Khan Academy at Oakland Unity High School

- 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)