So does anyone use Khan Academy?

[TomSD]

First off, it is a free site and I am not shilling for them or affiliated with them in any way. The YouTube link is a link to a TED talk by their founder with Bill Gates as the host if that tells you anything.

https://www.khanacademy.org/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gM95HHI4gLk

Awesome educational concept and very well executed. I'm using it to take my math skills up a couple notches in order to advance my programming skills (algorithms, concrete math & the like). Was just curious how much it was being used and what people who have used it longer than I have thought of it.

 

[Henry22]

Used it for chemistry and physics while studying for the MCAT. I found it pretty helpful and there are a ton of topics.

 

[TomSD]

I posted this on another forum when I first started on Khan Academy and it holds even more true now...

What is kicking my butt is my reliance on technology. My basic math skills are shot, sad but true. Not like I am retarded and can't do my math but it has been so long since I did things like long hand division or multiplication of large decimals/fractions that it hurts my head and I make stupid mistakes, lol. Starting at ground zero though and letting the system advance me instead of trying to skip ahead. I want to refresh my foundation before getting into heavy stuff that I need to understand advanced programming concepts/theory.

It reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend about phone numbers and names and the like. Back in the day I knew dozens of numbers by heart... friends, family, schools, etc. now I know like mine and my parents (only because it hasn't changed since I was a kid). It is the dumbing down effect technology can have on our daily lives and is amazing once you start really thinking about it. I mean sure it is awesome that you can instantly Google factoids or pull up info on your phone (birthdays, phone numbers, anniversaries, etc) or pull a calculator up to do complex math but there is a price.

It amazes me that so many of my basic skills could've slipped so far behind. I am powering through them and catching up to where I should be but that I have to work at it is kind of disturbing to me. And it isn't like I have a nontechnical job. I am a programmer and deal with math and advanced math concepts on a daily basis but everything is so abstracted by technology that you don't have to really know the details which is what causes skill slippage.

 

[Zuljin]

I know TCC and UTA students who use it.

 

[nukebrewer]

I just took an online college course that had Khan Academy videos as supplemental material and I thought they weren't that good. Maybe it was just they way they presented it, but patrickjmt.com was much better at explaining the concepts behind whatever it was we were learning in any given module.