The Khan Academy has just got rid of its popular streak metric. I woke up this morning in a somewhat ratty frame of mind and decided to soothe the savage breast by doing a few exercises on KA (which for a while now has had a feature that suggested exercises to review) - and discovered, with shock and dismay, that KA had completely changed the UI. It is much more sensible in one respect - the user is prodded into working through a group of exercises on a single subject, rather than reviewing the mixed bag of exercises hauled up by the algorithm. Unfortunately all this solid good sense is coupled with a new progress display consisting of stacks of leaves, which replaces the former streak bar (and the most recent streak bar was already a step in the wrong direction, replacing the ur-streak bar which told you how long a streak you had racked up).
Now honestly. If they were going to lavish this kind of ingenuity on the site, why not give us exercises on Laplace transforms? Or, to be slightly less esoteric, why not have a bank of exercises on integration? At present the site simply reinforces the bad mindset of the sort of person who does not use calculus on a daily basis - that is, the attitude that differentiation is the easy one and integration is to be approached with extreme caution, not to say trepidation. (There are currently NO exercises in integration.)
A while back I read a piece by a British mathematician who commented that the sense for how best to tackle integration came with maturity - one developed one's intuition by doing a wide variety of problems over the years. I was unfortunately introduced to integration at Smith, at a time when I was profoundly depressed, so I did not then lay down the foundation for this particular sort of mathematical maturity - but the comment filled me with hope. I felt that if I did problems on a daily basis intuition would come. And if such problems were readily available online, with instant feedback, I would probably be doing them on a daily basis. Paltry it may be, but it would be good for me to rack up a streak of a thousand or so. Well, it is salutary, no doubt, to be made to confront one's sloth: I expect there is a software package with a perfectly serviceable question bank, and sloth has led me down the path of least resistance.
Showing posts with label Khan Academy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Khan Academy. Show all posts
Thursday, April 5, 2012
Thursday, March 29, 2012
I started doing exercises on the Khan Academy about 8 months ago as a way of taking my mind of crazymaking things I can do nothing about. I now have 1,755,000 exercise points and loose change; this gives some idea of how crazy I would have been if I had not been working out fiddly little exercises in kinematics and such. I feel a bit guilty about this, because I could long since have gone past the mathematics I already know by watching videos. The problem is, though, that I hate videos as an instructional tool, and the whole point, after all, was to soothe the savage breast.
The other day, though, I succumbed to the gamification which some see as a flaw in the enterprise. At the time I had every badge it was possible to win without watching a video. There are many more badges, but these all require watching videos, and I do so LOATHE videos. Still, I thought I would look at the list of videos and see if there was anything I could bear to watch. And what should I see but a whole slew of videos on Laplace Transforms! Something I had never covered in the days when I was studying mathematics!
I should say at once that I had no idea at this point what a Laplace Transform actually was. The appeal of the topic was simply the name "Laplace Transform." For reasons that I can't defend, mathematics appeals to what I suppose boils down to a love of kit. Glamorous names are good, as is some novel sort of notation. (The Laplace Transform, of course, offers both.) So I watched 6 or 7 videos, racking up several badges in the process - but the fact is, I really don't like videos.
It was at this point that the policy of giving house room to unread books came into its own. Back in 1997 I would appear to have bought a book on differential equations under the impression that I would quickly be reading up on differential equations. (Readers familiar with my publishing career will, I hope, not hold it against me if this optimism was unfounded.) Now, though, I pulled the book off my shelf and found a whole chapter on the Laplace Transform! A chapter which I did find much easier to follow than the video, though without the video it might have gone unread for further countless years.
The other day, though, I succumbed to the gamification which some see as a flaw in the enterprise. At the time I had every badge it was possible to win without watching a video. There are many more badges, but these all require watching videos, and I do so LOATHE videos. Still, I thought I would look at the list of videos and see if there was anything I could bear to watch. And what should I see but a whole slew of videos on Laplace Transforms! Something I had never covered in the days when I was studying mathematics!
I should say at once that I had no idea at this point what a Laplace Transform actually was. The appeal of the topic was simply the name "Laplace Transform." For reasons that I can't defend, mathematics appeals to what I suppose boils down to a love of kit. Glamorous names are good, as is some novel sort of notation. (The Laplace Transform, of course, offers both.) So I watched 6 or 7 videos, racking up several badges in the process - but the fact is, I really don't like videos.
It was at this point that the policy of giving house room to unread books came into its own. Back in 1997 I would appear to have bought a book on differential equations under the impression that I would quickly be reading up on differential equations. (Readers familiar with my publishing career will, I hope, not hold it against me if this optimism was unfounded.) Now, though, I pulled the book off my shelf and found a whole chapter on the Laplace Transform! A chapter which I did find much easier to follow than the video, though without the video it might have gone unread for further countless years.
Thursday, August 11, 2011
useful & cool (dulce et utile)
I was playing around on Khan Academy (as one does). As one does if one is unable to block out the world and write a book because unable to leave e-mails unchecked for months on end because there is a book to be launched. ('Publish and be damned' takes on a whole new meaning in these degenerate days.)
And!
What to my wondering eyes should appear!
A couple of weeks ago I was playing around on Khan Academy, reminding myself of really basic stuff, trigonometry, bits and pieces, mostly last used a couple of decades ago, needed for less basic stuff. The answers to the exercises were multiple choice.
Last night I went back to a couple of these exercises.
They had fixed things that weren't quite right.
Instead of multiple choice answers, the player (erm, student) had blanks to fill in. The player could also click to get a list of acceptable formats for answers.
