The Khan Classroom

In the spring of 2011, Salman Khan's TED talk helped spark a national conversation about an idea called the "flipped classroom" and how internet technology can be used to transform learning and teaching (see this Wired article for a great summary of Khan, its impact, and criticisms as well as the 60 Minutes story in my "great videos" section).

If you were to visit Khan Academy today you will find video tutorials for a wide variety of topics- and it isn't limited to just math.   You want to learn more about the debt ceiling, Raphael's School of Athens, Newton's Laws of Motion?  Then Khan has a video for you.  Of course, you can learn about those topics, and 3,897 other topics that are featured on the site by simply doing a google search or reading about them on Wikipedia.

So why all of the publicity?  Why is Khan what everyone, including deep-pocketed investors like Bill Gates, is talking about in educational circles?  For me, a visit to Sparta Middle School's 8th grade math teacher, Mr. Kopp, provided all of the answers.

During the Thanksgiving break, Mr. Kopp created accounts for all of his students within the Khan website and provided students and their parents with primers on how to use Khan to enhance the student learning experience and to supplement what was taking place in the classroom.  What many students and parents soon discovered was that Khan is not just a series of youtube videos, arranged by topic.  It is a virtual classroom, where students can learn at their own pace, increase their proficiency of standards-aligned skills, and provide valuable data to their teacher who in response provides targeted intervention and remediation.

Last Friday, I visited a few of Mr. Kopp's classes to see how his experiment was working out for his students and how Khan has influenced the student-teacher experience.  The first main difference was the setting.  These classes weren't meeting in the classroom but rather in the Media Center's Mac Lab. Typically, Khan is used at home to supplement, reinforce or preview what students are learning in the classroom.   However, two or three times per marking period, Mr. Kopp brings his class to the media center for a Khan review.  Each student was working on their own computer, all signed in to their Khan student accounts.  The students knew they had a unit test next week and they were practicing problems based on the skills that they were to be assessed on.

However, practicing problems really doesn't accurately explain what I was witnessing.  For each topic that the students were going to be tested on (the upcoming unit test), the Khan site has corresponding sets (stacks) of questions.  For each question, the student is timed for how long it takes to get the answer.  This tells the site how confident the student is with this concept.  If the student answers multiple questions in a row on the same topic quickly, then the program knows that the student is proficient and will increase the challenge of the questions asked.  At the end of the stack, if the student got all eight questions correct, they can be confident that they are proficient in that skill and move on to the next topic.  What if they are stumped by a specific question?  Khan provides hints and then links to the original video tutorial to re-teach the topic.  The more time, hints and videos that a student requires to get through a particular stack of questions, the less likely they will be identified as having achieved proficiency.  Khan keeps track of all this and is able to provide to Mr. Kopp a report of how students fared and where he needs to provide additional assistance or re-teaching (see screenshots below).  The immediate feedback that Khan provides gives students the affirmation of their particular strengths and weaknesses and where they need to focus their energy in preparation for the assessment.

The students appreciate the ability to move at their own pace, whether that means focusing on a skill that they are having difficulty with, or exploring advanced math topics that they are curious about.   Khan also provides students with charts, graphs and other progress indicators that allow students to chart their own progress and set their own learning goals.  Throughout the class period, not one student was doing the same thing as another student- a truly differentiated learning experience.  Said one student of working with Khan Academy, "it is helpful because you can't always have a teacher holding your hand, and the videos and hints help me understand." This student logs in to Khan two or three nights per week to practice concepts learned in class.  As a result, she is proud to report that her grade went from a "75% to a 92%!"

Parents can sign up to be "coaches" and access the same individual performance data that Mr. Kopp is given.  For many parents, middle school mathematics can be frustrating because they are less and less able to assist their children at home.  The Khan Academy can bridge this gap.  To foster this partnership between home and school, Mr. Kopp provided parents with Khan primers through e-mail and offered daytime and evening workshops to learn about the program.

For Mr. Kopp, the experience has been transformative.  The hours and hours of preparation that was required to set this up for all of his classes has paid dividends in terms of student motivation and engagement as well as the added stream of individual student data that he is provided and uses to plan his lessons, activities, and assignments.  Kudos to him for taking this technological and pedagogical leap of faith.  We are excited to see where it takes him and his students.

