One thing that I did well in high school was in math though not everyone does well in math and sometimes it is hard for them to get help either that they are afraid to ask for help or they don't want to look stupid and want to do everything them selves. But what ever reason it is learning math has become easier now than ever before. I always did well in math till I got to calculas in high school till I got lazy or what ever reason I started to fail my first math class ever. After that I started having problems in math when I got in to college and when I started to do high level math trying to pick back up my math from high school that I had not done in a long time. I had to relearn a lot of things and in doing so was hard for me to do.
Though like many people we are good at different things and not so strong at others but it does not mean we can't learn it. This is where I see Khan Academy come in. I am able to go back and do math at my own pace and find where I am struggling and where I know what I know. For instance if I did not learn my rules of exponents I may be able to pass an exponents test that a teach gives me but later down the road when I am doing different functions in algebra or calculus then it may hurt me a lot that I never learned how to do them properly even though I did pass that test back then. But now with the Khan Academy I am able to go back and test my self to help improve my self.
So how can this be used? well I personally am going to be using it for my self to go back and learn things that I should have learned and go over areas that I know I did bad in college. But I am also going to using this as supplemental materiel for my own children's education while I teach them mathematics.
Khan has done a good job in making the videos short for people like me that have short attention spans. All the videos in math are around 8 minutes long. But not only did they keep my attention with the videos but they made it so that you earn points for watching videos and you earn points for the more lessons you do and if you do them well you get more points. They make play into the addictive nature of earning points for most people. Which helps kids as they can compete with their friends if they like over how many points they have or over how many different badges they get.
How this helps teachers and parents. If your a parent and your wanting your child to do some work out side of class to make sure that they are knowing that they are being tough in school then you can have your child on khan and set your self up as a coach. This allows you to monitor them and see where they are struggling and where they are good at. They give you statistics on how long they where on and how often they got on. They show specific questions that they got wrong and you can see how it was supposed to be done. All the statistics that they give you as a parent helps you determine how you can best help your child succeed in school. The same thing is true for teachers if they have their students on khan academy they are able to see where they are struggling better than any test will tell them. This allows them to know how hard they are working and if they need more attention or less if they understand it. The statistics for khan academy is what makes me love this website the most as it really give you the power to find how to best help the learner if that is yourself or a child.
I encourage everyone to join and check it out for your self and for others that you know. If you feel that this is good providing free education for the world not just a select few then help them develop it more and put more lessons up there than just math. This can be expanded a lot more than just math. follow the link below to help them out.
http://www.khanacademy.org/contribute
Thanks for Reading,
Local Tech Repair Admin
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