https://supermemo.guru/wiki/Experts_do_not_understand_Khan_Academy Experts do not understand Khan Academy From supermemo.guru Jump to navigation Jump to search This reference is used to annotate "I would never send my kids to school" (2017) by Piotr Wozniak [ ] Contents * 1 Teachers live in a fish tank * 2 Washington Post blasts Khan Academy * 3 Power of fuzzy learning * 4 Incremental approach to trajectory optimization * 5 Should Khan Academy get schoolified? * 6 Armchair criticism in blindfolds * 7 References Teachers live in a fish tank Unschoolers love Khan Academy. At the same time, a great deal of teachers are harshly critical of Sal Khan. The criticism is largerly derived from a teacher's fish tank perspective. Good teachers can spend decades in the system without grasping those essential principles of free learning that are obscured by the distortive lens of schooling. Those poorly understood principles include: * Fundamental law of learning * Reliance of intelligence on free choice * Power of semantic learning * Value of error in the learning process * Destructive power of interference * Knowledge darwinism, and more Naturally, there are many others aspects of schooling that are hard to see from within the system without direct comparison with unschoolers or democratic schools. For example, the impact of school on addictions or mental health. However, those are not directly related to the criticism of Khan Academy. Instead, there is one undeniable factor: Sal Khan is a rock star of education. It is all but human to be a bit envious of somebody else's success. That envy can grow exponentially with a perception of undeserved praise. A math teacher who perfected his trade for decades will naturally wonder if slapdash videos watched on a mobile phone can really replace a loving teacher's personalized approach to a struggling student. A dedicated teacher who puts his students well ahead of the problem of low pay may actually feel that Sal is doing harm to the learning process. We need to understand that teacher. He wants to see a better world, but he cannot see that Sal's work is truly a step to educational salvation. I also dabble in education, however, my appreciation of Khan's work is great enough to entirely eliminate the problem of envy. In this text, I only have words of praise for Sal. In addition, his Academy is actually pretty compatible with my baby: incremental reading (see: incremental video). Washington Post blasts Khan Academy In July 2012, Valerie Strauss in two columns in Washington Post panned Sal Khan and his efforts of bringing free education to every home. Karim Kai Ani, creator of Mathalicious, wrote: Teachers aren't "pissed off" because Sal Khan is the world's teacher. They're concerned that he's a bad teacher who people think is great; that the guy who's delivered over 170 million lessons to students around the world openly brags about being unprepared and considers the precise explanation of mathematical concepts to be mere "nitpicking." Experienced educators are concerned that when bad teaching happens in the classroom, it's a crisis; but that when it happens on YouTube, it's a "revolution." Karim Kai Ani understands mathematics, semantic learning, and learntropy. However, there is one factor that makes all the above reasoning incorrect: free choice. There is no compulsory schooling at Khan Academy. A child can watch a video and walk away if it does not produce a sufficient learntropy signal. There are many competitors to Sal (e.g. I never saw a better explanation of Laplace operator than this by Blue Brown who also delivers for Khan). The competition does not only come from video, but also from great text manuals, or college-level lectures. Teachers keep forgetting that they are not the best assessors of learntropy. The best assessor is impersonal. It is the student's own learn drive system that is largely involuntary (i.e. the signal depends solely on prior knowledge and the information delivery)(see: Pleasure of learning). Karim Kai Ani can produce a pedagogically perfect delivery at Mathalicious, but the effort may instantly be quashed by the learn drive reward signal. The kid may simply say "I do not like it", and that assessment cannot be argued with. In education, child's brain is the only true God. Experts in mathematics education, Christopher Danielson and Michael Paul Goldenberg wrote: rather than revolutionizing mathematics teaching and learning, Khan's work adds a technological patina to a moribund notion of teaching and learning mathematics. What is more, his videos reveal an ignorance of how we know students learn mathematics [...] Many mathematics educators stress another kind of knowledge necessary to design and deliver quality instruction: pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). PCK refers to knowledge of content as it relates to teaching [...] particular kinds of PCK are associated with