Aug 152012
 

Khan Academy Launches The Future of Computer ScienceĀ Education

Khan Academy: As educators struggle to motivate more students to take up technology-related majors, breakout online education startup, Khan Academy, has a novel approach. Ā ā€Computer Science is an intensely creative field,ā€ says Shantanu Sinha, President of Khan Academy, which gave TechCrunch an exclusive look at their brand new education portal that teaches Computer Science fundamentals through interactive drawing. ā€œWe really wanted to focus on creating something that could inspire young children, and get them excited and motivated to explore CS further.ā€ The portalā€™s interactive design is a major evolutionary step for a website that has since been almost entirely based on YouTube lectures (with over 178 million views). I rarely get excited about online education, which often just recycles our antiquated education system into a digital format, but the new Khan Academy Computer Science project is beyond impressive.

khan academy

http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/14/khan-academy-launches-the-future-of-computer-science-education/

Tom McDonald’s Comments:

Note, at minimum, the following:

ā€œSeptember 2004ā€³

ā€œThere is considerable research on the first 3 goals of PBL but little on the last 2. Moreover, minimal research has been conducted outside medical and gifted education. Understanding how these goals are achieved with less skilled learners is an important part of a research agenda for PBLā€

A step in the right direction, but how will long term, individual, critical information,Ā  learning outcomes be measured and advanced, over traditional teaching?

Where individual, long term, critical must know learning, = Appropriate, Professionally Facilitated: initial understanding, ongoing reinforcement, fluency/mastery, recall (eliminating forgetting), application, stick/behavior change, adaptive reasoning skills, in the most effective and most efficient way possible

How does this pedagogy compare to the new truly personalized, long term, learning model?:

ā€œ Instructor facilitated, truly personalized learning, over time, with Instructor facilitated, truly personalized reinforcement, over time, in an Instructor facilitated, truly personalized, blended learning environment, over timeā€.

Tom

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