Before I departed WGBH, I organized a debate on the merits of Khan Academy and the claims made on its behalf. The debater and I flipped a coin to take Pro-Khan or Con-Khan positions, and I ended up with pro, despite quite a lot of personal skepticism, not about its value per se, but the claims made.
Robert Talbert, a blogger for The Chronicle of Higher Education, has a nice piece on what Kahn Academy is and isn’t (and a moment’s thought makes clear that people other than Khan himself or Bill Gates are better positioned to make that judgment). It also describes that Khan quite admirably responded to the “peer review” offered by parody videos of his videos, pulling them down, correcting errors, and improving the pedagogy.
There’s now a contest to do “critique” videos of Khan videos, as a means to improve content and pedagogy. Perhaps we’re at a 2.0 phase of videos for education, and Khan, positive and negative, is not the “ceiling” but the “floor” of this modality. Seems like a good thing. Below, another math teacher with richer videos that complement Khan’s procedurally-focused ones.
A Few Reasonable Words 