Khan Academy Helped My Daughters Through Distance Learning
My kids, like everyone else’s, are doing distance-learning. Basically, it’s the idea of learning away from an actual school and mainly online.
I was worried about my daughters keeping up with the work and being able to stay on schedule since I’m not there with them to monitor their progress.
So, I asked them how they were doing? And they both said the same thing.
THEY LOVE IT.
They can both learn at their own pace, get it finished and move on to something else. They feel that the pace at their school is way to slow especially in classes where some of their classmates halt the class with their behavior.
The mentioned that many of their friends are not doing as well and hate the format.
But why are my kids loving it while others struggling?
We threw that question back and forth and ultimately concluded that it’s probably because I had them do Khan Academy almost 5-6 years ago.
https://www.khanacademy.org/
I came across Khan Academy years ago and fell in love with the concept. The founder argued that we as a society would eventually have to “flip the classroom” to maximize the time that students had with real teachers.
“Flipping the classroom” meant that the children would be assigned online video material to learn the lesson of the day. The platform quizzes them for comprehension. When they get to class, the teacher would then spend her time ensuring that the students understood the lesson. The teacher could focus on the students who didn’t grade well in the quiz. And this would maximize their time in the classroom.
Well, I enrolled them on the website and they each followed their grade level classes and any other material that intrigued them. They loved it and would breeze through the lessons.
I think this experience is now shaping their current experience with distance-learning. In addition, I think that because I work from home and train myself on new material every day, they see it as a normal thing.
I kinda got lucky.
They are both now in high school. There have been times recently where they both said they didn’t understand the teacher’s explanation of a lesson.
My solution? Go find that on Khan Academy and see how they explain there. They came back every time feeling better.
I heard that now many teachers are using Khan now. The progress has been slow. I wish there was a larger adoption.
But if your child is not using Khan Academy, I highly recommend you check them out especially to fill the gaps. The lessons are quick and easy.
Good luck and stay safe.
