I just got a few You tube links through Dr. Prasad. It was about Khan Academy.
I always thought about our education system. I always knew there was a tremendous scope for improvement but it was not until I started preparing for CAT that I realized the true extent of it. Now CAT is not your regular entrance test. The way it tests the competence of the test taker leaves no doubt that he really has to have something in him, or at least acquire that level of competency, to study in one of the topmost colleges in the country. However, it's the way it goes about it that makes you think.
Almost all of the top b-schools in the country regularly crib about the lack of diversity in their batches. Various methods are used to increase the same - lowering the thresh-hold of cutoff marks, profile screening etc. But I feel this is only a symtomatic treatment, meaning they are only treating the symptoms and not the disease.
Ever wondered why there are so many engineers in the top b-schools? See the way an engineer is trained, or at least tested, ingrains to some extent what I like to call "Angular Thinking" within the student, whether he knows it or not. But what about those who are never trained this way? Or worse still, those who pass out of our school system.
Please bear with me a little bit before I return to talking about Khan Academy.
Our schooling system never treates a student to the amazing world of logic. Millions of children don't know that something like this exists. I was one of them until recently. But when I came in contact with it, it was amazing!! I was amazed to discover the extent to which logic decides every moment we spend the way we spend it.
Now let's talk about the IITs. The institutions really grill the student. It's so tiring and stressful that students go into depression if they don't get a seat. But who's to blame? I say it's our schooling system. The IITs essentially test the student on the application of concepts. I never thought that I was applying when I was in my school. It's what Mr. Salman Khan, founder of the Khan Academy, says - our teaching system at present follows "one size fits all" rule.
This system needs to change, and Khan Academy has done wonderful job in at least moving in that direction.
It all started when Salman Khan wated to teach mathematics to his cousins online.
After sending them the videos, he put them up on You Tube so anyone else could view it if they wanted to. But he could never have imagined that this would snowball into a major phenomenon that is currently under way, but we'll touch that later. The feedback he received from his cousins was unthinkable. They actually preferred his videos to him. The videos granted them the ability to listen to him at their own pace. It was much easier now to ask him to repeat what they couldn't understand. They could revisit his lectures as and when they needed to. This ability that has been placed at the disposal of students has profound implications. This happening snowballed into teachers actually leaving comments relating to how it was changing their
classrooms. What if I told you that ther's a school in Los Altos, USA actually inducted khanacademy.org into their coursework, gutting their existing books in the process? They actually asked students to watch the lectures at home and then helped them do homework at school. There are extensive databases for teachers to keep track of their student's progress. Do refer the video.
Now the implications of this seemingly small events are huge. Though internet connectivity in rural India is poor, an indigenised website like this could really help illiterate children pursue studies with minimal involvement of the teachers. This solves our deficient teacher problem for rural India and removing illiteracy in one go. I mean even autistic children benefited from this!! The implications are huge, but Khan would need extensive support from multiple levels in society and in governments.
If implemented on a mass scale, this could really become a world wide network, which is Khan's ultimate vision.
I always thought about our education system. I always knew there was a tremendous scope for improvement but it was not until I started preparing for CAT that I realized the true extent of it. Now CAT is not your regular entrance test. The way it tests the competence of the test taker leaves no doubt that he really has to have something in him, or at least acquire that level of competency, to study in one of the topmost colleges in the country. However, it's the way it goes about it that makes you think.
Almost all of the top b-schools in the country regularly crib about the lack of diversity in their batches. Various methods are used to increase the same - lowering the thresh-hold of cutoff marks, profile screening etc. But I feel this is only a symtomatic treatment, meaning they are only treating the symptoms and not the disease.
Ever wondered why there are so many engineers in the top b-schools? See the way an engineer is trained, or at least tested, ingrains to some extent what I like to call "Angular Thinking" within the student, whether he knows it or not. But what about those who are never trained this way? Or worse still, those who pass out of our school system.
Please bear with me a little bit before I return to talking about Khan Academy.
Our schooling system never treates a student to the amazing world of logic. Millions of children don't know that something like this exists. I was one of them until recently. But when I came in contact with it, it was amazing!! I was amazed to discover the extent to which logic decides every moment we spend the way we spend it.
Now let's talk about the IITs. The institutions really grill the student. It's so tiring and stressful that students go into depression if they don't get a seat. But who's to blame? I say it's our schooling system. The IITs essentially test the student on the application of concepts. I never thought that I was applying when I was in my school. It's what Mr. Salman Khan, founder of the Khan Academy, says - our teaching system at present follows "one size fits all" rule.
This system needs to change, and Khan Academy has done wonderful job in at least moving in that direction.
It all started when Salman Khan wated to teach mathematics to his cousins online.
After sending them the videos, he put them up on You Tube so anyone else could view it if they wanted to. But he could never have imagined that this would snowball into a major phenomenon that is currently under way, but we'll touch that later. The feedback he received from his cousins was unthinkable. They actually preferred his videos to him. The videos granted them the ability to listen to him at their own pace. It was much easier now to ask him to repeat what they couldn't understand. They could revisit his lectures as and when they needed to. This ability that has been placed at the disposal of students has profound implications. This happening snowballed into teachers actually leaving comments relating to how it was changing their
classrooms. What if I told you that ther's a school in Los Altos, USA actually inducted khanacademy.org into their coursework, gutting their existing books in the process? They actually asked students to watch the lectures at home and then helped them do homework at school. There are extensive databases for teachers to keep track of their student's progress. Do refer the video.
Now the implications of this seemingly small events are huge. Though internet connectivity in rural India is poor, an indigenised website like this could really help illiterate children pursue studies with minimal involvement of the teachers. This solves our deficient teacher problem for rural India and removing illiteracy in one go. I mean even autistic children benefited from this!! The implications are huge, but Khan would need extensive support from multiple levels in society and in governments.
If implemented on a mass scale, this could really become a world wide network, which is Khan's ultimate vision.
GOOD BLOG.. BUT I WISH YOU BRING IN AND TALK ORGANIZATIONAL RELATED CONCEPTS WHILE DISCUSSING THE KHAN.. YOU NEED TO USE THE TOOLS OF MANAGEMENT.. CONCEPTS. UNLESS YOU USE THEM.. UNDERSTANDING AND LEARNING IS NOT COMPLETE.
ReplyDeleteYOU ARE GOOD BLOGGER.. DR MANDI