Online Lessons

I stumbled upon an interesting and helpful site earlier this week. The sight is www.khanacademy.org. I was reading an article in the New York Times about homeschooling and this was a site that the parent mentioned. This website has video lessons on a crazy amount of topics related to math, science, history, and more. They have over 1800 video lessons on anything you could think of related to science and math. I think this could be a useful site to use if a student needs help on a certain lesson, or a new way of looking at it. If a child was sick and there was a lesson that they missed they could possibly watch it on this site and not be too far behind their class.

Their are of course a few problems with lessons like this online. There isn't teacher you can immediately ask a question if you are stuck (there is a spot under the video where you can ask a question, but I have not tried this out yet.) If a student doesn't get something they could be completely stuck and become frustrated. Another think that could be a problem is that the voice of the individual giving the lesson is pretty monotonous, and I could see these videos being very boring for a student.

It has inspired me to create online videos like this in the future. Not for every single topic but for big picture stuff, or for modeling how to add, subtract, multiply and divide. I think that many students would benefit greatly from a video actually showing you how to work out a problem as opposed to reading it from a textbook.

Overall I think that these online video-lessons are a great idea, but they should be used in conjunction with lessons actually taught in the classroom, not as a replacement for them. Sites like this would also be a great way for students to learn during the summer, and develop individual learning skills and commitment.