Khan Academy Triples Unique Users To 3.5 Million
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I can't imagine how much easier K-12 would have been had Khan Academy been around. I've looked at other math and learning resources, and while they're all solid in ways, there just seems to be something that Khan "gets" that others don't, even if it's just as simple as a good UI and design.
In my opinion, Khan Academy is worth every ounce of hype, and I'm usually someone who is strongly anti-hype.
The trade-off could well be watching soaps vs re-doing your high school or university level math.
At least with Khan, it is free, it can be done in your spare time, and you only focus on things that actually interest you.
But I really wished that they would allow me to sign up with them and them alone without having to use either google or facebook to log in, that's a really bad mistake on their part imo.
- facebook and/or google may not be around forever
- my account with facebook and/or google could get disabled by them on a whim,
severing my link with the Khan academy
- there is no upside to me to log in with a facebook
and/or google account
- there is a downside, which is that I have to sign up for a different service, that
I may have valid reasons for not wanting to join (in the case of fb that does not
require a whole lot of imagination)
Really, when you only allow people to log in to your site by forcing them to become a member of another site first you are creating a barrier that need not exist.
I'm sure there are plenty of valid reasons for them why they do it this way (possibly, for instance because google and facebook do a lot of work to ensure that their accounts are only given out to those that deserve it, thereby cutting out on spam), but for me it does not work.
For sure that is a small minorities, but small minorities are at least still allowed to speak up. Good thing HN does not require a facebook or a google login.
- the stories of disabled accounts are vastly over-hyped, and the likelihood of it happening are almost nil
- there is significant upside for you to use your Facebook or Google account to signup/login with a service. Much less work, it's one click to login after you authorize it every time, no need to have another login/pass combo, and if you wish to no longer use the site, it's easy to disable
- most people have a Facebook or Google already, especially KA's market
The effort to create and maintain signups/logins separately for KA vs using existing drop-in solutions for both Google & FB makes the decision obvious. This is a much more convenient solution for both the users and devs of KA.
HN does not require but does allow you to use a similiar login scheme with Clickpass.
Better to play it safe and to open that door as wide as possible.
Why is this particular cost/benefit tradeoff bad? Again: the evidence is that Khan is doing well. And Khan is not run by morons who just do whatever Google and Facebook --- the two largest identity providers on the Internet --- tell them to do.
You just asked the commenter to spell it out in your previous comment. Chastising him/her for doing so really, really doesn't move us forward. His comments about requiring sign-up (particularly on services that don't allow minors under 13) were an excellent explanation.
Signing a student up to a standalone service is no problem, but as soon as that service includes email or other student communication, the teachers need to get parents' consent.
This is really limiting the adoption across the rest of her school, they don't really want to get everyone a new GMail or Facebook account.
I know that at my sisters' charter school (2 schools, K-8 and 9-12), the entire school is on the Google Apps Education platform and getting started with Khan Academy was really simple for them, as they already had name@school.com email accounts they were used to using.
That being said, we're thinking about becoming our own identity provider as well, primarily for this reason.
Just one of those things that's on the list and has to be weighed against everything else -- the majority of our users are doing just fine w/ Google/Facebook.
EDIT: Actually, facebook also has a minimum age requirement of 13 (https://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=210644045634222). Can't see how khanacademy missed that. I think this is a major flaw in their signup system. Should they (khanacademy) really be blocking every kid younger then 13?
EDIT2: It seems like they address it here (http://www.khanacademy.org/about/getting-started) but their solution is having the parents create an account for the kids.
I don't really think this is actually acceptable by facebook's terms of service though, not sure about google. See point 4 in https://www.facebook.com/terms.php
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If your students are under 13:
You currently have two options: you can sign your school up for Google Apps for Education, which will help you provide each student with a Google account that can be used with Khan Academy, or you can have your students' parents individually create accounts for each student on either Google or Facebook. We are constantly working to improve this situation, but that's the best we've got at the moment (sorry!).
If you already have Google Apps for Education accounts but aren't able to use them to sign in on the Khan Academy, you might need to upgrade your account.
