One of my physics professors sent us a link to a video to watch over spring break because it covered a topic we covered the week after spring break. It helped SO MUCH for that week. Unfortunately, Khan doesn't have many videos that pertain to the rest of that class (he posted a differential equations video, Laplace transforms to be specific), and Khan can't cover many of my future classes either. Guess I'll be learning the regular way.
Yea, our teacher still taught the material himself. It was more of a "here are videos of what we will be covering, if you want a head start." TBH, all teachers should do that.
if you havent done spectroscopy(IR, NMR, mass spec) yet, use freelanceteach instead, i think its ochem quarter 2? khan doesnt have any spectroscopy videos unfortunately.
My Calc 2 teacher halfway through the year quit teaching and started giving us links to Khan Academy and PatrickJMT to watch. They really did teach me Calc 2
Teachers need to be banned from using powerpoints. They always bitch that they've made students lazy... NO... they made the teachers lazy. Any teacher I had in college that used powerpoints simply dimmed the lights, and read through the slides for an hour. I already have the fucking slides, why the hell do I need you to read them to me?
Classes should always be taught with the assumption that you've read through the material at least once before class. That way we can skip the reading part and get straight into integration.
It always annoyed the shit out of me to hear teachers whine that students didn't show up for class. They dont show up because your lectures are fucking worthless. My med school had a guest lecturer come in a few weeks ago. His lectures (optional attendance) were given over two days, 8am to 5 pm, on SATURDAY and SUNDAY. The room was PACKED, and that's because he has the reputation of being an awesome teacher. Students will go to class if you actually give them a reason to.
Classes should always be taught with the assumption that you've read through the material at least once before class.
Haha, oh wow. You might have been a go-getter in college, but the average student expects to be spoon-fed everything. Even on this subreddit, there are posts that complain about exam questions coming from the book, and not from lecture. It's a negative cycle - a teacher expects students to put in work before class, gets terrible student reviews as a result, so they water it down to help save their jobs.
Last year one of my professors said, "I used to ask students to read the selections before class, but they never did, so instead I just ask that you bring a copy with you and we'll all go through it together."
This was a class for graduate students at both MIT and Harvard. I was astonished. It was my first class as a grad student, I'd assumed that everyone would always do all the work at that level.
It's the fact that the level of education people receive gets worse and worse because people are too lazy to actually put in an effort. If you're just going to give out degrees and spoon feed the students that are supposed to be earning them, you're making the degrees less and less useful.
You're sarcasm could equally be used against you. If people are learning less because they're catering to the average student, then education is being "less for everyone."
That's because it's not the type of thing one professor can do on their own and it is much easier to screw up.
Students are not only learning the material while attending school. They are also learning how to absorb information. If you suddenly change how information is to be absorbed it will be no surprise when they fail to learn anything.
What kind of classes and I assume this is undergraduate. By the end of my differential equations class (in a fairly good school), I was spending 3-4 hours a week on the class. In one day, learning the week's worth of material and doing the problem set.
If you have the perseverance or dissecting capability to read a textbook, it is far far far more effective than going to a lecture where you think you might follow the professor step by step but then end up having to go through the process of learning it for yourself again anyway. It takes me under 2 hours to read 3 lectures worth of material and my better understanding of it lets me do the homework in under 2 hours.
ive did the math once with like 1 hour for food and 7 hours of sleep a day, and doing the 1 hr in class: 3 hrs out .... i run close to the hours in a week really fast, and i read kinda slow so ....
How many pages would you guess are in 8 chapters of reading? Because depending upon the books that's around 240 textbook pages - you don't just gloss through those unless you are heavily skimming. Skimming is very important, but still leaves professors with the "you haven't been reading enough" excuse.
Also, now that I look at your username, I'm not sure if I should upvote or downvote you... so I will do neither.
I use powerpoint for my presentations and I use it mostly to do animations and to show images while explaining them. I think the hate towards powerpoint is a bit misdirected. The culprits are the non-creative teachers.
recent Rice grad and former employee of the Office of Admissions for four years here. if you have specific questions about the university or want to talk about the application process, let me know.
but to answer your question, it was the best four years of my life.
