What is Khan Academy?

Top 5 Teacher Tips for Using Khan Academy

For over 15 years Khan Academy has been making a difference for students in both classrooms and homes.  Founded by Sal Khan as a way to tutor his cousins, Khan Academy has grown into one of the largest not-for-profit education sites in the world.

Here is what every teacher needs to know about Khan Academy.

It has been praised by many educators as a tool for students to learn independently at their own pace without having to pay large amounts of money for tutoring classes or coursework. According to their mission:

“Anyone can learn anything for free.”

Khan Academy is on a mission to provide a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere. Their interactive practice problems, articles, and videos help students succeed in math, biology, chemistry, physics, history, economics, finance, grammar, and many other topics. Khan Academy provides teachers with data on how their students are doing, so they can identify gaps in learning and provide tailored instruction. They also offer free personalized SAT and LSAT practice in partnership with the College Board and the Law School Admission Council. “

And of course, one of the best things is that Khan Academy is a non-profit and most of their resources are free to teachers and students.

Sal actually heeded the advice and graduated from M.I.T. in 1998 with three degrees: a bachelor of science in mathematics, a combined B.S. in electrical engineering and computer science, and a concurrent master’s degree in electrical engineering.

Khan used his education and his experience tutoring his family to create Khan Academy, with a mission of providing “a free world-class education for anyone anywhere.”

Their videos, many by Khan himself, are shot on a virtual background in which notes are written. This allows for both audio and visual input to support learning. Students practice at their own pace, first filling in gaps in their understanding and then accelerating their learning. A growing body of research indicates that Khan Academy’s personalized mastery learning helps drive learning outcomes for students, and even easily implementable thresholds of usage are associated with meaningful progress.

• Age 10:  I went on to practice some geometry and trigonometry, and I watched the video. I thought I got what he was saying, but when I took the test, what was on it was totally irrelevant to what the guy said. Really disappointed.
• Age 14: The only thing Khan Academy did was bring my grade down. In my algebra class we started Khan closer to the end of the year and since then my grade has fallen way too far. It might work for others but not me.
• Age 12: It stinks. It is boring and your kid will fall asleep. My teacher even said I know you guys hate it.
• Age 15: I would definitely recommend this website. It has personally helped me. Although people learn at different rates. The instructor is very clear. I would definitely tell you to use it for MATH
• Age 13: As a personal user of Khan Academy and a 7th grader who is studying Algebra I, I absolutely love this truly educational website. It lets you receive points so you can feel rewarded for any skill you have mastered for cool profiles and overall, Khan Academy is a great website for students who have trouble with math.

1. Learn how to use Khan Academy as a student
   One of the best ways to see all the perks that Khan Academy offers is to put yourself in the student’s shoes. It will help you know how to communicate with your students when giving them assignments and sharing your expectations for their work.
2. Encourage Mastery Challenges
   In addition to standard quizzes and tests, there are self-paced Mastery Challenges that students can take to make sure they know skills even if they haven’t formally covered this skill in the past year. If the student doesn’t do well in the Mastery Challenge, they’ll level down, giving them more opportunities to work on this skill until they can pass the challenges without issue.
3. Search for Individual Skills
   Students or teachers can search for individual skills so you can target or re-target learning in a specific area. It is easy to do, just by going to the top of any page. A search for “long division,” for example, brings up three predictive search results: long division, long division of polynomials, and long division with decimals.
   Many students find his way of teaching to be just what they need to get over the hump.
4. Embrace Electives
   With many school and homeschool budgets making it difficult to hire teachers for courses such as art history or economics, it’s nice to know that these are available as free Khan Academy courses.
   Khan’s partnerships with other organizations provide some very unique opportunities to learners of all ages, including “Imagineering” with Disney (also called “storytelling”), where kids build their own theme park.
5. Use all of Khan’s resources
   In addition to the brilliant courses that the platform offers, there are other highlights to explore:

• Daily schedule samples with resources by age and grade
• Hundreds of free books for summer reading programs or ELA enrichment
• A regularly updated blog that shares the new Khan Academy features
• The comment section of each lesson, which allows you to see what kids are asking about each skill
• Test prep courses that cover the PSAT, SAT, LSAT, Praxis, MCAT, NCLEX-RN, GMAT, CAHSEE, and IIT JEE.

• Use the classroom management tools, which include lesson assignments and the ability to see how each student is progressing on assigned goals.
• Incorporate tools, such as Google Classroom, to communicate lessons to students and get their feedback.
• Use gamified lessons to encourage students and give teachers a way to add bonus points to grades.
• Challenge students with AP-based resources, taught by instructors who know the AP materials intimately, providing reinforcement and test preparation.

What suggestions do you have for teachers using Khan Academy?

Sources

https://www.techlearning.com/how-to/what-is-khan-academy

https://blog.khanacademy.org/three-things-you-probably-didnt-know-about-sal/

https://www.commonsensemedia.org/website-reviews/khan-academy/user-reviews/child

https://www.hp.com/us-en/shop/tech-takes/tip-using-khan-academy-remote-learning