I’m stealing this idea from a post by Dan Meyer that I recall from way-back-when.
Actually, I lied. I wouldn’t have loved Khan Academy when I was a student. I would have found his videos boring and pointless. I already know this! I would whine. It’s just the same stuff my teacher already told me.
Yes, the amazing pedagogical content of KA’s videos is exactly the same stuff I remember getting from my math teachers. Lecture, lecture, and more lecture, with maybe a little time at the end of class to start on the homework assignment.
I can’t watch his stuff now either. I can get 2-3 minutes through a KA (or a KA video with commentary) video before I have to turn it off. I just can’t take it.
And I don’t relate to the student who asks, “Change in time? How is that the same as time? Is it the same? Why?” I would never have asked that question when I was in high school physics.
“Duh—obviously they are the same,” 12th-grade Bree would say (though she would have been nicer about how she phrased this—she wasn’t a jerk).
When I was in high school, it never would have occurred to me to question that fact.
Never.
And that is exactly where my education failed me.
“I just can’t take it” made me smile because that’s exactly how I feel about some of the KA videos. My normal answer when people ask why I want to be a teacher is because I want to undo the bad that was done to me. We’re on a mission, Bree!