On Sun, Jul 29, 2012 at 4:10 PM, A. Jorge Garcia <calcpage@aol.com> wrote:
I blogged about Khan Academy recently. If you've seen my post, you may want to revisit it as I've been updating it over the last few weeks. I've been getting a lot of email queries about SmartBoarding and ScreenCasting so I've been adding them to this blog post:
http://shadowfaxrant.blogspot.com/2012/07/kahn-academy-savior-of-american.ht...
HTH, A. Jorge Garcia Applied Math & CompSci http://shadowfaxrant.blogspot.com http://ww.youtube.com/calcpage2009
I've been writing about Khan Academy too sometimes: """ Keith Devlin's idea at the Oregon Math Summit (1997) was that basic competence in computation and numeracy needed to diffuse throughout the curriculum, so that these generic life skills would not be overly confused with "mathematics" in particular. I support that idea, but in part I see the process ("cultural osmosis" you could call it) happening outside the school. 'Sesame Street' marked a turning point in elementary education in many ways. 'Khan Academy' is just code for didactic content in short clips, i.e. 'Sesame Street' at a higher level (might still feature animation and puppets -- Khan's are one aesthetic among many). In other words, if we're talking about how to advance the level of STEM sophistication in the broader culture, among youth and oldsters alike, it's not a given that "aligning the the Common Core" is where to focus -- more a side show than a big tent activity. We have far more leverage in other areas, such as in the content of Saturday morning cartoons. Bill Nye the Science Guy made a big difference to STEM and yet those silly DCers don't award "best teacher" to TV personalities, because they're too busy inspiring a different set of vocations as encoded in Department of Labor catalogs (i.e. "TV personality" is not coded as "Teacher"). Katie Couric is not considered a "teacher". She's an "anchor". Such are the exigencies of the English language and its many calcified / codified grammars (language games). """ http://mathforum.org/kb/message.jspa?messageID=7854797 Kirby