See "1. Eligibility" in (http://www.khanacademy.org/about/tos)
EDIT: Also, I found out that youtube actually doesn't let anyone under 13 use their service, so I'm guessing you can't watch the videos either if you're under 13. See "12. Ability to Accept Terms of Service" in (http://www.youtube.com/static?gl=US&template=terms)
I just found out the internet is just for people over 13...
and one of the most common workarounds for that regulation for a child logging in from the child's home with the parents' permission is simply for the child to self-report an incorrect birthdate. (It's usually a good idea not to have your real actual birthday on too many websites anyway, especially if you are a minor, as one's date of birth is one key element for identity theft.) It's too bad that a federal regulation designed to protect children often turns children into liars to get access to wholesome websites that are good for children, but that's what happens when a regulation isn't carefully thought out. One of the few websites with a lot of under-thirteen-year-old users that actually makes it reasonably easy for parents to follow the COPPA regulation is the Art of Problem-Solving (AoPS) website
https://www.artofproblemsolving.com/
(which actually offers even better math-learning opportunities than the Khan Academy website, many of which are free and a few of which cost money). I have three children signed up on AoPS; one is under thirteen and one other started at age eleven but is now an adult.
The mathematics and physics stuff would have been great for me... if it had existed fifteen years ago.
OCW kind of stuff is already super awesome but in would be much better in a khan-style. When you watch lectures on OCW you know its not for you, its for the studens in the class. The professor talks about when the exams are and so on. The other thing is that its hard to know when you are ready to take a course, in the khan system you could show what you have to know to do the course.
I see a bright future for education.
2 - ...it won't happen anytime soon because the funding/grants KA received from Gates Foundation and Google Grants is primarily for internationalization of the app and translation of the videos.
3 - I'd welcome OCW improving their interface, so if any MIT CS students are reading this, you all might want to volunteer time to improve the OCW app.
It would be a disaster for MIT's education if the legendary MIT problem sets were turned into Khan Academy-style exercises. To explain why I think so, allow me to quote the FAQ I prepare about the distinction between "problems" and "exercises" in mathematics instruction for families of students in the math classes I teach:
PROBLEMS VERSUS EXERCISES
I frequently encounter discussions among parents about repetitive school math lessons, so a few years ago I prepared this Frequently Asked Question (FAQ) document about the distinction between math exercises (good in sufficient but not excessive amount) and math problems (always good in any amount).
Most books about mathematics have what are called "exercises" in them, questions that prompt a learner to practice the concepts discussed in the mathematics book. By reading one mathematics book, and then several more, I learned that some mathematicians draw a distinction between "exercises" and "problems" (which is the terminology generally used by the mathematicians who draw this distinction). I think this distinction is useful for teachers and learners to consider while selecting materials for studying mathematics, so I'll share the quotations from which I learned this distinction here. I first read about the distinction between exercises and problems in a Taiwan reprint of a book by Howard Eves.
"It is perhaps pertinent to make a comment or two here about the problems of the text. There is a distinction between what may be called a PROBLEM and what may be considered an EXERCISE. The latter serves to drill a student in some technique or procedure, and requires little, if any, original thought. Thus, after a student beginning algebra has encountered the quadratic formula, he should undoubtedly be given a set of exercises in the form of specific quadratic equations to be solved by the newly acquired tool. The working of these exercises will help clinch his grasp of the formula and will assure his ability to use the formula. An exercise, then, can always be done with reasonable dispatch and with a minimum of creative thinking. In contrast to an exercise, a problem, if it is a good one for its level, should require thought on the part of the student. The student must devise strategic attacks, some of which may fail, others of which may partially or completely carry him through. He may need to look up some procedure or some associated material in texts, so that he can push his plan through. Having successfully solved a problem, the student should consider it to see if he can devise a different and perhaps better solution. He should look for further deductions, generalizations, applications, and allied results. In short, he should live with the thing for a time, and examine it carefully in all lights. To be suitable, a problem must be such that the student cannot solve it immediately. One does not complain about a problem being too difficult, but rather too easy.
"It is impossible to overstate the importance of problems in mathematics. It is by means of problems that mathematics develops and actually lifts itself by its own bootstraps. Every research article, every doctoral thesis, every new discovery in mathematics, results from an attempt to solve some problem. The posing of appropriate problems, then, appears to be a very suitable way to introduce the student to mathematical research. And it is worth noting, the more problems one plays with, the more problems one may be able to pose on one's own. The ability to propose significant problems is one requirement to be a creative mathematician."
