Thursday, May 10, 2012

Free Education: Khan Academy

By Deborah Kaplan, Home Tutoring Plus, Inc.

Whether you've never heard of the Khan Academy or you're a seasoned user, read on to explore the out-of-the-box possibilities of this phenomenal site. With about 3,000 videos on a variety of subjects, about 300 math exercises and the ability for both students and teachers to track students' progress, the Khan Academy is achieving its mission: “We're a not-for-profit with the goal of changing education for the better by providing a free world-class education to anyone anywhere.”
 Wow. Pausing for breath. ;-)
  Students of all ages can use the academy's video library. The videos cover K-12 math, science topics such as biology, chemistry, and physics, and even has videos on finance and history. Each video is a digestible chunk, approximately 10 minutes long, and set-up for viewing on the computer.
 Students can watch a video, try the exercises, get help and tips along the way, track their progress and earn “energy points” and badges for successfully completing work. By logging in, their progress is automatically tracked and they can view it in a variety of motivating graphs. By setting goals, they can continually monitor their progress towards the goals.
 Name yourself or your student's tutor as “coach” and track what your student has done, how long they spent working on Khan Academy and more. Watch this video for a good introduction to the student tracking component.

 We cannot recommend this great resource enough!

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