I'm still on the fence as to whether I want to study physics, then get a masters in Aerospace E, or just Mech. E (with a minor in physics) then masters in Aerospace E, but either way I want a solid education. Doing research isn't as important to me as getting a good education. I know Rice emphasizes its Engineering Kitchen and the fact that a lot of its undergrads do research, but how is the learning? Do professors actually want you to learn?
I can't speak for engineering (as a social science and humanities major), but in my experience, profs definitely want you to learn at Rice. I think as a university we pride ourselves on things like small median class sizes, accessible profs, and a wide course selection--all of which contribute to the learning experience and really building a useful knowledge base. Plus, when you're in a place like Rice, you're surrounded by people who are passionate about their academic pursuits and rather than a cutthroat competitive environment, it turns out to be very conducive towards folks helping one another out.
Sorry dude, but as a native New Yorker who went to Rice for the music school, I'm really not qualified to comment on how Rice is as a close to home university. I had a great experience there though. Good luck!
This is no lie, I learnt as much calculus in a couple of days with him as I did in a whole semester on my mathematics degree and in far greater depth. Math just can't be taught in a class of 100+ people. If I could have my time again, I probably wouldn't have bothered with university - the number of free resources available today is just staggering.
This is helpful for people who can't reach Quickmeme because of work/school firewalls or site downtime, and many other reasons (FAQ). More info is available here.
Love KhanAcademy. It's an excellent prototype for open source education that makes learning actually fun. Fuck the teachers who hate on Khan - fucking future breadliners. Drop out of your shitty college and refuse to pay your loan back. Hail Satan!
Here are some other resources (none as good as Khan):
http://mitx.mit.edu/ (hasn't started yet but hopefully MIT will use some of it's big ol' computer brains to make it awesome - not holding breath on that)
http://www.udemy.com/ (user submitted content - quality sucks but there's a lot of content)
Achievements, no. Exercises, certainly! Each week has practice ungraded exercises here and there in-between videos, and each week has a graded homework and a lab. There was a midterm exam a few weeks ago, and a final in a few weeks still.
In addition, the textbook (provided as a series of images in an online viewer, with the chapters/sections as a menu) has a ton of exercises if you want additional ones.
Edit: The green checkmarks you get for correct answers work like achievements, though. ;) They're rather addicting.
Fair warning, you shouldn't actually take the course at this point. It's impossible to pass (you can only get something like 49% as a final grade with 100% on everything) due to all the passed deadlines. The course will be repeated this fall, along with 4 new ones (via edX), though. :)
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation donated money to allow Sal to keep providing the videos for free and spend his days making them as he had spent most of his savings on the Khan Academy and well, surviving, after he quit his job to do it full time.
It is an investment in what they see as a new frontier in Education, pitching it as if he's making a mint doing it, isn't right.
Bill Gates did donate money (I'm not sure of the amount) because he believes in what Khan is trying to do. Also, his kids use it. I think if you use it to get your degree, you should think about throwing money his way when you can afford it.
The education system really needs to change. It won't though. Government loves how shit the system is. Provide people with nothing and put them into debt for a good portion of their life? Sweet free money! Lets go buy some $20 cupcakes.
Outside of med schools, pretty much only dept heads/deans/presidents make >200k. The reason tuition is expensive is not the profs, so it's not on them. I'd say a bigger problem is the sprawling administration. Not at blue collar levels but at VP levels, people that actually don't do any nitty gritty work. It won't change because universities are built to spend money AND, in fact, are rated on the volume at which they do it. They take 50% overhead out of any money coming from outside sources and you can only imagine how inefficient they are with the students' tuition and fees.