Learning to Serve

“The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.”- Gandhi

For the final three weeks of my senior of high school I had the opportunity to participate in a service learning project through a local branch of Habitat for Humanity.  I learned a lot about the power of service during that experience.  Not only was I able to help work with an organization that builds homes in low-income areas but I learned about myself by, as Gandhi said, serving others.  At SMS we try and instill in our students the importance of service within the context of their own learning and as part of their growing understandings of citizenship, empathy and responsibility.   We believe it is essential to model for our students our own commitment to serve others and I thought I would share with you two examples of how SMS staff-members have done exactly this.
 
Nearly three years ago, the Caribbean nation of Haiti, suffered a devastating earthquake.  The country, already known to be the poorest nation in the western hemisphere, was crippled by the quake and its aftermath. Homelessness, disease, malnutrition, dehydration, impassable roads, leveled buildings and lack of adequate healthcare were among the major challenges.  As we are learning here in New Jersey, the recovery and rebuilding following a natural disaster takes the financial and political support of local and national government and the already existing network of support that includes representatives from the healthcare, construction, and service industries.  This all takes time.  In Haiti, time moves very slowly due to the lack of adequate government, poor infrastructure, and the overwhelming nature of rebuilding a country that was already impoverished.


In order to get adequate care and help stop the spread of disease, the Haitian people depend on outside organizations (NGO's) to send trained personnel, supplies and equipment.  One such organization, Nurchers, is a local organization that is committed to teaching the people of impoverished areas the essential foundations of healthcare so that the people can eventually provide it themselves. The group's goal is to "spread healthcare wisdom globally, one village at a time."

In the summer of 2012, a group of local nurses, including SMS nurse Mrs. Lil Farrell, visited Haiti for five days- bringing with them loads of supplies, and their nursing expertise that they utilized to not only treat hundreds of suffering Haitians but to also teach local leaders essential skills that will allow them to provide adequate care for years to come.  Of the experience Mrs. Farrell reports that the Haitian people were "amazing, lovely and appreciative."  The Nurchers group basically set up a "clinic" (four standing concrete walls with a tin roof), and provided assessments and screenings for the local population.  The nurses also worked with local volunteers, teaching them how to provide basic first aid, and to identify common ailments such as dehydration and infection- especially prevalent in babies and children- with the goal of ensuring that a basic element of care be available to the people long after the experts left.

Nurse Lil-  doing her part in making one small part of the world a better place and paying it forward to the people of Haiti.  Please be sure to ask Mrs. Farrell about her experience this summer in Haiti.  

In the late summer of 2005, Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, damaging many coastal communities and nearly erasing one of America's great cities off of the map.  A thousand miles away, a group of Sparta teachers took it upon themselves to do what they could to help and in April of 2006 the group, including current SMS staffmembers: Robert Gilmartin, Barbara Gilmartin, Jason Kopp, Danielle Kopp and Michelle Hertzberg, went to New Orleans and spent their Spring Break volunteering with the organization, Catholic Charities.

The teachers were tasked with tearing down the internal walls and cabinets of several flood-damaged homes.  The picture above shows the proud group shortly after wrapping up work on one of the homes.  This house was one of the thousands of homes in the New Orleans area that were destroyed by flooding and mold.  The only way to save the home and to bring the family who lived there back was to tear the house apart and to start again.  Thanks to this group of Spartan volunteers one New Orleans family could return home.  Following Hurricane Katrina, it is estimated that over one million people volunteered to help rebuild the Gulf Coast, helping to change the narrative of hopelessness and despair to one of resolve and community.  I guess that makes each of these teachers- one in a million.

Volunteering and community service are great ways to learn about yourself, connect with people from diverse backgrounds and lifestyles, and experience the feeling of making a difference.  So next time your local scout/brownie troop, place of worship, team or other organization is looking for youth volunteers- go for it, the world needs more people like you.


Related Resources:

Interested in learning more about nursing as a career?

Volunteering opportunities for students and families:
Pass It Along

Special Olympics of New Jersey

Sparta Middle School's Builders Club

Serve.Gov

United Way

Youth Service America

AmeriCorps

New Orleans Post-Katrina: