Ahh, xkcd. Most of them are cute little things, then about 1 in 10 must take him hours.
Topic: Dumbing-down of the educational system? (Read 23,902 times)
seen todays XKCD?
I dunno Iain, just go content by content. The only 4th hand gripe I have of Khan Academy is it's a little disconnected, the items are shorter than reg college lectures, so it might take some work to organize them into an instructional pattern.Yes, that's the approach that I took for evaluating the online KA elementary maths tuition system for Lily, comparing it to the content of another online elementary maths tuition system (Mathletics) that she was already using per her primary school's contract for the service. She said the KA one helped her to learn/overcome some stuff that she had been a bit "stuck" with (had not understood) and that the Mathletics one didn't really cover/help with.
Old Regulations Strike Again: Minnesota Says It's Against The Law To Offer Open Courseware Class Without Approval
from the oh-come-on dept
Every day, it seems, we hear of yet another story of silly out-of-date regulations, which may have had a reasonable purpose initially, getting in the way of perfectly legitimate innovation. For example, there's been a massive growth in "open courseware" or open education programs, that put various educational classes online for everyone to benefit. They're not designed to replace the degrees of college, but rather to just help people learn. One of the biggest ones, Coursera, recently told people in Minnesota that they could no longer take Coursera classes, due to ridiculously outdated Minnesota regulations:
Notice for Minnesota Users:QuoteCoursera has been informed by the Minnesota Office of Higher Education that under Minnesota Statutes (136A.61 to 136A.71), a university cannot offer online courses to Minnesota residents unless the university has received authorization from the State of Minnesota to do so. If you are a resident of Minnesota, you agree that either (1) you will not take courses on Coursera, or (2) for each class that you take, the majority of work you do for the class will be done from outside the State of Minnesota.
In Victory for Common Sense, Minnesota Will Allow Free Online Courses After All
(An exceedingly rare event today!) A former fifth-grade teacher implicated in a cheating scandal reportedly gave students the illegal assistance because she thought they were “dumb as hell.”
According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, math teacher Shayla Smith was accused of offering students the answers to a test they were taking at the time. She had reportedly been responsible for supervising them while the tests were being completed.
Schajuan Jones, who taught a fourth-grade class across the hall from Smith’s former room, overheard her talking to another teacher about the test.
“The words were, ‘I had to give your kids, or your students, the answers because they’re dumb as hell,’” Jones was quoted as saying about the interaction between Smith and the unidentified third teacher.
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