Technology is programmed but Teaching isn't. Can't Fix That.

Dan Meyer mentions Pattern Matching In Khan Academy, quoting Stephanie H. Chang, one of Khan Academy's software engineers:

I observed how some students made progress in exercises without necessarily demonstrating understanding of the underlying concepts. The practice of “pattern matching” is something that Ben Eater and Sal had mentioned on several occasions, but seeing some of it happening firsthand made a deeper impression on me.

I find these kinds of errors showing up often on the gray, blurry line between teaching and computing/programming.

Those who teach don’t necessarily understand programming so they tend to not be able to specify what works in a classroom and the processes or habits that the software is meant to address.

Those who program have never taught so they don’t know how to write the code that solves the problem because they fundamentally don’t understand the problem - or more problematically, don't understand the math they are "teaching" well enough to actually teach it. (That wisc-online tutorial about radians is still there 10 years on, still unchanged, still displaying the same problems I talked about in 2008.)

Unfortunately, those who have done both to a sufficient level aren’t writing the programs that most of us need.  Sometimes, the incompetence is on both sides, but ...

You see this in:
-- grading programs that ignore the ways teachers operate and get in the way instead of making life truly easier ... I just need to enter grades and I don't need a "Wizard" to do it. Why do I have to put this number here and why can't I delete it later?  Why does the thing insist on showing the entire gradebook at all times - I'd like to allow a sub or a student aide to enter attendance. Why does the program not allow me to copy and paste the progress report into an email? Why do I have to use a "wizard" to enter a note to student?

-- Moodle courses that purport to teach but contain things like this gem from a graduate-credit bearing course being "taught" by our "curriculum coordinator":

Google Apps Tutorial:
Watch this online tutorial introduction for Google Apps. (Hints: your screen may not be large enough, so scroll down to see the next button. Playback controls are near the bottom of the page in the center--a very small tab above the line.) Some things on this tutorial will look a little different. Don't let that throw you.
http://services.google.com/apps/resources/overviews/welcome/topicWelcome/index.html

That's it.  That's the sum total of her "teaching". "Follow this link and learn from it".  Must be nice to earn that much money doing so little.

Isosceles has a new definition in SKOOL.

--- software that doesn’t work or fails in bizarre ways ... did you know that Greece is an island? or that a 45-45-90 triangle can have sides 252-325-403? SKOOL says it does and anything named SKOOL.com must be correct, right?  It came with the SmartBoard, so it must be Smart.

 --- Tools and software that include limitations and drawbacks unnecessarily. One of the most puzzling is TI-SmartView, which allows the teacher to project on a IWB a very realistic, working version of the TI-84. The simulation has been deliberately slowed down to mimic the time that the actual calculator takes to graph a complicated function ... WTF? ... I have a quad-core machine and it takes seconds to do this graph? As a result, I use the thing only to show the students key locations and methods -  it's too damned slow and cumbersome ... I use things like Graph 4.4 instead -- better graphics, higher resolution, more colors, faster interface, free. Anyway ...

“I observed how some students made progress in exercises without necessarily demonstrating understanding of the underlying concepts.”

Yeah, like the people who made and those who take the at wisc-online tutorial about radians.

We’ve come a long way but not nearly far enough to allow the replacement of teachers; like one other of Dan Meyer's commenters, I see the best use of Khan as taking the rote memorization out of the hands of the teacher-in-class (though Flash Cards is the Number ONE “really cool idea” promoted by the parents I talk to, especially the home-schoolers).

Let them practice outside of class and bring basic skills to automaticity so that we can do some real work together in our limited time together.

Khan Academy post briefing

My account - quite a mixture for the
suggestions. How is this generated?

From the Los Altos School District, a discussion of how Khan Academy worked and didn't work, it's strengths and weaknesses and the insistence of the media in misinterpreting the information.

Unfortunately, the idea of flipping the classroom that Sal mentioned in his TED Talk resonated with many members of the media, and we were unsuccessful in helping some of them divorce this idea from what they saw in Los Altos.  As a result, our educational philosophy, teaching practices, and Khan Academy implementation have been misrepresented, in varying degrees, by a few major media outlets.

What is it good for?

Teachers in our district have determined that the greatest value of the Khan Academy lies, not in the videos, but in the exercise modules and data generated as students work practice problems.

I would have to agree but with reservations.  I signed up for an account and was thrown into a morass of possibilities that didn't seem to have any rhyme or reason and certainly didn't seem to be scaffolded in any meaningful way.  Where do I start? My suggestions list included a riff on tau vs pi that seemed to be based on Vi Hart's much more succinct video. If I'm truly just starting geometry and I have the Angles 1 thing done, is this a great thing to listen to next?

Why can't I indicate my current course somewhere and leap right to it, landing in a sequential list of things presented in an organized fashion? Do I have to begin with telling time just to check those off my bucket list? Can my teacher (excuse me, my COACH) direct me to a specific topic? Haven't seen a way yet.  I guess you're on your own ... homeschooler or unschooler, but not following anyone's lead.

And then there's the actual work: video, then practice. The video is very rambling ... I guess it's okay but then you're dropped into practice that ranges from tough to simplistic without a noticeable scheme. Take, for example, Order of operations ... a fairly straightforward kind of thing. You expect to be given examples that test the use of the rule and that progress from simple to complicated.  Instead, the ten expressions ranged all over the place. Early on, I got a complex, 4-step, thing that wound up to be -394 but that was followed by a much simpler one. I recorded a couple in the middle of the pack.  In order,

And no exponents. Weird.

I intend to have students do some out-of-class review in a structured way and we'll see.  Not afraid for my job, though.

The Crisis that is Khan

Karim Kai Ani via Washingtonpost.com.

teachers aren’t “pissed off” because Sal Khan is the world’s teacher. They’re concerned that he’s a bad teacher who people think is great; that the guy who’s delivered over 170 million lessons to students around the world openly brags about being unprepared and considers the precise explanation of mathematical concepts to be mere “nitpicking.”
Experienced educators are concerned that when bad teaching happens in the classroom, it’s a crisis; but that when it happens on YouTube, it’s a “revolution.”

Another KA analogy.

Some things can be automated. Brick-laying can be made far easier using one of these very cool machines but it still takes a human to lay things out in the required pattern. Education is far harder. Automatic education won't work all by itself, no matter how much the knuckleheads want Khan Academy to be that way. Khan Academy, like the Tiger-Stone bricklayer, makes things easier in some ways but you still need more ... a teacher. Salman Khan and his "off-the-cuff" videos aren't the devil ... but they aren't an education, either.