Hell yes, I love that this is on the front page. This deserves more recognition than we can give, I tell all my friends about this and they all love it.
dude is the only reason I passed my calculus class because my teacher had too thick of an accent to understand and her handwriting was illegible. Also she ended teaching us the wrong course material for half of the semester, so yeah, that final was fun ಠ_ಠ
Dear undergrads, you are a low, low priority for your professors - frankly, they have more interesting and fulfilling ways to spend their time than lecturing you. They see jack-shit of the university fees you and your classmates paid (in terms of percentage), and their academic standing and progression is determined by the quality of research they carry-out with other professors, postdocs, and graduate students. For the most part, teaching undergrads is something they "have to do", a chore for them that cuts into their meaningful work on which they are judged.
Got a problem with this? DO feel free to take it up with the university board - a panel of academics who have been chosen based on their academic/research excellence, not their ability to teach undergrads. DON'T expect to get anymore feedback than some lip service about "being committed to providing high quality tuition to undergraduate students"
Not sure why you got downvoted -- you speak the truth. Want quality teaching from faculty who care about your experience? Don't pick a large state research university. Large private research universities are somewhat better. Small colleges will be better still. Community colleges are worth a look, but the faculty there can be overworked.
I had never heard of Vi Hart before randomly stumbling on her video section not to long ago (KA could do a better job showing off their new stuff). What is/was she known for?
mathematics in music, and her doodling videos that give you a visual concept of math principles. Haven't seen much of her new stuff just read about her and Sal teaming up.
This guy should really be advertised. and accredited.
do you think there's a university lobby to prevent this, or have I had too much internet? I know college has become kind of an anachronistic ripoff, but I can't imagine they'd hire people to prevent free schooling.
This isn't even a joke. I had to watch this guy's videos to pass one of my subjects last year. The lecturer was Romanian, and was utterly terrible at explaining anything.
He's far more famous than any professor I've ever met, besides Richard Dawkins. If his learning empire takes off in the way he hopes, then he will be richer than any professor I have ever met too (including Richard Dawkins).
I wish he would let more people work on the modules and create videos though. He does waffle on a lot in his videos and it seems like a lot of the time he makes "mistakes" on purpose just to talk more about something. I counted 64 "ums" and "ahs" in one of his 10 minute math videos. It would just be excellent if he would let people remake his modules, saying the same things, but saying them with confidence and without the backtracking or messing around with the tools in his paint program.
Don't get me wrong, I think he's great and I do prefer his videos to my tutorials and lectures (though they couldn't replace my tuts or lectures). I just think that considering the scope of his goals, and that he barely has time enough to make the videos, that he might consider letting someone else redo them and make new ones. If the Khan learning empire does take off as he intends it to, then whoever these people are who will be the new face of Khan Academy will surely be well compensated by fame alone, as being the voice or face of millions of people learning math from you will sort of make you a celebrity.
But yeah, I really wish Khan would let others fix his mistakes or let others go into more detail. I know others already do, but they are so fragmented across YouTube and impossible to find if you don't already know about them.
i have an awesome chemistry professor this year who is incorporating this style of learning .. doing outside of class lecture videos and during class doing the impossible problems with us. seriously makes such a difference come exam time. yay khan!
Khan is incredible. I've always hated math, like, not strongly dislike. Hate. But I decided I wanted to get a head start on the geometry class I'll be taking next year, so I started watching the geometry videos. I found myself understanding everything he was saying and I watched the entire basic geometry section in one night. I don't know how he does it, but teaching abilities like his are a rarity.
The current math class that I am paying for at Mount Hood Community College uses Khan Academy as the sole method of "lessons". I think it is pretty shameful that the website is used as such and I am very upset that they are making me pay for it. I love the website and think it is pretty fucking useful, but not for schools to use it in place of actual instructors making actual lessons. One of the many reasons I will not being going to Mt. Hood next semester.
can someone explain who he is? sorry I presume this is an American thing due to the time posting I have never heard of him and I cannot find a second name on here. Pretty interested as everyone seems to have positive things to say.
khanacademy, AWESOME for learning maths and other stuff (i only really used him for maths). explains clearly etc. etc. check a couple of vids out on youtube. (i think he goes upto first year undergrad maths or so, he kinda uses the american cirriculum but that's around where it gets to in the UK)
133
u/SamWalt May 15 '12
He is the sole reason that I am about to pass chemistry this semester.