greater gains in student learning PhD titles notwithstanding, by virtue of their profession, Danielson and Goldberg may not be aware that pedagogical content knowledge (PKC) is an artifact of schooling. The best judge of the content is student's brain. Today children can choose from dozens of videos or articles explaining a given subject and try them all until one clicks with their preferences. Later on, children can pick their favorite authors and methods of delivery. This is the first step to efficient knowledge darwinism in semantic learning. If Khan is not revolutionary, neither is YouTube. Just two simple ideas. How can we possibly not love ideas that change the world only because they are simple, or perhaps imperfect. Simple idea of Page Rank in Google advanced our collective intelligence by an order of magnitude. The experts ask "Does Khan know what he needs to know?" We contend that the videos at Khan Academy are alarmingly devoid of pedagogical content knowledge. We claim further that (1) the examples Khan chooses appear selected at random and thus are, perhaps unsurprisingly, often quite poor. They are prone either to create further confusion, or to fail to address fundamental questions students are likely to have; and (2) Khan's explanations are frequently off target in addressing likely student questions that experienced teachers would anticipate and elicit The experts complain that Khan does not explain a hermetic algorithm. This is a typical effect of the tape recorder model of education. In this way of thinking, we need to record algorithms precisely on the "brain tape", or they will be played back with an ambiguity and result in possibly erroneous solutions. I read "devoid of PCK" as expert's divine insight into the type of audience that will arrive to the video. PCK is not only knowledge dependent, it is audience dependent. "Comparing decimals" may be watched by a 5-year-old or by me. I would say Khan is entertaining for a wide spectrum audience. What's "alarming" for a "perfect teacher" may actually add fun and spice to an average viewer. Power of fuzzy learning In real education, i.e. free learning, there is nothing wrong with getting a first approximation on the algorithm from a quick video, and then correcting one's weaknesses in real life applications. We have neural networks to do all the necessary computing. Most kids are more likely to master basic math from simple computer games that may carry no pedagogical content, and no intended knowledge content. It is learning by having fun that always trumps rigid lectures polished to perfection when students become robots of precise imitation (like tape recorders)(see: Education counteracts evolution). Many vinyl connoisseurs cannot stand the perfection of CD quality music, and those who love real music played by real musicians may be repulsed by algorithmic impeccability of computer-generated music. It is understandable why experts cannot stand Khan's imperfections. However, imperfections and errors have a contribution to knowledge darwinism and the emergence of applicability in abstract knowledge. Drop out techniques in neural networks are a good analogy to good training by providing micro-challenges that underlie high-quality generalization. What the experts do not seem to realize is that Khan has a devastating advantage over all those PCK-correct lectures that require years of study of PCK and many more years of study of math in general for the teacher. The advantage is: choice! Kids who do not like a given lecture, can quickly google for 10 alternatives until they find the one they love. They can find it at Khan Academy or elsewhere. They will come back to Khan for his avuncular approach, lack of scripts, improvisation, and warm voice. Kids often need those attributes more than mathematical precision and PCK. It is an equivalent of gamification with many positive side effects. A student who thinks that 0.435 > 0.76 is offered nothing in the way of correction on Khan Academy Don't all people get similar corrections in their live all the time? If a substantial proportion of the population is weak at numbers it is precisely due to the hate of math that is instilled by perfect inculcation from the earliest ages along a fixed schedule by perfect and perfectly boring teachers, perfect PCK that feels like "uncanny valley of math". Most of people need a peek of an eye, and figure out the answer even if they have never been trained. I never paid attention at math class, and I delegate simple math jobs to the neural networks in the brain. Perfect algorithms and perfect examples can serve one purpose: losing interest in mathematics. I wish the "experts" could publish their own 6000 videos and let nitpickers pull them apart. You can find a fly in almost any ointment. That 0.7 is bigger than 0.09 should be obvious to any first grader with a bit of experience in videogames. As for "greater