Community reviews for Khan Academy

Fantastic interactive math lessons with progress tracking and awards. Many wonderful videos by Sal and others on a wide variety of topics.

Great for reinforcement of topics taught in class. Perfect for students who are reluctant to ask questions in class.

I have a class set of Ipads. I use this as a "standard based grading system". If the students get three in a row, its a 100. They have all six weeks to go back and try as many times as they need to get the three in a row and I will replace it with 100. This puts the initiative on the students. I really like it.

I find Khan Academy to be much more than a site for videos. As a math teacher, the practice lessons make my life easier and bring a level of engagement I rarely get from worksheets in the classroom. The structure is always being improved and updated, which I like a lot. Once you set up the initial classes, it becomes a very easy and effective tool to use.

I like it because it helps students who work at their own pace and need addtional practice.

This could be used in a variety of ways - by the teacher as an inro to percentages - by individual students as an intro or as a reinforcement OR even for advanced students as enrichment. I like that the tutorials are short and easy to understand and follow along. It made connections to prior knowledge. I did find some confusion with the practice problems - after the first two tutorials "Describing the meaning of percent" the firs question was X is what % of n. No examples of solving this had preceded this question. I did like the "hint" button and the fact that it only revealed one step at a time which provides scaffolding as needed by individual students. There seemed to be just the right number of practice problems given so as not to become excessive and frustrate or create boredom.

Khan Academy has so much to offer students. What started with simple instructional videos has grown into a robust platform for supporting students in many subject areas. Students can still watch the videos, but now Khan offers scaffolded practice with a strong ""hint"" function, sequenced tutorials, and some assessments. The tutorials, such as ""Negative Number Basics"" are a sequence of mini-lessons and adaptive math practice. These tutorial have been extremely useful for my students this year! Khan offers structured and differentiated support that compliments a more traditional math classroom. On the downside, my students do get tired of watching the Khan videos. For younger students, the videos are not as engaging as they could be, especially if they are referenced frequently.

Secondary and postsecondary students would be able to utilize these videos to support classroom learning. They could also delve into topics of interest to them, benefitting from Sal Khan's impressive knowledge. These videos provide conversational audio, images and Khan's use of drawing to explain concepts. Teachers could assign videos for students to view in or outside or class. Their use would definitely aid teachers in differentiating instruction.

For teachers seeking to reinforce the concepts of Newton’s law and general understandings of gravity, these videos are a nice supplement to classroom instruction and practice. Be aware, however, that Khan is somewhat imprecise (sometimes using the term “weight” when he means “mass,” for example.). In addition, Mr. Khan sometimes uses examples that may confuse students new to the concepts. In the first video in the series, for example, Mr. Khan begins by discussing rain falling to earth to get students thinking about objects falling towards earth and why that might be. This is a common pedagogical move, however, he gets tripped up in the concept of water vapor thus providing a moment of confusion for students. For students seeking to clarify their understanding of the concepts, be aware that some of the looseness with terms and confusing examples may cause misconceptions to be solidified rather than clarified. Nonetheless, students with a classroom teacher to reinforce terms and concepts may find the numerous examples and working through equations useful.

Five videos produced via KhanAcademy capture the essence of multiplying and dividing fractions. Teachers can infuse any of them within their own instruction or homeschoolers can learn their math concepts from these videos. The instruction is pedagogically sound with systematic step-by-step instructions that move from simplistic concepts through word problems. Shortcuts are introduced and reinforced throughout that speed the process of arriving at the correct solution. Five problems within each of the 7 sets of practice activities were completed to gauge the quality of the feedback and explanation of the solutions. Although a few problems simply changed the numbers to be calculated, there was an ample supply of quality practice activities in each set. No problems were identified with the solutions provided and the practice activities were interesting. Students could request hints in order to gain a perspective on how to begin their solutions and responses were accurately accepted in different formats (for example, improper fractions or mixed fraction). In a few cases, after inputting an improper fraction, a request was made to simplify it. Visuals within the videos were similar to what a teacher would write and/or draw on a blackboard or SmartBoard; however, in a couple of cases, colors specified by the instructor did not agree with what appeared on the computer screen. Instruction within the videos was progressively and sufficiently repetitive to help students remember various processes. As problems progressed from simple to more complex, critical thinking is required – especially when word problems include irrelevant information. Students must then decide what information to exclude in order to solve the problem(s). Anyone can post a question in the Q&A section, however, it’s unclear whether a student, a teacher, or a KhanAcademy representative is providing the response; some questions were never answered. An additional plus for this website is that the videos and practice activities have been linked to the Math Common Core and as such can be seamlessly selected for inclusion within the math curriculum.