Comment by sanderjd | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sanderjd | Hacker News Reader

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Your first paragraph may be right, but I think the rest is wrong.

Paper education materials have a recurring distribution cost, whereas digital materials have a larger up-front but mostly one-time cost. Investment in both digital education materials and widespread access to computers is what is revolutionary, not the specific lessons.

There is always some sort of blurb in an article like this that says something dismissive like "such a such a video which was proved bad by such and such people was switched out for a better one after the criticism". That's the point! One video file on some server somewhere is overwritten and everybody immediately has better materials than they did before. No new workbooks, no new editions of textbooks, no printing press or shipping involvement whatsoever, it's just fixed.

I'm sure a lot of these educators agree with that premise and would love to start a competing platform or work for Khan Academy itself on improving its material. Perhaps the real criticism is that Khan Academy is a major hype suck, making competitors hard to launch, and that it's apparent success has made it over-confident and closed to wider collaboration with educators.

There will always be some dis-gruntled teacher jealous of the popularity of KA's videos, and their criticism will generally amount to nit-picking some aspect or other.

I never seem to see any reasonable and valid criticism of KA's approach or his content. He himself goes to great length to state that his videos are not meant as a replacement to a classroom setting and yet some teachers with similar videos always bemoan KA's popularity.

I'm not comparing paper to interactive media.

I'd be happy with a regularly updated ebook, worksheets, Q&A stuff that I can do offline i.e. print it and sit in the garden/park for a bit with.

My main problem is that you can't consume video at your own rate, just the rate the author defines you should be consuming it, which in this case is "jumpy".

I've had the blessing of a good lecturer or two in the past. Salman is not one of them nor is anywhere near them.

I personally dislike video and prefer reading myself, I would however like to point out that video (compared with someone standing at the front of a room and lecturing to you) gives you much more control over pacing. You can pause, rewind, fast-forward and even, on Youtube and HTML5 video (though dependant on your browser), watch at various speeds faster and slower than real-time. (Khan apparently switched from tutoring his cousins face-to-face precisely because they said the preferred him on Youtube, which he'd originally done as a "second-best" offer when he wasn't available, as it put them back in control.)

Complaints from people who make videos and put them online (like the lady in the article) get far more respect from me than people who vaguely claim that you can't replace face-to-face lecturing, and that all face-to-face lecturing is of a high-quality. Doubly so since, I personally would prefer a well written article/book to either.

This particular lady's videos reminded me of suffering through bad powerpoints, that could be much better done as written material. All they seem to add is someone reading to me, and not in a particularly pleasant tone (think how much criticism she'd get from someone who does voiceovers professionally! These amateurs who don't know anything trying to do stuff themselves, not even realising what a fool they make of themselves!) At least Khan works through problems in the traditional blackboard manner, which seems slightly harder to translate to simple ebooks.

Ah, sorry, in a late-night stupor, I mis-read your "paper version" as literally paper version.

I totally agree with you personally, but I think videos are more useful for lots of people.

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