So,
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lila_werewolf asked me what KhanAcademy was, and ... I just super love KhanAcademy so I want to talk about it here XD I was typing this as a response and realized I was making like... a whole entire post about KA lol.
It's a free online learning tool that covers a lot of subjects, though the primary focus is math, science, and computers. But they're continuously expanding. Primarily I just use it for math because it's the most developed, but I do the science sometimes for fun, too. I have tried their programming course and I don't really recommend it, though. But I love the math part of the site -- it originally started as just a math-teaching site, so it's the most developed part.
Basically, you make an account and then you can start working on studying at your own pace. You can follow courses, which go through short textbook-like articles, video lectures, and practices (giving you little problems to try to solve), or you can use the "mission" mode to kind of go at your own pace in your own order, however you want.
Everything is broken down into "skills," which cover everything from kindergarten-level math (counting, adding and subtracting single-digit numbers, understanding and using a number line, etc.) to college-level calculus. Each "skill" is very specific, for example, "adding two numbers less than 10" is a skill, and even as you go on, everything is broken down into these specific "skills." For example, under the subject of "negative numbers," there are 21 unique skills. So instead of just considering understanding negative numbers as a single subject/skill, it's broken down into many little skills that all together help you understand negative numbers.
Skills start out as "Needs Practice" and can "level up" to Practiced, Level 1, Level 2, and Mastered. As you continue to use the site, you can take "Mastery Challenges" which are like little tests that see how well you understand the skills you've learned. The challenges are never more than 5 or 6 questions, and each question will be about a different skill. If you get a question right on your first try during a challenge without using hints, that skill will "level up." If you use hints but still get it right, the skill will stay at the same level, or if you get it wrong or have to use hints for a skill you've already "Mastered," the skill will level down. Basically, unless you have Mastered a skill, the site will offer you ways to practice the skill. And it will always mix in skills you've mastered into your challenges to make sure you haven't forgotten or lost the handle on your skills. So it really tries to keep the content at your current level, and encourages you to practice in the areas you need the most help with, with really focused and specific skills.
Each skill has one (or sometimes even more than one) short video lecture about it, and each video has its own discussion forum where you can ask questions, and get help from other users (it's also used as a classroom tool, so "other users" includes teachers!), so it's pretty much like having access to free textbooks, lectures, and teachers of all kinds. The forum is heavily moderated and is generally a nice place, though sometimes it can take a while to get an answer to a question. That's the part I was talking about in my post -- since I love math and I think I'm good at explaining it, I like to try to answer questions. Before it was hard to find the questions since you pretty much had to go to each video and search for questions yourself. But now, when you master an entire "mission" (a chunk of skills), it will let you see unanswered questions in that mission so you can easily find people who need help, which is nice!
The site also uses modern research on math education, so it's focused not on memorization of methods to solve math problems, but rather on making sure students understand the concepts behind math and numbers in the first place.
( This part is kind of a lot of babbling about new math methods and not about KA anymore lol )Anyway, back to talking about KhanAcademy. I'm going to show some examples of how it works. There's kind of two ways you can use the site, like I said -- one is a course with a track where you learn things in order. It basically has a little course laid out for you, and you go through a series of descriptions, examples, videos, and practice questions. Then there is a free mode where you can kind of go at your own pace and practice what you feel like in your own way (it's the same content, just arranged in a different way). I use the free mode. I don't even remember how to get to the other mode, but the science lessons and stuff only work in that way.
So, when you go to one of your missions, you'll get a panel on the side that looks like this:
This is your "mission progress." This is mine for 6th grade US math. You don't have to go by grade levels, you can do missions related to areas of study, like arithmetic, geometry, etc, and the sets of skills there will reflect your mission.
Anyway, all the dark blue squares are skills I have mastered. You can see how the skills are broken down into subjects. Like I said before, there's 21 unique skills that make up the understanding of the concept of "Negative numbers." This doesn't mean using negative numbers in various ways, like in algebra or whatever, these are skills specifically related to just understanding the concept of negative numbers alone. I really want to stress how thorough this is lol.
Anyway, you can see I have one gray square in there. That means it's "Not Practiced." Sometimes they add squares. I've finished everything in 6th grade before, but now I'm down to 98% because they've added some squares since then (I call them squares but they're called skills lol).
the 'main' part of the page will be a queue of things you can work on. If you have a Mastery Challenge available, it will be at the top. Then things you need to practice will be below that, and you can pick what you want to do. You can also click on a square to work on that skill.
The square I'm missing under Negative Numbers is "ordering small negative numbers." This skill is about understanding where negative numbers appear on the number line, and understanding how to put them in order from least to greatest. So I can click on that square, or on "Ordering small negative numbers" in my list of activities (not shown, but the main part of the page) and I can practice that skill. These will usually be in order from what KA thinks you should practice next, so you can use that if you're not sure what you want to do next. You can even just click a button that says "next activity" and it will bring it up for you.
This is what a practice looks like. You're given some simple questions, only one at a time. Then you have a goal -- in the top right corner, it says "Get 5 questions correct in a row." So if I do that, I will have cleared the practice, and level up my skill from "Not Practiced" to "Practiced." Then later, I'll be able to use a Mastery Challenge to level it up to Level 1. If you don't ever use hints or get questions wrong, you can actually go from "Practiced" to "Mastered" in one step. This is to allow you to fill up squares more easily for concepts you already know before using Khan Academy.
