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Course: Talks and interviews > Unit 1
Lesson 2: Schools using Khan Academy- Khan Academy's Discovery Lab - Summer 2012
- Khan Academy at Eastside College Prep (grades 6-8)
- Khan Academy in Los Altos School District
- Khan Academy at Summit Public Schools
- Khan Academy at KIPP
- Khan Academy at Oakland Unity High School
- Khan Academy at Marlborough School
- The Gates Notes: Administrators in Los Altos
- The Gates Notes: Teachers in Los Altos
- The Gates Notes: Students in Los Altos
- The Gates Notes: Insights into students' progress
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Khan Academy at Oakland Unity High School
How Khan Academy helped increase student responsibility and motivation in east Oakland.
Want to join the conversation?
- Is there a Khan Academy app for my son’s iPad or can it be accessed from the Wii U remote? He is in the early stages of addition and subtraction and I am amazed how he is absorbed with Khan Academy.(6 votes)
- that is a very good question i wish it was possible too(4 votes)
- At1:29, the teacher says the kids quit.
Why give up?(2 votes)- Hi. I am the teacher in the video. Kids quit when facing difficult math problems for may reasons. Many have just developed the habit of quitting. During their middle school years they leaned that they could quit and still pass the course and get promoted to the next grade. That diminished their sense of responsibility. They never learned the habit of working through the difficulty on a tough problem. Soon they become convinced that they could not do the difficult problems.
Our focus is on helping students rediscover their sense of academic responsibility and the joy of learning. Khan Academy helps them rebuild their work ethic and build real confidence.
Peter McIntosh(7 votes)
- why is most of the videos from california?(2 votes)
- That's where Sal lives and operates Khan Academy with his employees with.(4 votes)
- Was khan academy's ability to provide video instruction in both English and Spanish lead to better instruction to those in the Oakland area that could not speak fluent English?(3 votes)
- Yes some people can't speak engilsh but can speak spanish.(0 votes)
- I have a small classroom (5-7 students) setting and the students are at a very different level. So how do I set up my Khan classroom so I can work on some skills individually and some as a group?(0 votes)
- This should be very similar to how you set up your classroom to work with students at different levels without Khan Academy.
At my school we have classes that range from 4 to 14 students and most times the classrooms are at very different levels. Every classroom (in theory) has aides to allow teaching at the level of the students. The advantage to Khan Academy is you can have students working on the exercises they need to review while working with students in groups to go over material that needs your attention.
It can be hard to work with groups of students who are at very different levels. You have an advantage that you have access to KA and a small group. Using the tools available you can get assistance in figuring out how to set up peer tutoring to have the higher level students work with the lower level students. You will also get better results of how the students are doing.(3 votes)
- What remedial program did Oakland Unity use previously?(1 vote)
- Hi, I'm one of the teachers at Unity. By this question, I'm assuming you believe that we have implemented Khan Academy as purely a remedial program. Actually, we've completely replaced our other curriculum with Khan Academy (currently through Algebra 2). The great thing about Khan Academy is that it is much more flexible than a textbook, and we can do continuous necessary remediation throughout the course of a regular math class (such as Algebra 1 or Geometry).