than" signs (>), it takes quite a bit of videogaming to get this kind of knowledge. It is admittedly, not a very popular sign, but if kids recall it from games, it means that it does not really take long to learn, and there is no need to ram it into unprepared minds with the help of perfectly polished lectures that kids hate. Incremental approach to trajectory optimization As for Sal's methodology: Khan will put the video out there and see how people react to it. He perceives this to be a better approach than incorporating results of quality research projects into his instructional decisions. In the age of No Child Left Behind and its mandate for "scientifically based research" as the foundation for classroom instruction, this seems lazy Khan employs knowledge darwinism and free choice of self-directed students. In that his superiority over the PCK-perfect curriculum has some analogies to the superiority of Wikipedia over Encyclopedia Britannica. Experts want perfect automation of the mind, while darwinian approach poses unpredictable challenges that foster intelligence. "No Child Left Behind" has become notorious for precisely this robotic weakness. As Alfie Kohn put it: "No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is an appalling and unredeemable experiment that has done incalculable damage to our schools" (see: No Child Left Behind Act is working). Our experts provide a prescription for perfect math knowledge: (1) learn an algorithm, (2) use it a few times, and (3) go on to other vast areas of math. All fluency in math is born via trial and error with a bit of reading, lots of computation, and most of all: solving specific problems in real life. Those problem provide the most effective reinforcement signal that makes it possible to store abstract knowledge with highest applicability. Sal takes it easy. This is why he is so prolific. He does not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Even an occasional math error could be of benefit. Nothing makes kids more exited than a chance to prove their teacher wrong! The chances of sending a Venus probe off course are negligible. Math anxiety, and the loss of love of learning are far more likely to produce errors in the adult world. Should Khan Academy get schoolified? Here is what experts suggest to Khan: Instead, we suggest that Khan Academy desperately needs voices of teaching experience. Khan could tap into any number of existing networks of exemplary teaching I fear this would be exactly the approach that would drive students away. Academy would smell of school and students are well conditioned to stay away from anything that reminds them of schooling. Those suggested teaching experts might be recruited from ... ... recipients of the Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching or the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards I have a counter suggestion. Award winning teachers should publish their own videos and compete with Khan. If they make any dent at YouTube (like Blue Brown above), Khan will sure come in knocking. Armchair criticism in blindfolds Expertise and PhD surely deserved, the presented voices are an acme of armchair criticism. Valerie Strauss spoke about her blog (source): There really is nothing new under the sun in education; we recycle ideas and just give them new names It is pretty obvious we never had YouTube before, and we never had a free choice of vast free educational video resources at our fingertips. For the first time we can do college in pajamas. Today we can even combine on-line resources with spaced repetition and incremental reading. For the first time we can ride a highway of education in where the only speed limit is set by the human brain. The sun is indeed very bright, and new things must be hard to see for those blinded with the old school. You go Sal! References --------------------------------------------------------------------- Quoted excerpts come from the following reference: Title 1: Khan Academy: The revolution that isn't Title 2: Does the Khan Academy know how to teach? Date: 2012 Source: Washington Post Backlink: Khan Academy --------------------------------------------------------------------- For more texts on memory, learning, sleep, creativity, and problem solving, see Super Memory Guru Retrieved from "https://supermemo.guru/index.php?title= Experts_do_not_understand_Khan_Academy&oldid=19616" Navigation menu Personal tools * Log in Namespaces * Page * Discussion [ ] Variants expanded collapsed Views * Read * View source * View history [ ] More expanded collapsed Search [ ] [Search] [Go] Navigation * Main page * Recent changes * Random page * Help about MediaWiki Tools * What links here * Related changes * Special pages * Printable version * Permanent link * Page information * This page was last edited on 7 February 2020, at 03:46. * Privacy policy * About supermemo.guru * Disclaimers * Powered by MediaWiki