Anyawy, basically, you just drag the four numbers so they are in order from least to greatest, then click "Check Answer." If you've done it right, you will move on to the next question; if it's wrong, you'll get to keep trying until you get it right. You can also use the "hint" button to show a hint. It will tell you a basic concept that can help you, like "negative numbers are less than positive numbers" or something. The more you click the "hint" button, it will give you more in-depth explanation of the concept at hand, and eventually will walk you through the entire problem and show you the answer. Using any hints will not mark the question as "correct," but rather as "helped" or something, so you still will have to get 5 in a row without using hints to finish the practice.
It will also show you the videos available on the topic. You can click to watch the video, where Sal (the guy who originally made the site) will give a short lecture explaining the concept and showing how to solve problems. The quality of these lectures is hit-or-miss, and it's probably the weakest part of the site. Sal makes mistakes sometimes and now and then the videos are too rushed or not helpful enough.
Most of the time, they are very helpful, though. But it's pretty much just a little lecture about a very specific topic. So you can watch a video specifically about the order of negative numbers there, as well as see the discussion forum about that specific topic, where you can ask questions, and see questions and answers that other people have submitted.
Sadly there are actually trolls on the site, now, and it can take a little while for things to get moderated (like a day or so). So sometimes you'll see an answer to a question like "it's easy ur stupid" or something. But like 95% of the comments are good questions/answers, and it's designed to show those with priority. You can also flag bad comments.
Once you clear the practice, you'll get some "energy points," and your little avatar will dance for you, and your skill will level up accordingly. So it moved to "Practiced" here.
There's a lot of little avatar things, and you'll unlock them as you get energy points. At first you can just use the little droplet-looking ones, and then you'll get the 'evolved' versions of them as you do more. It's cute. I don't really mess with this too much. I just like the ones with the leaves coming out of their head lol. I changed to the yellow one. There's more than just these, too, and some you have to do special things to unlock.
You also have a profile/dashboard thing, where you can look at what you've done and see content related to your progress. There's also a "dashboard" that will suggest things for you to work on next. Though I usually jump straight into a mission.
Here's a list of all the major 'missions' you can work on. For math, you'll get a completion percentage next to each one you've worked on. The others are more just free study so there's no percentage, but they have tracks for you that you can go through if you want.
The math courses are very thorough and pretty much will cover everything you'd learn through advanced-placement high school/beginner college courses with a lot of detail. The science courses will teach you the basics of each subject, like the equivalent of taking introductory college courses, though they're prepared in easy-to-digest ways. The site is meant to be used by any age.
I haven't really tried the economics or art ones. And then there's also test prep and college application help, too. The goal of the site is to essentially provide an entire kindergarten to high school core education completely for free. Since everything is so thorough and you can learn at your own pace, I find it really fun to use it as a way to learn more about sciences, and as a way to continue to practice math skills, since it continues to try to stay at your level, and make sure you're not losing a grasp on the concepts you've learned.
This is actually my second account -- I had gone a bit further in my first account, but it was one of those "log in with facebook" accounts, and then I wasn't able to use it while my facebook was deactivated, so I made a new account and worked up from kindergarten again. My first time, I actually just used the "world of math" mission (which is literally everything on the site) and it tries to assess your level and go from there. You can still go to that mission whenever you want, just to see what your progress looks like on learning all the math skills the site has to offer.
This is what mine looks like, hahaha.
Anyway, sorry this was so wordy. I know I repeated stuff a LOT but I don't feel like going back and editing it... Personally I think KhanAcademy is one of the greatest things that exists on the World Wide Web, and highly suggest it for anyone just to play around with for fun. Leveling up your skills and getting badges and stuff makes it feel like a game, and you're keeping your mind in shape at the same time. Plus you can get a good foundation on a lot of subjects through using it.
It might even be a helpful tool for people with dyscalculia -- not that it's going to be a solution to dyscalculia itself, but I think the way that it breaks down concept into very focused skills, it could be a good way to practice some basic math skills in a friendly and game-like way which isn't very intimidating or overwhelming. There are entire sections devoted to things like counting money, measuring ingredients, etc. I know that it's not going to teach away dyscalculia or anything, but it might help make people who have it feel more comfortable with some of these things even if they will always struggle with them, since it lets you practice them at your own pace without any pressure.
You're rewarded for logging in and working on something every day. But you don't have to do much -- just doing those five "put the numbers in order" practice questions counted toward my daily streak. There's a reward for doing something 100 days in a row which I haven't gotten yet hahaha. I just started doing it again so I'm only at 3 days in a row now.
The only thing I wish the site had was a "friends" feature. You can't add friends and compare progress and stuff. I realize why this is, especially for teachers using it in a classroom setting for their students, since comparing yourself to others can be counterproductive, but I think for people who want to use a feature like that, it would be nice. Not that it would really do anything but tell you what your friends are accomplishing... it could maybe let you "like" their progress, but instead of "liking" it, you'd send them an encouraging message. Like it would be a "Good work!" or "Nice job!" button. That would be cool. And of course, no negativity functions available. But yeah, like I said, I realize why it doesn't have a feature like this. Letting people comment or interact with others' profiles would be a disaster for a site like this.
You can, however, add people as your students or as your children. So parents can have an account and add their kids, and use their account to monitor their kids' progress and help them. Same with teachers/students. I don't really know how it works, though, since I'm just using a personal account. I think KA was originally intended to be a personal/homeschooling/adult continued learning site, but it caught on being used in classrooms (the creator of the site, though, is vocally anti-school/anti-institutionalized-learning) and as college prep/help, and so it's really focused on that a lot these days.
Anyway, that's KhanAcademy lmao. Sorry this was so long-winded and all-over-the-place, and very repetitive. I don't want to edit it now. Actually I feel like I already said this but now I can't find where I said it, so maybe I started to say it but deleted it... idk. I just need to end this entry now XD![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