Eves, Howard (1963). A Survey of Geometry volume 1. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, page ix.
I have since read about this distinction in several other books.
"Before going any further, let's digress a minute to discuss different levels of problems that might appear in a book about mathematics:
Level 1. Given an explicit object x and an explicit property P(x), prove that P(x) is true. . . .
Level 2. Given an explicit set X and an explicit property P(x), prove that P(x) is true for FOR ALL x [existing in] X. . . .
Level 3. Given an explicit set X and an explicit property P(x), prove OR DISPROVE that P(x) is true for for all x [existing in] X. . . .
Level 4. Given an explicit set X and an explicit property P(x), find a NECESSARY AND SUFFICIENT CONDITION Q(x) that P(x) is true. . . .
Level 5. Given an explicit set X, find an INTERESTING PROPERTY P(x) of its elements. Now we're in the scary domain of pure research, where students might think that total chaos reigns. This is real mathematics. Authors of textbooks rarely dare to pose level 5 problems."
Graham, Ronald, Knuth, Donald, and Patashnik, Oren (1994). Concrete Mathematics Second Edition. Boston: Addison-Wesley, pages 72-73.
This digression becomes the subject of a, um, problem in Exercise 4 of Chapter 3: "The text describes problems at levels 1 through 5. What is a level 0 problem? (This, by the way, is NOT a level 0 problem.)"
"First, what is a PROBLEM? We distinguish between PROBLEMS and EXERCISES. An exercise is a question that you know how to resolve immediately. Whether you get it right or not depends on how expertly you apply specific techniques, but you don't need to puzzle out what techniques to use. In contrast, a problem demands much thought and resourcefulness before the right approach is found. . . .
"A good problem is mysterious and interesting. It is mysterious, because at first you don't know how to solve it. If it is not interesting, you won't think about it much. If it is interesting, though, you will want to put a lot of time and effort into understanding it."
Zeitz, Paul (1999). The Art and Craft of Problem Solving. New York: Wiley, pages 3 and 4.
". . . . As Paul Halmos said, 'Problems are the heart of mathematics,' so we should 'emphasize them more and more in the classroom, in seminars, and in the books and articles we write, to train our students to be better problem-posers and problem-solvers than we are.'
"The problems we have selected are definitely not exercises. Our definition of an exercise is that you look at it and know immediately how to complete it. It is just a question of doing the work, whereas by a problem, we mean a more intricate question for which at first one has probably no clue to how to approach it, but by perseverance and inspired effort one can transform it into a sequence of exercises."
Andreescu, Titu & Gelca, Razvan (2000), Mathematical Olympiad Challenges. Boston: Birkhäuser, page xiii.
"It is easier to advance in one topic by going ahead with the more elementary parts of another topic, where the first one is applied. The brain much prefers to work that way, rather than to concentrate on ugly technical formulas which are obviously unrelated to anything except artificial drilling. Of course, some rote drilling is necessary. The problem is how to strike a balance."
Lang, Serge (1988), Basic Mathematics. New York: Springer-Verlag, p. xi.
"Learn by Solving Problems
"We believe that the best way to learn mathematics is by solving problems. Lots and lots of problems. In fact, we believe the best way to learn mathematics is to try to solve problems that you don't know how to do. When you discover something on your own, you'll understand it much better than if someone just tells it to you.
. . . .
"If you find the problems are too easy, this means you should try harder problems. Nobody learns very much by solving problems that are too easy for them."
Rusczyk, Richard (2007). Introduction to Algebra. Alpine, CA: AoPS Incorporated, p. iii.
It works great. Students nowadays tend to do all of their math on a calculator; they're not so great at mental math. It really holds them back on the SAT. The test's format invites calculation errors. The SAT specific videos are great, too.
Two weeks ago my mom cut out a lengthy article for me, as she often does when she thinks she's read something relevant to my interests. To my surprise it was on Khan Academy, something I already read about past summer in Wired.
2. Does anyone know whether KA has received any more international press coverage lately?
I am impressed by these numbers because it means that more people are now aware that there is a quality free resource where they can educate themselves.
As the other commentator pointed out, their goal is not to make money. And this is impressive because it's a huge progress towards their stated goal.