Sunday, July 7, 2019

The Good, The Bad, The Khan Academy

"I should really start blogging, it would help me to process my learning and growth as a teacher."

-Me for the last four years.

Well now it is graduate school time and someone else is requiring me to blog. I should thank them some day.

Rightly so, our class is starting off by simply re-exploring what learning is and how we do it. As we read and watched class materials I kept thinking of YouTuber, Derek Muller, and his Veritasium channel. Derek tackles science videos with a very different approach than the content forward, clear explanation style of Khan Academy videos. I analyzed a bit of Derek's thesis, Designing Effective Multimedia for Physics Education and his style of educational videos in an essay. Instead of focusing on an information dump, Derek draws out the preconceptions and ideas people start with then uses conversation, experiments, and dissonance to move towards a more accurate conception. We are calling this "conceptual change" in our class as opposed to thinking of learning as just absorbing content. My full essay is here. 

1 comment:

  1. I love that this class is forcing you to do something that you've wanted to do for so long! Hopefully you enjoy it and keep it going after the class is over. I'm impressed that you took the initiative to look into the thesis of a YouTuber that you know is effective at helping his viewers achieve conceptual change. I hadn't seen Derek Muller's videos before, and I definitely appreciate being introduced to someone who creates those types of resources :)

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