Khan Academy & STEM – Social Value through Social Media
With renewed focus in American on science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), educators across the country are coming up with creative ways to provide instruction to their students. Using the internet is, of course, an obvious and popular approach.
Khan Academy is a fine example of a website that has high social value as an educational resource. They provide, free of charge, online education videos on just about any subject matter. Khan Academy is so popular teachers who use it as a resource have actually ‘flipped’ their classrooms, meaning students get the lecture at home using Khan Academy videos instead of in the classroom. In school the next day, they then do what would traditionally have been the homework assignment. This approach helps teachers to focus on how well the students have grasped what they viewed in the videos, go over the concepts and provide guidance. But taking it further, Khan suggests using technology to humanize the classroom so teachers can be freed up to spend more time with each student.
As one student commented on Khan Academy’s You Tube channel, “…I remember seeing all this ‘Matrix’ text in class and here I’m all like ‘I know kung-fu!'” The modules are fun, for adults too. View Salman Khan’s TED talk below and then try a lesson or two!
