Anybody KHAN do it!!

 

Well, this week I received a bunch of messages from teachers and friends alike.  "Did you see the 60 minute video on Khan Academy?"  Now, I have seen Khan Academy before, linked some of the videos to my lessons, peruse the app once and a while...............but what was all of the hype about?  Why so many messages in such little time?  I'm finally just accepting the fact that I am the geeky friend of some people.  Whatever the case, it was time to see what this video was all about.

 

So after watching it, I went into the website and started playing with the program.  I noticed first of all that there was a lot more to it than just a series of videos.  Although there is an enormous library of videos teaching the subject at a surface level, there are also a lot of skills tests that are associated to a lot, but not all of the videos.  See if your an expert at addition and if not, you can watch a video and go back to practice your skill.  A little energy bar lights up as you get questions correct and points are accumulated for something.  If you get questions wrong you lose progress in the energy bar.  You need to fill the energy bar in order to show some sign of mastery.  There were also many other incentives dealing with "badges".  Collect badges and become elite.

 

Anyway, I was interested from it on a teacher's end as well.  So I opened up both of my google accounts, that's right, I said it, both of them.  One as a student, one as a teacher.  I wanted to see how easy it was to manage and as I predicted, it was very easy.  It was easy to create classes, add and delete students from the class and it was easy to see their progress.  It would collect all of the data that they accrued while they were on the site.  How many attempts at a problem, how long they were on an exercise or video, whether or not they need help or if they showed mastery.  It had everything.  They are currently linking everything to the national common core and trying to get their video collection done for all of their skills lessons.  It was quite extensive.

 

I am not one to wait around, so today I tried it out with the students since I've been having them complete any assignments on a black and white page in a while.  They loved being able to try it out.  They were into trying to get the little energy bar up so that they showed completion.  One girl must have done over 50 problems and it gave me time to work with her.  It did not have a video associated with it, but I did not mind showing them how to do a couple of their problems.  The more a student gets wrong, the more it seems they need to get right to show mastery.  Later on, I checked out the progress report as a teacher and it had everything that I witnessed.  Even the girl who was having trouble was red flagged on my account.  It wasn't hard to get them on it and to start having them practice.

I can easily see this type of skills based format become a main part of education.  I like the idea that they are receiving the surface level teaching from someone else along with a quick practice.  Watching some of the videos on the site it shows how to implement it into the classroom and I can see me do something of this nature.  Have students work at their own pace until a few of them reach a certain checkpoint and then have them go a little deeper into it with an authentic problem.  On the other end, in use with an authentic unit, this could be the overt knowledge that they get and then can create something with their knowledge..........a rap........or a video.  Something.

There are a ton of other videos in Science and Economics as well.  I'm not sure if they are as streamlined as the math, but they are there as a one stop shop.  Pretty cool stuff.  I definitely see me utilizing it in the future.

 

My Light Bulb

Driving down the road the other morning I'm sitting there thinking about the music.  A little bit of 80's rock, jamming out to "Tarzan Boy".  I haven't heard that song in forever and I start reflecting on the first time I heard it.  My parent's study, on the lime green chair over my JVC boom box.

Out of no where, it hits me.  The light turns on in my head and I'm now thinking about how easy it would be for me to incorporate a Wiki into one of my lessons.  My students are in AFDA, a high school course dedicated to functions and algebra.  However, one of the sections is learning all about financing.  I have a few seniors in my class and the rest juniors.  I thought, they are soon going to be going to beach week and I remember watching a video when I was learning about Wikis by a group named CommonCraft.  They broke it down to a quick and easy 3 minute video that just made absolute sense.  Basically, wikis for dummies.  

I decided to take the idea that CommonCraft uses of building a camping trip using a wiki and have them build a Beach Week trip using the wiki.  Now, I have done the same with middle school, but this one had to propose a little higher math.  Since some of them have jobs, the propose questions would be, "How many hours would you have to work in order for you to save up for beach week?".  They will need to research the taxes that get taken out of Virginia paychecks, think about car rental places and insurance, look up rental properties and so on.  I even think that they could use part of the Wiki to do a price budget of food like we did my summer program when we learned how BlackBoard could help out in collaboration.

So, I'm not sure what sparked this idea to pop in my head.  In fact, it was quite frustrating and I missed the rest of the song.  Luckily, I was on Pandora and I quickly jumped over to Spotify to put it on my playlist.  Problem averted and Tarzan Boy was back to bless the airwaves in my car.

Commutes and Podcasts

For a few years now I have been listening to podcasts.  When they first came out, I was listening to them sporadically and had no interest in hearing what other people had to say about stuff.  That's how I felt about them.  People simply talking about stuff because they had nobody to talk to in their community that would listen to them.  BUT, some part of me thought there was some value and I didn't forget about them.
I started looking for topics that I was always researching on the web.  Technology STUFF and education technology STUFF.  Once I had a focus of what it is I wanted to hear people rant and rave about, I was hooked.  My library is not extensive for podcast, but it keeps me interested for the duration of my hour ride to work sometimes when I don't want to listen to music or the stupid news AND I don't want to be listening to all of the thoughts in my head.  I simply used them to get ideas to research later on the web.  If you're reading this, you probably are in the same course and you probably like your job enough to enjoy researching new stuff.  I get all of my podcasts from iTunes, but here are some of the things that I listen to and their sites.

The Tech Teachers - 2 teachers that are easy to listen to and talk about sites that could be used in school and technology affordances.

The Tech Chic Tips - A podcast with tips for educators about using technology in instruction to engage students. 

Ed Tech Crew - A weekly podcast about technology in education.

November Learning Podcasts - Cool interviews with educators who are pushing the edge.

Teacher 2.0 - Short snippets aimed to harness e-learning tools and engage students.

School Sucks - Sometimes it's common sense, sometimes it's crap, but it does provide me with the other side of the coin and help me think about what's wrong with education.

MathGrad - Mathy stuff connected to real world concepts.  It helps me bring ideas into my curriculum.