WWP Part C-Research 2- Khan's Academy

I started using this site a few years ago with all the incredible videos explaining math. Then I attended a math share alike conference a few months back and one of the teachers showed the "Coaching" part of Khan's Academy so it is time to give it a whirl... Here is an article from Wired Magazine about Salman Khan that explains all about how he got started and what the site is all about.

First impressions:

• The video tutoring is great, it is chunked into small enough pieces so the students will not get bored and not have too much to learn in one session.
• The log ins are connected with Facebook and Gmail (which works for us as we are a Google School!).
• The Knowledge Map is incredible (see picture below). Students can easily go through and follow a path or they can choose lessons as they want.
• The coaching is easy to use, students can signup for a coach using their email, with my 5th graders it took about 5 minutes to get everyone logged and signed up with me as their coach!
• We will be experimenting with the coaching this week

The Knowledge Map:

Implementation notes:

• All students with the exception of one (who has a hard time following directions, so she forgot to log into her Gmail before going onto Khan) were able to sign me up as their coach. I was easily able to check whether or not the students were there and what they had accomplished. It was very telling to see what the kids accomplished in 30 minutes, some watched videos, some did lessons, some even tried trigonometry (without success, but it is pretty cute).