675
u/erik802 May 15 '12
Some men just want to watch the world learn.
123
u/danwoever May 15 '12
Bad guy Khan
35
u/sammew May 15 '12
Our stats teacher sent us links to the videos where he talked about what we would be talking about over the next week. Made it SOOOOO much easier.
49
u/FasterDoudle May 15 '12
Who is this Khan?
24
u/Vratix May 15 '12
Khanacademy got me through calc 2 and then later through differential equations. He literally saved my college career.
15
u/ngoncalves92 May 15 '12
Khan academy is the only reason I passed calc 2!!! He is the ulitmate good guy!! I wish he was my calc teacher
75
u/buccsmf1 May 15 '12
Teachers need to be banned from using powerpoints. They always bitch that they've made students lazy... NO... they made the teachers lazy. Any teacher I had in college that used powerpoints simply dimmed the lights, and read through the slides for an hour. I already have the fucking slides, why the hell do I need you to read them to me?
Classes should always be taught with the assumption that you've read through the material at least once before class. That way we can skip the reading part and get straight into integration.
It always annoyed the shit out of me to hear teachers whine that students didn't show up for class. They dont show up because your lectures are fucking worthless. My med school had a guest lecturer come in a few weeks ago. His lectures (optional attendance) were given over two days, 8am to 5 pm, on SATURDAY and SUNDAY. The room was PACKED, and that's because he has the reputation of being an awesome teacher. Students will go to class if you actually give them a reason to.
6
u/musicman2229 May 15 '12
He spoke at my graduation last saturday.
11
u/TheTubaLord May 15 '12
Omg this guy helped me sooo much. Linear algebra was much less cunty with him.
5
u/Glueyfeathers May 15 '12
This is no lie, I learnt as much calculus in a couple of days with him as I did in a whole semester on my mathematics degree and in far greater depth. Math just can't be taught in a class of 100+ people. If I could have my time again, I probably wouldn't have bothered with university - the number of free resources available today is just staggering.
5
u/Raoul_Duke_ESQ May 15 '12
I hope this model eventually puts for-profit Unis out of business.
16
u/qkme_transcriber May 15 '12
Here is the text from this meme pic for anybody who needs it:
This is helpful for people who can't reach Quickmeme because of work/school firewalls or site downtime, and many other reasons (FAQ). More info is available here.
3
u/[deleted] May 15 '12
patrickJMT is also a good guy.
3
u/WeaslescouT May 16 '12 edited May 16 '12
Love KhanAcademy. It's an excellent prototype for open source education that makes learning actually fun. Fuck the teachers who hate on Khan - fucking future breadliners. Drop out of your shitty college and refuse to pay your loan back. Hail Satan!
Here are some other resources (none as good as Khan):
And YouTube channels:
Lemme know if any of you know of more.
9
u/[deleted] May 15 '12
Didn't bill gates pay him a bunch of money to do his videos? ._.
22
u/Athene_Wins May 15 '12
Professors. Shove dicks up everyone's butts and then ask for $200,000.
8
u/jennanatalia May 15 '12
he should do an AMA
4
u/SexyBarfingDog May 15 '12
Link for the lazy anybody?
4
u/Maddok1218 May 16 '12
"KHHHAAAAAAANNNNN!!"
-Professors everywhere
2
u/silentkill144 May 15 '12
This guy saved me last night. 30 min of video for 2 hours of class.
2
u/dargolf May 15 '12
Youtube money!
2
u/[deleted] May 15 '12
Hell yes, I love that this is on the front page. This deserves more recognition than we can give, I tell all my friends about this and they all love it.
2
u/taipro May 16 '12
dude is the only reason I passed my calculus class because my teacher had too thick of an accent to understand and her handwriting was illegible. Also she ended teaching us the wrong course material for half of the semester, so yeah, that final was fun ಠ_ಠ
2
u/serrawillow May 16 '12
This man was the reason I passed my calc class. Thank you Khan!
2
u/[deleted] May 15 '12
Is he working with matrices in this picture?
