But no. There are more. Many, many more videos. On all sorts of topics.
Here is just a taste: algebra; chemistry; biology; physics; art history; finance; history; and many other social studies and humanities topics.
Up until now, I was quite content to watch the video on my own and prepare for future lessons. But then I spent a little time poking around the site and discovered a fantastic way to engage the students.
If you register as a COACH, and then have you students register as STUDENTS, you can track your students` progress and they watch the videos and practice the concepts through a variety of activities.
For each lesson you teach, you can suggest a video to your students--as a preview of the concepts or as a review of the concepts after you have taught the lesson.
From speaking with students who have used the videos in this manner, they really like the ability to pause, write and reflect about the concepts being presented.
And hopefully, no matter which way you use the videos, the concepts will stick and our students will be more successful.
I think I might lean towards "Khan Academy is pretty good.". The topics he covers are extensive, and for independent learning or remedial work the videos and quizzes can be helpful. I like the hierarchy of topics in the practice section and the game style of earning points and completing levels.
ReplyDeleteThat said, the videos are electronic chalk and talk. It is an ok style, but it just seems to fall short of what we could hope for when we're using an Internet connected device which could be used in ways that are interactive, collaborative, and connect with real-world ("authentic") scenarios.
For pre-teaching I hope I can teach my class better than Sal Khan who has never met them, so would prefer to record a short lesson myself. I played with this in the fall, and technically speaking it was easier than I thought. Maybe that can be one of our goals in Digital Lit going forward to see that teachers know how to record a lesson if they choose so they don't feel reliant on preset material for out of class resources?