Khan Academy: A Case for E-Learning in Web 2.0

I haven’t taken a math course since freshman year of college---and I nearly failed that one. Only a surprising loophole in procedure and a week of cramming for the hardest final of my life saved me from having to take Algebra 3 two semesters in a row. However, I’m running through a video about statistics right now. I’ve got it paused so I can write this in fact. What happened to me? When did I not only become a numbers man, but actually enjoy thinking about the probability of lightning striking me versus winning the Oklahoma State Lottery?

Khan Academy.

Unless you lived under a cave (yes, under since even caves can get wireless signals these days), I’ll recap this internet success story. Khan Academy started out as a couple of mathematics videos by Salman Khan. After an endorsement from Bill Gates, who uses it to teach his own children off of the website, Khan Academy as quickly grown into a living example of how e-learning could seriously compete with public education. There’s a rebellious streak in me that imagines thousands of parents dropping public in favor of homeschooling youths with direct tutelage from Salman Khan’s brilliant videos. But, videos have been down before, what’s the difference?

Stop and Start

Most videos you run into on youtube.com are meant to be played from minute 0 to minute 1-credits. I’ve used youtube in the classroom, but rarely much farther than how teachers of old used the TV and VCR to let kids watch documentaries on nature or famous events. Khan Academy’s videos are meant to be stopped, restarted, and played in the middle. At one point, in a technology class, we stopped a video and used a smartboard to etch our own arithmetic on the screen (the first amazing idea I ever saw for smartboards, the one I thought “this is exactly what this technology is for”).

Practice, Practice, Practice.

Videos and clever narration are one thing, but Khan also supplies practice to each of his courses. For instance, going through the basic addition practice gives simple addition problems. However, what’s different is the level of extrinsic goals found on a single page. First, there’s the smiley faces and frownies given to right or wrong questions respectively. But KhanAcademy.com also uses a streak system where students can see how many questions they answered correctly in a row. If a student gets a certain number correct, they’re labeled as proficient and given a choice to go to a new subject.

The Future

It’s a wonderful place. Imagine a place like facebook or a MMO, but with students wanting to answer as many questions as possible to attain trophies and rewards. This is still based on extrinsic goal structures (basically wanting to out-do everyone else), but it creates a competitive environment that might be beneficial to the both the overachiever and average student. Average students get the help they need through repetition, viewing simple instruction videos, and social pressure. Overachievers are able to speed ahead to what actually challenges them rather than wait for everyone else.

Wiki Walking: Whistle While You Work

Yes, the above title is more my own love for alliteration, so please forgive its cheesiness. Wikis are like…

The dog from Up: intelligent, sometimes random, lovable, and a part of a community. They’re a different breed of community from the ones I’ve talked about before like Myspace or Facebook because those are centered around the social process. However, wikis are based around the collection and catalogue of information . For instance, Wikipedia, where the name comes from, catalogues information that its users find relevant from city information to videogame plot summaries to political upheavals. There is nary a topic I can think of that is not on Wikipedia for a person’s reading pleasure.

But, it’s different still from a traditional encyclopedia by virtue of being edited before. A short history on dictionaries and encyclopedias show they were motivated into existence by people wanting to preserve a microcosm of culture. Since culture can be shown by the information it possesses . So, that’s why an encyclopedia has information on U.S. Presidents rather than potential social conspiracies. Consumers are more likely to purchase information that is relevant to them. Wikipedia Is different by virtue of cataloguing information on such a massive scale that it could hardly ever be entirely read through. This means that Wikipedia’s content is chosen passively by the reader rather than selected But can individual organizations use Wikis to impact their own learning environments?

I think Wikis are a perfect example of a tool being used by users that has varying levels of success not dependent on leadership. Leadership is a variable in a wiki community since contribution needs to come from a variety of sources and intelligences rather than a guide intelligence. Of course, there can be a hierarchical leadership in a wiki community and in fact, as discussed in early posts, these positions are usually reserved for the physical leaders (those that maintain and run the service rather than just provide content). However, in a school or business, wikis be a way for individuals to contribute information that is normally shared through dialogue. For instance, a person might be more likely to discuss etiquette in the workplace on a forum such as a wiki where he or she is not the only contributor. Being able to have numerous people edit one file at once can affect the dynamics of the group from being centered on one figure to giving each person a self-assigned role. Don’t like to do content? Fine, there’s plenty of work to do editing the style used. Don’t like either? Then editing content mistakes or sourcing errors might be your thing.

Overall, wikis have many levels of organizational contribution and none have to be leadership promoted. Now, this does not mean that natural leadership does not happen, its just that pre-assigned leadership is less effective than normal. When content is the central issue, the person who contributes the most might well become the leader or someone who edits a category across multiple articles.

Forums, the Future, and Facebook (also some Web 2.0)

The snow storm that trawled across the Midwest gives a good example of how virtual communities benefit and detract from the learning experience. Beneficiary from the fact I can access all of my school work without having to meet with my class or having to brave the weather for meetings with a professor. On the other hand, virtual communities are harder to keep track of and invest time in. They are socially driven rather than a physical responsibility. So, to further my discussion last week of virtual communities, let’s dive into content and structure.

Most of what I’m referring to is from Renninger’s Building Virtual Communities (Chapter 5, 6, and 8). I said last week I’d cover the importance of content and luckily Renninger really goes with the different communication methods virtual communities’ use. Some of these are as old as usenet groups or mailing lists. While both of these methods still exist, I think the proper way to think of the evolution of the internet is the classic Web 1.0 versus 2.0 argument.

1.0

Mostly, this era translates itself as the use of one medium: typed messages. Forums (sometimes called discussion boards), mailing lists, and early chat clients mainly used typed messages to communicate ideas. Not that no other medium existed, but the bandwidth limitations in the late 80s to early 2000s made Voice Over IP (VoIP) and videos a much more rare (and in my opinion, badly implemented) idea. As such, Usenet and other discussion boards created communities through their members’ mutual understanding of topics such as engineering, videogames, politics, or any number of issues.

Mailing lists were a bit before my time. Sure, my university has some that give out updates, but people used these lists to create dialogues between the mailers. My understanding of the process makes it out to be like letter pen pals who discuss things back and forth. The difference between this and a forum were an exclusivity issue. Mainly, this came from mailing lists not being a resolvable address a normal person could type into a search engine or address bar.

With a broad brush, I think of this era of community as being one that tries to bring people together with limited technologies.

2.0

However, the current view of the Internet is one of unlimited technology further typing people together. The inclusion of multiple media websites such as youtube.com (a combination of text, sound, and video) creates an entirely different experience. No longer are users limited, as much, by bandwidth and computer hardware restrictions, but by their willingness to participate. Content is the essential factor still in determining the cliques and circles communities form into. As a constant example, Facebook, which has millions of users and who use a variety of text media to communicate. Facebook is even breaking the wall down between the instant and slow forms of communicating with their announcement to create a messaging system that incorporates email and chat. Google is doing the same thing with its Google Wave two years ago and current chat clients which relay emails as well as communicates with friends.

In Summary…

This is normally where I’d put the “The Future?”, but honestly Web 2.0’s technological innovation and its effect on teaching communities isn’t over. Mobile communication is getting bigger on smartphones, but I feel this technology has yet to reach its ultimate resolution and honestly, speculating on the future with communication technology might lead me farther into science fiction rather than science theory.

I hope everyone in the Midwest braved the weather well and I’m hoping that next week will be a sunnier (and more productive week) for everyone.