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“Also, he thinks it makes more sense to have students watch lectures at home and do homework at school as opposed to vice versa.”

That makes sense to me. Students definitely benefit when they are doing work with experts and peers on hand. Taking up the entire period with lecture crams out the actual doing.

Rather, crowds out the actual doing.

Have I mentioned the value of giving commenters the ability to edit their posts? No edit option is so 2007.

Is there any intent to sharing this video online?

Can we see a walkthrough of the new digs? I loved seeing the walkthroughs of the on-going construction, but we never got to see a final video / images of the new finished space.

High school math teacher, education blogger, very interested in any kind of elaboration on “getting people to develop intuition” and “the more money people spend on videos, the worse those videos seem to get.” Very interested.

I’ve been working in the distance learning space (higher ed, commercial, and entrepreneurial) for a few years now, and I’ve seen the field struggle to embrace the idea of participatory learning.

The current model is to convert pre-existing Powerpoints into a web friendly format with Articulate, create some discussion board topics around that content, rinse and repeat. Throw a 100 question exam in at the end of the semester and you have yourself a pretty awful course.

The best online courses are almost evolutionary in nature, students start with a single question, something like: “How should we balance our consumption with the protection of our environment?”

From there, all forms of research and expression are encouraged, the instructor serving as a kind of wrangler of ideas, encouraging critical thinking and collaboration along the way, their “expertise” applied only in small doses.

As the global community of educators embraces this participatory way of learning, I think we’ll really see the Internet taken more seriously as a legitimate educational platform.

As a side note, Moodle is a fantastic open-source LMS (learning management system), 2.0 is about to be released, and it’s looking great. I build training systems for health care and other organizations on top of it, super flexible.

@Stephen

How you envision that working for something like math? I mean I personally can’t imagine starting a course with the question “how can we mathematically describe rates of change?” and then let the students go off and discover calculus.

@David

I totally agree, and I must admit that I have no experience with teaching math/physics/chemistry online. In this case, I see the instructors role as that of a curator – finding the best online lectures and illustrations that bring the content to life.

I do however think there is always room for exploration of context, the instructor might ask the students document (camera phone photos or video with upload straight to the LMS ) that would illustrate the idea of “rate of change”, etc.

I think it’s a) funny and b) potentially concerning how Sal has become so tied/associated to ‘his video format’.

Half of the points discussed above are about various aspects of his videos. This may or may not have anything to do with actually learning, by the way.

If the medium is the message (and it especially is for some of the groups targeted by Sal), then I think the medium best include collaborative learning. And context. And an emphasis on critical thinking skills rather than an inventory of material.

I’d like to echo Matt B’s request – it would be great to see the video of your session if you are willing to share it.

Very good!

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I think what makes the Khan academy so effective is there is not a teacher to mediate. He lets his videos speak for themselves. He assumes his students are intelligent enough to learn the material on their own through the videos without the help of another teacher. Why would a teacher need to explain an explanation as in a traditional classroom experience? If this is because teachers assume students couldn’t understand the material on their own, then teachers need to start giving students more credit as in the case of Sal.

Great Work Sal Khan! Would love to see this video posted…

We admire Sal Khan for what he has done. We’re using 37signals and open source tools such as Drupal and Kaltura to enable thousands of Sals to start their own academy.

Putting aside the debate on how the learning process could and should be changed, you have to admit the man is inspirational. I, too, would love to see the video from your discussion. In the meantime, you can listen to him at Mixergy: http://mixergy.com/salman-khan-academy-interview/

We have terrific engagement from our large bloc of home schooled kids who use our site’s fully moderated forum as a way of honing their writing & keyboard skills.

Asynch learning is taking off big time—we can vouch for that just on the empirical proof alone from our site.

Video is OK as a cool medium for expert testimony. As part of an interactive setting, it’s really a good “extra.”

So far, there does not seem to be a viable substitute for dialogue.

I see continual reversion to the Waldorf model in which a natural interest is used as a hub from which all disciplines are spoked in. It’s always best to ride in the direction that your pony is going.