Blog Assignment #14

Frank Noschese vs Kahn Academy

This is an interesting debate if one really believes there are two sides to the debate, but I don't really see it that way. For starters, I completely agree with Mr Noschese's fundamental premise that you learn more by doing than by hearing. I also agree that the more a student puts into solving a problem, the greater the understanding of the problem solving process. When I first started reading this blog about Kahn Academy, I was immediately defensive because I think Kahn Academy is great. However, after absorbing the post, I realized Mr Noschese is not really attacking what Salmon Kahn has done, he is angry about the way Kahn Academy has been promoted, not necessarily by Mr Kahn, as a revolutionary in the educational process. Kahn Academy has been fortunate enough to receive financial support from sponsors with big bucks (ie Bill Gates) and has produced over 2000 educational videos. Obviously I can't read his mind but from what I,ve seen and heard I think Mr Kahn has continued to proceed just like he started: helping people with specific problems or concepts they are struggling with at the time. His videos have become so numerous and encompassing that you can learn a lot of stuff from his tutorials that you might miss in class, and there is the advantage of working at a pace that is right for you.

Mr Noschese is arguing correctly that some concepts (physics in this case) can only be really learned with hands on exploration. No argument from me. However, I think he may be a little extreme in the elevator discussion. Yes, if you build a simulation elevator you probably will have a more concrete understanding of the forces involved. But at some point before you build the elevator you must have a pretty good knowledge of force, velocity, and acceleration, and how to calculate these values for a given situation. I think Kahn Academy does a good job of teaching and reinforcing calculations of this sort. I took a lot of physics and chemistry when I was in college and I have taught both. The labs and hands-on stuff is great for teaching you how to apply this knowledge to the real world, but if you don't know the basics involved and how to manipulate the equations to fit the information available, you're not going to have much success with hands-on, real world applications.

Finally, I think the bottom line is there must be both types of instruction for mastery of any topic to be achieved. First you must learn the basics, then you learn how to apply them to the world that we live in and the problems encountered there. Our education system needs a major tune-up and a lot of people are searching for the answers. If money was not always an issue, some problems could be solved relatively quickly, such as teacher-student ratios and resources available to teachers and students. These are not the only problems, but these are problems. We'll just have keep trying to improve things and maybe one day we'll get there. I really liked a quote Mr Noschese had from one of his students: "Don't hate the player, hate the game". We are all just players. It's the game that needs to change.