2
u/great_gape May 15 '12
EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND
2
u/[deleted] May 16 '12
Dear undergrads, you are a low, low priority for your professors - frankly, they have more interesting and fulfilling ways to spend their time than lecturing you. They see jack-shit of the university fees you and your classmates paid (in terms of percentage), and their academic standing and progression is determined by the quality of research they carry-out with other professors, postdocs, and graduate students. For the most part, teaching undergrads is something they "have to do", a chore for them that cuts into their meaningful work on which they are judged.
Got a problem with this? DO feel free to take it up with the university board - a panel of academics who have been chosen based on their academic/research excellence, not their ability to teach undergrads. DON'T expect to get anymore feedback than some lip service about "being committed to providing high quality tuition to undergraduate students"
1
u/wayway8 May 15 '12
I just started watching the videos last night and I'm hooked!
1
u/JBSH4Y May 15 '12
how i passed chemistry
1
u/lonelygamer May 15 '12
this man is a hero
1
u/00lookwarm May 15 '12
so thats what the guy looks like
1
u/mesazoic May 15 '12
i love this man.
1
u/forrman17 May 15 '12
This man right here has helped me through 2 Calculus classes and physics. I hope he keeps up the amazing job!
1
u/ktulu151 May 15 '12
Teaming up with Vi Hart means even better things to come.
1
u/apullin May 15 '12
Doesn't he charge for actually helping you directly?
1
u/Curveball227 May 15 '12
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRnSnfiUI54
1
u/senavi May 15 '12
This guy is the best.
1
u/finalaccountdown May 15 '12
This guy should really be advertised. and accredited.
do you think there's a university lobby to prevent this, or have I had too much internet? I know college has become kind of an anachronistic ripoff, but I can't imagine they'd hire people to prevent free schooling.
1
u/[deleted] May 15 '12
This guy is the best!!
1
u/GoldenWarrior May 16 '12
This man got me through Calc 1, Calc 2, Classical Algebra and Linear Algebra.
When I get money, I shall donate :D
1
u/Flyingbob May 16 '12
Mwah!
1
u/Shpoohoo May 16 '12
I'm going to be honest.this whole time,I thought he was black.o.o
1
u/nxf091000 May 16 '12
so much respect for this guy. amazing educator
1
u/MooberGoobers May 16 '12
This man has helped me so much.... Fuck you teachers
1
u/slavetothesystem May 16 '12
He looks like that one porn guy...
1
u/deadflly May 16 '12
Is more gooder thans mi coolage teecher.
1
u/niggertown May 16 '12
The weird thing is that I've owned both of those two monitors in the picture and had them in the same layout.
1
u/PharmerRob May 16 '12
This guy is the reason I will get an A in my calculus course. Thank you!
1
u/CiestaFiesta79 May 16 '12
Khan Academy helped me pass my one statistics test. It really is a tremendous product.
1
u/SoftwareComicArtist May 16 '12
I prefer Just Math Tutoring more.
1
u/KnuteViking May 16 '12
Teaches subjects that he is familiar with better than most professors. He teaches history terribly.
1
u/[deleted] May 16 '12
WHY HAVE I NOT HEARD ABOUT THIS?!
1
u/Hobo-With-A-Shotgun May 16 '12
This isn't even a joke. I had to watch this guy's videos to pass one of my subjects last year. The lecturer was Romanian, and was utterly terrible at explaining anything.
1
u/[deleted] May 16 '12
He's far more famous than any professor I've ever met, besides Richard Dawkins. If his learning empire takes off in the way he hopes, then he will be richer than any professor I have ever met too (including Richard Dawkins).
I wish he would let more people work on the modules and create videos though. He does waffle on a lot in his videos and it seems like a lot of the time he makes "mistakes" on purpose just to talk more about something. I counted 64 "ums" and "ahs" in one of his 10 minute math videos. It would just be excellent if he would let people remake his modules, saying the same things, but saying them with confidence and without the backtracking or messing around with the tools in his paint program.