The year prior to using Khan Academy we attempted to use Revolution Prep's program for gearing students up for Algebra 1. We did this with a group of about 16 students who were pulled out of Algebra 1 after the first semester, as they just didn't have the requisite skills to be successful. The program was pretty poor (all multiple choice, all students getting the same questions in the same order, etc.), and we had to supplement heavily with worksheets and other class activities. Since then, we've created another math track for students that come in with more gaps than we can fill during our summer program. We have a group each year that take Algebra 1 over the course of 2 years, instead of 1, which gives us enough time to remediate with them, and also provides the necessary content at a pace they can be successful with.(2 votes)
- What is the exact location of the Oakland high school?(1 vote)
- http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Oakland+Unity+High+School+California(1 vote)
- Why has khan never came to other places in the word?(1 vote)
- idk they should make it in other parts thoe:)(1 vote)
- how did khan academy start?(1 vote)
- Anyone can make videos and put them online, what's facinating to me is how he makes the excersises and later more sophisticated data analysis of the students' progress and badges and all these other cool stuff. It comes from after asking his cousins on the videos that he made, he doesn't get good feedback, not objective or somewhat vague. He's building the system to get the feedback more objectively, and that is why he is amazing for me.(1 vote)
- Je comprend le francais et l'arabe courament mais l'anglais un peu,est ce que je peux m'ameliorer sachant que je suis un prof de maths.(1 vote)
Video transcript
- I think what's fun for me is watching my students
get excited about math, 'cause I'm a math nerd. My students, at the beginning, were like, "Math sucks, I don't really like math," but more and more of
them are getting excited and getting excited when
they understand something. (soft melodic beat) - Both my principal and
I, the very same day, heard the same piece on NPR,
talking about Kahn Academy, and they were talking about the videos, and they mentioned the exercises, and we both had this same reaction. We go, "What, exercises? "Kahn has exercises?" And most people, when I say exercises, we say, "We've got to look deeper at this. "There's something here
we can really use." - We had experimented with
online learning already with another program that wasn't working, and I had gone onto Kahn
Academy and experienced it and saw how much better it was, how much students could learn, and so I was excited for students to learn in an online form that
would actually work. (upbeat jazz music) - The thing that surprised us was the way Kahn worked to help change
the habits of these kids. Previously, when they
looked at a homework problem that was difficult, they stopped. I can't get it, I won't do it. Something about Kahn, you can't just stop because, well then how do
I move the bar forward? How do I make the progress on the system? It seduces them into doing more effort. They start doing the effort. They start taking responsibility
for their own education. (upbeat jazz music) - High school students are definitely lacking a lot of foundations,
there are some big gaps. Specifically negative
numbers, fractions, decimals. They come into ninth
grade, and they're like, "Oh, I've heard this speech
before, I already know it." And so Kahn Academy says,
"Actually, you don't know it, "'cause you just got this problem wrong." And so it confronts them with
their own false confidence and then they're like, "Okay,
now I need to learn it." And they learn it, finally,
for the first time. - We test our students
coming in every year. Before school starts, we
give them a test in algebra. They've taken algebra, but we
wanna see how much they know, and unfortunately, they know very little. The last two years, incoming
freshman average score on a algebra pre-assessment:
17%, exactly the same. Last years class did not use Kahn, this years class uses Kahn. Same lecture, same teacher. As brilliant as we are,
we haven't really changed. Kahn is the changing factor here, and our scores have been much higher. The average last year was 37%. The average this year: 72%. - Some students took off right away. They realized that they
could actually go in and learn whatever they wanted, as long as they got the
required learning done, so I have students that are
learning calculus already and that jumped into geometry right away, because they thought it was cool. Other students took a
while to figure that out, because they were still plotting through the required stuff, but as more and more of
them are getting stronger, they're getting happier
about making choices about what they get to learn. (percussive fade out) - We actually have two
different classrooms. In my classroom, there are no computers. They have a computer lab where, about two or three times a week, they're working exclusively
with the computer. When they're with me,
I'm explaining problems. They're doing problems. What's different in my room is this: My kids are more engaged,
they're getting more help in the basics of solving equations, factoring quadratics, graphing parabolas. It's almost as if they
weren't doing homework before, now they're doing homework,
but it's Kahn homework. (upbeat music) Kahn is changing the one
thing that needs to be changed with these kids, which
is their learning habits. It finds a way to get them
to take more responsibility. Kahn is helping me win that battle, and that's a battle I
could not win by myself. Now that they're fully engaged, I actually have more of a
challenge being a math teacher. Now I have to find a way
to really take them deeper, into more complex problems, solving more difficult word problems, because they are engaged,
and they're ready for it. - I think the biggest change
I've seen in our students is their idea about how learning happens. Students felt that if a
teacher told you information, and magically you understood
it, and you did well. And Kahn Academy has really changed that. Now the students realize
that it's their job to figure it out, and there
are supports for them, but they're responsible
for understanding it. (funky beatboxing)