Design Experiment 3: Khan Academy, MIT OpenCourseware, & YouTube

This week, we are asked to explore Khan Academy and MIT Open Courseware. I teach high school level Computer Science class and it is necessary for students to master Algebra I skills before in order to succeed in my class. I am also helping some 11th grade students to get them ready for SAT test. I explored Khan Academy first this week. The Khan Academy is a non-profit educational organization that provides free video tutorials and interactive exercises. Teachers, parents, students can signup for free and learn and practice variety of subjects. Below is a very useful overview video.

Khan Academy has lessons from Math, Art & Humanities, Science & Engineering, Computing, Economy & Finance, Test Prep subjects. Khan Academy allows teachers to create a class, then add students to his/her class. This allows teachers to track his/her students' progress in the platform. Also, you can track your students' skill progresses. It is awesome you can see how many minutes your students spend on video lessons, skill activities, and mastered/struggled lessons.

Khan Academy has a Computing category. In this category, there are four sub-categories exist. These are Computer Programming, Computer Science, Hour of Code, and Computer Animation.
I explored each sections in the Computing category.

Computer Programming

This sections helps students to learn how to program drawings, animations, and games using JavaScript & ProcessingJS, or learn how to create webpages with HTML & CSS. Students can share whatever they create, explore what others have created and learn from each other!

I found this section very useful. Since I teach Computer science, and Web Design classes, my students can definitely benefit by using Khan Academy. It has interactive video tutorials, you can pause rewind or forward the video, and dive in and do something right away in the screen. There is a preview window next to it. It also has discussion, documentation and spin-off sections below each video. So, students can easily get help in discussion forums and documentation sections.

I think I can definitely integrate Khan Academy's Computer Programming course into my classes next year.

Computer Science

This sections helps you learn topics from computer science - algorithms (how we solve common problems in computer science and measure the efficiency of our solutions), cryptography (how we protect secret information), and information theory (how we encode and compress information).

This section is just awesome. Since I teach AP Computer Science course, having some information about algorithms is essential. With the help of algorithms, scientists solve real-world complex problems. Algorithms are step by step procedure or a set of steps to accomplish a task. I like how Khan Academy organized videos and activities together. Students can watch video, and next they practice on the related activity to master the content. I think I can integrate this unit into my AP Computer Science course beginning of the school year.

Hour of Code

Khan Academy has three hour of code activities. Hour of Drawing with Code, Hour of Webpages, and Hour of Databases. I think this one-hour introduction to computer science section designed to show that anybody can learn the basics of computer programming. This one-hour sections can be integrated at the beginning to introduce students to wonderful world of programming.

Computer Animation

This section is my favorite. Khan Academy collaborated with Pixar Animation Studios to create this unit. The goal is to show you how realistic blades of grass are modeled using parabolic arcs, how organic looking patterns are created using randomness, how clay models are transformed into digital characters using weighted averages, how characters are brought to life with geometric transformations, how animators bring characters to life with the help of animation curves, how virtual sets are constructed using geometric transformations, and how pixels are painted by solving systems of linear equations.I am glad that Khan Academy collaborated with a professional company to create this course. I teach

I can definitely incorporate this unit into my Digital Graphics & Illustration class.

Affordances

• Free
• User friendsly interface
• Badges for recognition
• Collect and analyze data
• Interact with others

 Khan Academy, Inc., a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. Khan Academy's term of use requires consent and approval form from legal parent/guardian of students whose 13 years old or younger. Khan Academy fits perfectly if you want to flip or blend your classroom. This tool support self-directed instruction and flipped/blended classroom approaches. Students can watch these videos and do activities at home, and come prepared to school and deepen their understanding and knowledge in the class. I feel confident now about developing online learning environment and incorporate all these wonderful tools into my online environment. I can now use Canvas CMS and incorporate Google Apps and Khan Academy into my online/blended/flipped classes.