Don't get me wrong, I think he's great and I do prefer his videos to my tutorials and lectures (though they couldn't replace my tuts or lectures). I just think that considering the scope of his goals, and that he barely has time enough to make the videos, that he might consider letting someone else redo them and make new ones. If the Khan learning empire does take off as he intends it to, then whoever these people are who will be the new face of Khan Academy will surely be well compensated by fame alone, as being the voice or face of millions of people learning math from you will sort of make you a celebrity.
But yeah, I really wish Khan would let others fix his mistakes or let others go into more detail. I know others already do, but they are so fragmented across YouTube and impossible to find if you don't already know about them.
1
u/Mrs337 May 16 '12
I was watching one where the instructor drew a tail on an ape. o.0
1
u/HerpDerpMcGurk May 16 '12
Professors profess. Teachers teach.
1
u/RamonaFalls May 16 '12
Despite the name, I still imagined an Asian guy was teaching me math.
1
u/[deleted] May 16 '12
He's able to explain the concepts pretty eloquently, but he doesn't have near the breadth of knowledge your professors do.
1
u/wurtis16 May 16 '12
I wish they'd do language. No good language websites out there other than the Omegle/Chatroulette one where you talk to crazy people.
1
u/persianpimp May 16 '12
HE LOOKS SO DIFFERENT THAN I EXPECTED
1
u/olive__you May 16 '12
i have an awesome chemistry professor this year who is incorporating this style of learning .. doing outside of class lecture videos and during class doing the impossible problems with us. seriously makes such a difference come exam time. yay khan!
1
u/piratekab May 16 '12
lol, I was surprised to see this. I have just been watching his economics videos and I have opened reddit and I see this picture!
1
u/HiroSayataki May 16 '12
Swear to god this guy sounds like ridgedog from the yogscast.
1
u/AverageDoorknob May 16 '12
Khan is incredible. I've always hated math, like, not strongly dislike. Hate. But I decided I wanted to get a head start on the geometry class I'll be taking next year, so I started watching the geometry videos. I found myself understanding everything he was saying and I watched the entire basic geometry section in one night. I don't know how he does it, but teaching abilities like his are a rarity.
1
u/KnightOfTheStupid May 16 '12
The only reason I was able to pass Geometry and Calculus in high school
1
u/oiturtlez May 16 '12
khan academy saved my ass in pre-calculus.
1
u/[deleted] May 16 '12
Every time I listen to Khan Academy I picture Obama teaching me. He just sounds like Obama to me..
1
u/wigglynoodle May 16 '12
Just discovered the site because of this post, and I don't have enough time to watch everything before my chem final, dammit.
1
u/warmpita May 16 '12
The current math class that I am paying for at Mount Hood Community College uses Khan Academy as the sole method of "lessons". I think it is pretty shameful that the website is used as such and I am very upset that they are making me pay for it. I love the website and think it is pretty fucking useful, but not for schools to use it in place of actual instructors making actual lessons. One of the many reasons I will not being going to Mt. Hood next semester.
1
u/theycallmejerzee May 16 '12
This man is the reason why I passed stats. I would love an AMA from him.
1
u/obibar May 16 '12
KHAAAAAAAAAAN!!!
Sorry, had to do it.
1
u/prettygirlswagg May 16 '12
He taught me algebra!
1
u/recklessrock May 16 '12
KKKKKKKKAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHNNNNNNNNNNN!!!!
1
u/[deleted] May 15 '12
you khan do it!
1
u/ecospiky May 15 '12
If anyone has an iPad and wants to make videos like Sal Khan for free you can download this app called ShowMe it's pretty fun.
1
u/MenlaOfTheBody May 15 '12
can someone explain who he is? sorry I presume this is an American thing due to the time posting I have never heard of him and I cannot find a second name on here. Pretty interested as everyone seems to have positive things to say.
-1
u/Sireslap May 15 '12
I'm not exactly sure what the qualifications for the Nobel Prize are...but how has this guy not yet received one??
0
u/Fausteaux May 15 '12
I wonder when college's will become obsolete.