{"id":726,"date":"2019-07-16T08:00:50","date_gmt":"2019-07-16T14:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bolt.athabascau.ca\/?p=726"},"modified":"2019-07-16T09:06:17","modified_gmt":"2019-07-16T15:06:17","slug":"khan-academy-a-math-teachers-best-friend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bolt.athabascau.ca\/index.php\/2019\/07\/16\/khan-academy-a-math-teachers-best-friend\/","title":{"rendered":"Khan Academy: A Math Teacher’s Best Friend?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Teacher\u00a0Blogger<\/span>\u00a0 | \u00a0By\u00a0Brad Skeet<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"MathIn late 2013, the Canadian Press communicated that a report from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development was published.\u00a0 Findings of the OECD’s Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, suggested that Canadian students’ mathematics scores were decreasing (Canadian Press, 2013).\u00a0 The Canadian Press went on to interview Anna Stokke, an associate professor of mathematics at the University of Manitoba who summarized the issue by stating that “what\u2019s required is a return to \u2018pencil and paper math,\u2019 which really requires practice.\u00a0 What happens is that children aren\u2019t getting the skills to do more difficult math, so they\u2019re struggling when they get to later concepts because math is very cumulative” (Canadian Press, 2013).\u00a0 For teachers in both Canada and the United States, the question arises as to how we can ensure that students have a basic foundation of mathematics while learning conceptual skills.<\/p>\n

In 2012, I was a junior high mathematics teacher.\u00a0 At the time I was in my eighteenth year of teaching mathematics from grades four through seven.\u00a0 Having taught well over five hundred students to that point in my career allowed me to see longer term trends in student mathematical understanding. My colleagues and I had noticed a decline in basic mathematical skills.\u00a0 Our issue was that many of our students had different understandings about these concepts and it became impossible to cover this range of understanding as a whole class.\u00a0 We were unable to tutor the number of students who required basic mathematical skills and understandings.\u00a0 We were desperate for a tool that would help.<\/p>\n

Khan Academy to the Rescue<\/strong><\/p>\n

We knew that our students needed self-paced lessons that provided them with the ability to start at their point of understanding.\u00a0 We did not have the money in our budget to purchase specific commercial software.\u00a0 It was around this time that we had heard of Khan Academy, a free resource that was readily available on YouTube.\u00a0 We were able to design different levels of learning in our Moodle platform.\u00a0 It was then a matter of embedding the Khan Academy videos from YouTube into the lessons.\u00a0 Students and parents embraced the videos.\u00a0 Teachers loved finding this free resource that was a part of an ever-growing repository of videos.<\/p>\n

A Short History of the Future<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"KhanSo, what is Khan Academy<\/em>?\u00a0 A short history of its creation is required.\u00a0 In 2004, Salman (Sal) Khan began to remotely tutor his cousin, Nadia, who was struggling with the topic of unit conversion. This was preventing her from being placed on an advanced math track (Khan Academy, 2018).\u00a0 Since Nadia was in New Orleans and Sal was in Boston, Sal began tutoring her over the phone and using Yahoo! Doodlepad.\u00a0 As her progress improved, Khan began tutoring her brothers.\u00a0 As word spread amongst his family, Khan could no longer schedule everyone for individual help so he began to screencast his videos and place them on YouTube for sharing purposes.\u00a0 More people kept watching his videos and Khan Academy became incorporated as a non-profit organization in 2008.\u00a0 In a short time, millions of people around the world began to log in to view videos about specific mathematics, science, and social science topics.\u00a0 Khan\u2019s screencast videos provide a visual lesson for students and teachers alike.<\/p>\n

Today, Khan Academy is a platform unto itself.\u00a0 While the videos are still available on YouTube to view, students can now create an account on the Khan Academy website.\u00a0 Students then choose their age, subject, topic, and grade level understanding.\u00a0 The student begins working in an area requiring tutoring.\u00a0 The site provides the student with examples, videos, and formative assessments.\u00a0 Students are able to track their progress as they move through these modules.<\/p>\n

Is Khan Academy an Open Educational Resource (OER)?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Is Khan Academy an OER?\u00a0 It depends on how stringent we want to be with the definition of an OER.\u00a0 On May 27, 2019, UNESCO stated, “Open Educational Resources (OER) are learning, teaching and research material in any format and medium that resides in the Public Domain or are under copyright that has been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, reuse, repurpose, adaptation and redistribution by others” (C. Blomgren, Personal Communication, 2019, May 27).<\/p>\n

Doug Leven of EdTech Strategies, LLC states that the OER community is looking for \u201cautomated feedback and analytics tools designed to save faculty time and work\u201d (Hewlett Foundation, 2018).\u00a0 In this regard, Khan Academy succeeds. The digital platform that Khan Academy provides takes students through lessons and then allows them to participate in formative assessment.\u00a0 Teachers are able to see these results and track a student\u2019s progress.<\/p>\n

However, if we apply David Wiley\u2019s 5Rs of openness, Khan Academy does not necessarily classify as an OER.\u00a0 While the videos have been made available for teachers and students to view online through their platform or YouTube, downloading and revising the video is not easily apparent.\u00a0 Khan Academy does not provide a download link for their videos.\u00a0 Secondly, it is not easy to remix videos and lessons that Khan Academy provides.\u00a0 In the section of his website entitled \u201cPoor Technical Choices Make Open Content Less Open<\/em>\u201d<\/em>, Wiley lists \u201caccess to the right tools to revise; the level of expertise required; meaningfully edible, and self-sourced as the 4 points of the ALMS Framework to guide if a resource is an OER\u201d (Wiley, n.d.). Khan Academy\u2019s videos would be difficult to revise and require a significant level of expertise that many teachers do not yet have.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Khan – A Great Fit in the Blended Classroom!<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"CheckmarkKhan Academy is an excellent resource for any educator, whether they work in a classroom, blended, or distance, providing that it is not the only resource used.\u00a0 Some of the strengths of this platform for a mathematics teacher are:<\/p>\n