maanantai 17. syyskuuta 2012

No news is bad news
Last two lessons and the next lesson I could not find material in Khan for us. Thereafter wa are done with the MAB1 course. The material we were missing:
  • direct and inverse proportionality
  • making equations out of word problems (english was too difficult in Khan)
  • incomplete quadratic equations 
All-in-all we: were able to cover about 75% of the course with the Khan acadamy.

torstai 6. syyskuuta 2012

day 9: Back to basics

This time we do first some more advanced exercises related to chapter 4 in our Finnish text book. But then we get back to very basics with Khan. This is because the students have clear lapses in their basic knowledge.

I think Khan is at its best when drilling the very basics. Then there is no language barrier.

tiistai 4. syyskuuta 2012

day 8: Monitoring
Monitoring progress of the students is in principle easy: you get a graphical report (see below). One gets a list of the names of the students who are struggling: this is the most important thing and lets the teacher guide students who are not able to ask for help.

perjantai 31. elokuuta 2012

day 7: Situation seems to be good (finally)

The www-page with links to Khan academy
http://www.iki.fi/markus.kaukonen/MAB1/mab1.html
seems to have solved most of the hassle.

Today I had time to tutor almost all students individually. Also the last students who had chosen not to use Khan-Academy tried it out today (I was forcing them to try it). Lets see what they choose the next lesson, are they still preferring the traditional text book?

torstai 30. elokuuta 2012

day 6: Trying to solve some problems:
  1. How to link the finnish text book/ curriculum to Khan akademy? 
  2. How to set a study path for the students (this is not allowed in Khan academy's native system).
  3. How students could avoid surfing around Khan-academy's hopelessly slow www-pages (because the mobile version does not work and they do not answer my complaints...)

    Solution: a link page to make the connection Finland-Khan:
    http://www.mv.helsinki.fi/home/mokaukon/public_html/MAB1/mab1.html
    (unfortunately only in Finnish, but you can give google compiler a go)
day 5: Students had some more important than maths: lesson canceled.

perjantai 24. elokuuta 2012

Some Background

Some Background:
  • Khan Academy (KA): watch the video (12min)  http://www.khanacademy.org/toolkit/ This may become a serious challenge to traditional teaching at least at the university level (because, at least in Finland, teaching is at its worst over there)
  • pupils: according to my  'enter poll' nobody likes math and everybody is poor in it. Group size 12. This is a compulsary course and the easier option.
  • teacher: did teacher training last winter, but practiced in physics and chemistry -> not too experienced ... but formally qualified in teaching maths.
  • school: small school with small classes -> experimental teaching may be possible.
day 4:
Problems because the curriculum of Khan academy (KA) is not equal to the Finnish academy. Students started doing KA:s section  'Exponent's and Radicals'. Problem: after some time it turned out that some question were too difficult compared to what we have in our Finnish textbook.

Lesson learned: teacher must do the Khan-practice in advance.
If there is too big a mismatch between the Finnish curriculum and KA one must do the exercises from the Finnish textbook (do it the traditional way).

torstai 23. elokuuta 2012

day 3: 80% of the students have managed their homework, disregarding the fact that I gave them a wrong email address (to let them be coached by me in Khan academy).

Now we are actually getting to busines, students do ' order-of-operations' and 'factors and multiples'.

Big problem: mobile version of Khan academy does not work for use, we must use standard version. I filed a complaint about this in Khan Academy...

Lots of problems, language is a big problem. But we seem to manage it (I and other students translate)

Aa, by the way students are in groups of 3 or 4, they should help each other before bothering me.

From now on idea is that students watch videos (in Khan, in english) or read the text book (the Finnish standard one) at home. School time is for practice.

day 2: The wlan network is not working properly. Lets postpone the start. However, pupils get homework: become my student in Khan academy (I'll be your coach).
day1: most of pupils have the tablets with them, both half of them do not get it working due to a missing password -> we'll try next day.
A Finnish upper secondary school teachers starts using Khan academy (www.khanacademy.org) for teaching, school is http://www.edu.raasepori.fi/karjaanlukio. There is a group of about 12 pupils. The course is short math (there is a long alterntive as well). Pupils have received free samsung PT-G7500 tablets (taxes are high over here). The school has WLAN for students. To my knowledge this is first time someone is using Khan academy in the official-system-teaching in Finland (please correct if I got it wrong).

I try to report my experinece here.