So on the one hand you had to work harder -- had to generate the correct answer rather than picking it off a list -- but on the other hand you were less likely to be penalized for not giving the right answer in the right format.
I told my mother about the Khan Academy the other day.
My grandmother, Blanche Spurrier Marsh, was born in 1900; she was a mathematician. After majoring in math at Randolph Macon she went on to teach, then to be principal of a school. She then married my grandfather, a Southerner who did not want his wife to work. My mother was born; my grandfather told my grandmother that she could not do two things. Her job was to look after the child; she could not also work in a school. What it turned out to mean was that it was fine for my grandmother to go to a school as a substitute, to help out as a favor, but not to have the advantages of a permanent job. (This would imply she needed to do it for the money.)
My mother was a musical prodigy, but she had no aptitude for mathematics. My grandmother tried to tutor her. To this day -- my mother is now 78 -- my mother remembers working on problems in long division at the dining room table. My mother was then 9 -- this would have been 1942. My grandmother walked up the stairs to the landing, looked down, said: You'll never be anything but a nincompoop!
(My mother has a phobia of computers. When things go wrong she does not remember that she played the Ballades of Chopin at her senior recital; she remembers that her mother called her a nincompoop in 1942.)
So, ANYWAY, I talk to my mother about the Khan Academy.
Khan says he started tutoring his cousins by phone, made a few videos as a "nice to have" -- and was told they liked the videos better. Which, he realized, made sense: they didn't have to expose their ignorance, they didn't have to worry about wasting his time, they could go back, replay, shame no longer got in the way of learning.
I think I thought telling my mother about this wonderful resource would lance the wound.
Or maybe that if my mother went online and did some exercises THIS would lance the wound.
It seems not to work that way.
My mother did see at once the value of the resource. She said you would go into a math class where everyone else understood something, and you would pretend to understand, so you fell further and further behind because no one bothered to explain because you had been pretending to understand.
(She never bothered to look at colleges. One of her teachers asked her about her plans in 12th grade, and she had done nothing, and he was appalled, and pushed her into an application to Rollins, which had an excellent conservatory -- and so she went to college. Because she was a musical prodigy, and one of her teachers noticed that something had to be done. I think we can agree an educational system ought not to depend on last-minute saves.)
It may be that you have to see the damage a sense of inadequacy can cause over a lifetime to appreciate the value of the Khan Academy. Khan himself may be too young to understand the full value of what he is offering. I looked at these exercises, which had been improved in a few WEEKS, and was charmed, disarmed, and for once, among all the madness, hopeful.
And!
What to my wondering eyes should appear!
A couple of weeks ago I was playing around on Khan Academy, reminding myself of really basic stuff, trigonometry, bits and pieces, mostly last used a couple of decades ago, needed for less basic stuff. The answers to the exercises were multiple choice.
Last night I went back to a couple of these exercises.
They had fixed things that weren't quite right.
Instead of multiple choice answers, the player (erm, student) had blanks to fill in. The player could also click to get a list of acceptable formats for answers.
So on the one hand you had to work harder -- had to generate the correct answer rather than picking it off a list -- but on the other hand you were less likely to be penalized for not giving the right answer in the right format.
I told my mother about the Khan Academy the other day.
My grandmother, Blanche Spurrier Marsh, was born in 1900; she was a mathematician. After majoring in math at Randolph Macon she went on to teach, then to be principal of a school. She then married my grandfather, a Southerner who did not want his wife to work. My mother was born; my grandfather told my grandmother that she could not do two things. Her job was to look after the child; she could not also work in a school. What it turned out to mean was that it was fine for my grandmother to go to a school as a substitute, to help out as a favor, but not to have the advantages of a permanent job. (This would imply she needed to do it for the money.)
My mother was a musical prodigy, but she had no aptitude for mathematics. My grandmother tried to tutor her. To this day -- my mother is now 78 -- my mother remembers working on problems in long division at the dining room table. My mother was then 9 -- this would have been 1942. My grandmother walked up the stairs to the landing, looked down, said: You'll never be anything but a nincompoop!
(My mother has a phobia of computers. When things go wrong she does not remember that she played the Ballades of Chopin at her senior recital; she remembers that her mother called her a nincompoop in 1942.)
So, ANYWAY, I talk to my mother about the Khan Academy.
Khan says he started tutoring his cousins by phone, made a few videos as a "nice to have" -- and was told they liked the videos better. Which, he realized, made sense: they didn't have to expose their ignorance, they didn't have to worry about wasting his time, they could go back, replay, shame no longer got in the way of learning.
I think I thought telling my mother about this wonderful resource would lance the wound.
Or maybe that if my mother went online and did some exercises THIS would lance the wound.
It seems not to work that way.
My mother did see at once the value of the resource. She said you would go into a math class where everyone else understood something, and you would pretend to understand, so you fell further and further behind because no one bothered to explain because you had been pretending to understand.
(She never bothered to look at colleges. One of her teachers asked her about her plans in 12th grade, and she had done nothing, and he was appalled, and pushed her into an application to Rollins, which had an excellent conservatory -- and so she went to college. Because she was a musical prodigy, and one of her teachers noticed that something had to be done. I think we can agree an educational system ought not to depend on last-minute saves.)
It may be that you have to see the damage a sense of inadequacy can cause over a lifetime to appreciate the value of the Khan Academy. Khan himself may be too young to understand the full value of what he is offering. I looked at these exercises, which had been improved in a few WEEKS, and was charmed, disarmed, and for once, among all the madness, hopeful.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)