014 MATHletes Challenge, number of overall and highly engaged users increased by 700% from the previous year.
These are staggering statistics, and should be celebrated.
However, as these numbers grew, I continued to talk to teachers. I heard their excitement about students’ engagement, improved test scores, and newfound confidence.  But just as important, I heard questions, feedback, critiques and suggestions for how to make Khan Academy more useful and useable in the Irish classroom.
The same 3 questions kept popping up:
Does Khan Academy align to the Irish curriculum?How can I be sure that the exercises I am assigning are relevant to what students should be learning?How can I find exercises in Khan Academy for the specific topics or units I am teaching this term?Maths looks the same in Ireland as it does in the US, and across Europe.
However, there are differences in when and how students are expected to understand different maths skills and competencies.
The first step toward building confidence in Khan Academy in Ireland was a thorough analysis of where the platform aligns to the Irish Curriculum, and where there were gaps. (Similar Khan Academy mapping projects have been done in other countries).
The GoalThe goal was to create a resource for teachers, students and parents that shows how Khan Academy can directly support the teaching and learning of specific areas of mathematics stipulated by Ireland’s the National Council for Curriculum …Read More