What Do YOU Want to Learn?

In reading this blog post on boston.com titled "Some Lessons for Virtual Learning", I came across a great resource: The Khan Academy. According to the Khan Academy website, it contains "over 2,700 videos covering everything from arithmetic to physics, finance, and history and 253 practice exercises". Just briefly looking at the site, one can see it is possible to learning something about topics ranging from the Geithner Plan to solve the banking crisis to Differential Equations to Healthcare to Investing.

Not only does this resource allow us, as educators, to learn more about topics we are interested in, or else watch a short video to refresh our minds on something we learned a long time ago, but it can provide a great resource for our students. As the blog post states: "The data from Khan Academy shows that, with self-paced learning, a lot of kids who would have otherwise been relegated to slow-learner status actually catch up to and outpace the supposed smarty-pants in the class." Yes, it would be great to have independent research done on this topic, but the potential for a site like the Khan Academy is truly endless. It truly is remarkable that not only can a student get instruction from you, their teacher in class, ask for help outside of class from you, be given workbook homework for enrichment, and then, watch a video in the comfort of their own home to further their learning.

No doubt, there must be some "quality control", where the teacher will need to judge the appropriateness of a video in the course of their class, but it can be a great resource to refer students to that are struggling with a particular topic, or else may want to move on to more advanced topics.

The Khan Academy is growing too, so I suspect that we will hear much more about it in the future. The blog states: "The free Khan Academy has provided almost 100 million exercises, now boasts about 3.5 million discrete users, and is growing at a rate of about 300,000 users a month (with the pace of growth increasing)". I encourage everyone to check out this resource, either for a potential link to share with students, or as a break from your regular coursework where you can explore some areas or topics of personal interest.