Khan Academy

Are your students struggling with maths and numeracy?

The Khan Academy has a large set of inter-related learning materials that you and your students can use for free (Open Educational Resources). We have had close look at his repository and highly recommend it.

A good place to start is by watching the TED talk that Salman Khan, founder of the Khan Academy, gave in March 2011 (http://www.ted.com/talks/salman_khan_let_s_use_video_to_reinvent_education.html). He gives an overview of the contents and demonstrates how the materials can be used. He also notes that teachers have contacted him to say, ‘We’ve used your videos to flip the classroom. You’ve given the lectures, so now what I do is assign the lectures for homework, and what used to be homework I now have the students doing in the classroom’. Khan advocates using technology to humanise the classroom.

Khan’s material focuses on maths and physics (as well as some other subjects) from the basics through university-level. Students can use the videos alone as found on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/user/khanacademy) or with interactive exercises that guide them through a learning stream (http://www.khanacademy.org/).

These materials could be used in the classroom or made available through AberLearn Blackboard or other VLE. For example, you could create an online quiz in which feedback for an incorrect answer directs students to the relevant item from the Khan Academy.

Please give it a try, We would love to know how you have used it and what you and your students think of the materials (is-alto@aber.ac.uk).