Description: With the backing of Gates and Google, Khan Academy and its free online educational videos are moving into the classroom and across the world. Their goal: to revolutionize how we teach and learn.
Source: CBS .com
Date: March 21, 2012
Questions:
1 Is Khan Academy the online silver bullet for on-line education?
2. What do you feel is the competitive advantage Khan Academy has over other competitors?
Sarah Lawson
Khan Academy became successful so fast because users saw almost immediate improvement in people’s learning. This company could become the silver bullet for online education because it’s offered to everyone around the world at no cost as long as there is access to the internet. Users have nothing to lose by trying out this company’s product and this attracts new users and perhaps keeps them coming back.
Khan has a competitive advantage over competitors because they not only provide a service, they measure the service and their success. Their mission is to educate children as well as possible. In order to do that, they need to monitor the results of the videos. The concept of this idea has benefits that are not just for students in learning environments but for teachers as well. The amount of time saved by using the classroom flip method is substantial to the classical method. Teachers no longer need to lecture their students in a topic, but instead assign videos for the students to watch and learn on their own time. In school hours are used for extra help and maintaining the scheduled lessons. This has changed the job of the teacher for the good of both students and teachers.
cl
Khan academy is revolutionizing the way that children are learning all over the world, it is free of charge sop it is open to anyone that has the internet. The reason for the immediate popularity of this learning tool is that it gives users almost an immediate improvement in results. Khan provides over 3000 videos teacher the watches anything from physics, arithmetic’s, all the way to finance and history. What gives Khan a competitive advantage over other online teaching methods. Is that it tracts the users performance, so that a person can see how they are improving, which can be a great motivator for kids and adults alike. Khan is also a funner way to learn things, I myself do not like reading books, but when it comes to movies, lets go. This tool does not only help the kids but also the teachers, they wont have to spend as much time explaining excercises. To kids but rather they will be able to assign a movie for the kids to watch, and im sure that there will be much more input from the kids in class because they have done their homework cause its fun and not read a book which can be quite boring.
Rosemary
Technology is now increasing and changing the way learn. Khan academy coming on stage, added more to the advantage of quick and fast absorbing of education. Parents want thier kids to be versatile and current on anything that would enhance the knowledge. Many forms of learning that helps to learn faster are visio-learning, audio-learning and kinethic-learning. Khan encompasses all these three types, because using video clips accompanying with audio and that involved the kids to use physical part like touching, playing and involving. Kids learn faster in an environment that positively contributed to their improvement. Teachers on the other hand, wanted something that would ease the learning techniques and give them the opportunity to focus on the other issues. Watching video is much more easier than reading, what kids would learn in hour of reading, could be done in half hour of watching. With video, it is easy to keep track on how the response from the viewer such as non-verbal and verbal cues, easy to documented changes, easy to watch over and over again and follow every step over 3 times of watching. To compare video to books is quite boring, not interesting and wasting of time. Video that has users friendly features would do much and profitable to schools, homes, instructors and to society at large.
Michael
Khan is awesome because it is free and it is easily recognized this makes for a successful model even though khan is not for profit. They are developing a great starting point for online education however I think they are not the silver bullet as online education definitely still needs some work. online course are difficult to take because people lose focus. If someone can find a way of keeping people focused in an online environment I believe they will be more successful than khan is now. Also khan does not have a lot people doing it. An online company can get people to do interviews and lectures with their information. That being said khan has been successful and it has meet its goals and I believe it will continue to be more popular. As with any emerging market it is a toss of the dice as to which system will end up on top. I like the stuff khan is doing and hope to see more of their efforts in the future. Whether can be successful is yet to be seen as online education as whole is growing it will be interesting to see whether a non for profit can take down the for profit.
neltum
Khan Academy is indeed, as one may see it, is a guru as regards online assisted learning is concerned. Over the years, online education has been a fad among top schools and universities because it does not only provide students the vast reality they need to understand but enables students with different preoccupations and limitations to achieve the degree they like. True on one sense that it cuts down time on the traditional classroom setting and that learning tools are more updated. But are we forgetting the fact that going to school everyday and spending much of their time reading in the library enhances socialization, resourcefulness and the ability to cope up with the rigidness of studies. Moreover, the question posed is: how guided students are in utilizing online learning? Will they be not tempted to resort to just take things easily and rely on anybody to do things for themselves?
Ellie
In Hundred years ago, no one can image people will get the education online. Technology change the way we learn. Khan Academy became successful and support the children are studying all the world. Khan uses the Internet to get more advantages and give chance to children to learn though the Internet. On one hand, it is a good news for the children who do not have chance to go to school, they can learn everything though the Internet. Knowledge will change their lives and fates. On the other hand, it is a better technology to help the children who are at school. Compare to listen to the teachers everyday, the students can get more funs to watch the video to learn. Children can not only just read the books and feel boring, they can choose the online teacher to learn and review. Make learning more interesting. This way will be interested more children. For Khan, it is a good way to develop a great staring point for online education and they are not for the profits. In the future, I think this technology will more popular and more children can get involve into it. Make education for more children, make education easier and make education more interesting.
Morgan
I believe Khan Academy has the potential to overtake all other on-line education because the content is easily accessible, free, and vast. It presents itself as both a companion to “regular” school as well as a hip alternative to additional tutoring. There a commercial for Sylvan I see on television a lot that says “if your child is falling behind, let your child blossom!” and I think, if I were struggling in school, the last thing I would want to be compared to is a floundering caterpillar-turned-butterfly.
Khan Academy does a lot of things that their competition neglects. The content is accessible from anywhere in the world and is completely free to use. Users can follow along at their own pace, and it is useful at any year of your education (from grade three to third year undergraduates). And there ares hundreds of topics, from math to history to cooking… you name it. The Academy is also useful for teachers because it provides alternate methods of learning difficult topics.
The Academy also takes note of your progress to see if you’re on track with your goals, which is updated in real time, and it keeps a record of every problem you’ve ever worked on – which is great for studying! The Academy also hands out “badges” for achieving goals, which is a good motivator for staying on track.
JX
Kahn academy is a type of online education. People can learn knowledge at home via using internet. It is so convenient. I think, for some people who are available to enter class such as person with disability, it is the best way to keep studying. In addition, online education is cheap, no limitation of time and place. Lots of online education institutions are in internet; even many Universities also use it to teach students such as University of Lethbridge. However, I do not think online education will replace traditional teaching ways. First thing is that students are hard to make effective group works. Lots of people think that people already lack of communication because of internet, if we use online education replace traditional education, the problem will be going worse. Second, students, especially children, need to be supervised by someone. A number of people will open Facebook, twitter or Msn at the same time that online class is running. Third, in traditional class students can ask questions immediately when they have something that they do not understand, but in online education is so hard. For Kahn academy, provide the track; let people know how they are improving, this is a competitive advantage over than competitors.
Claudia
This is such an amazing and revolutionary organization organization. I think this is a great way to get education to anyone who can get access to a computer. I dont think it is the silver bullet for online courses and institutions because as with most education systems there is still a respect and demand for the more expensive and notable. I think that Khan Academy has an advantage simply because of their cause. It seems that their sole existence is to provide education to anyone. If in the future they choose to charge for more specified courses they will already have marketed themselves successfully enough to have gain a chunk of the online market. This is an extremely progressive move for the expansion of knowledge and education.