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Course: Talks and interviews > Unit 1
Lesson 2: Schools using Khan Academy- Khan Academy's Discovery Lab - Summer 2012
- Khan Academy at Eastside College Prep (grades 6-8)
- Khan Academy in Los Altos School District
- Khan Academy at Summit Public Schools
- Khan Academy at KIPP
- Khan Academy at Oakland Unity High School
- Khan Academy at Marlborough School
- The Gates Notes: Administrators in Los Altos
- The Gates Notes: Teachers in Los Altos
- The Gates Notes: Students in Los Altos
- The Gates Notes: Insights into students' progress
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Khan Academy's Discovery Lab - Summer 2012
We ran a hands-on, project-based learning summer program in 2012. Check out the highlights! Created by Karl Wendt.
Want to join the conversation?
- Where is this offered?(33 votes)
- The camps will be located in the San Francisco Bay Area, likely in the Mountain View - Los Altos region according to the summer camp interest list here: http://www.khanacademy.org/about/discovery-lab(22 votes)
- this is cool.!! where is this? i wanna go!(8 votes)
- It is at the Loyola Elementary School in Los Altos, California. I went to it last summer! it was AMAZING!(3 votes)
- How can I get one Khan academy T-shirt like the ones in this video?(8 votes)
- I went to the camp last summer and all of the campers got one. I don't think you can purchase one. Unless you go to the camp or are a intern or volunteer, I don't think they are available.(3 votes)
- How do I take a brain fitness test on Khan Academy?(6 votes)
- is it for seventh graders?(5 votes)
- Khan is for everyone. However, it can be too hard or too easy depending on your knowledge and age. For instance, Khan has 1-digit addition. Something you learn in Kindergarten. But they also have stuff like calculus. Something you would learn in high school or college. But Khan has more than math.To see all the subjects, click "Learn" in the top left corner of the screen to see everything. Or go down to the bottom of the page to see even more info about Khan and Sal Khan's ideas. Hopefully you found this answer helpful.(8 votes)
- I am interested in how children were chosen to attend this camp. Did you randomly pick kids or was there some aptitude measurement used? I love the approach that Sal has described about the mission of Khan Academy but I'd like to see real-world experience that this benefits the "C" students. As an educator I have never taken any credit for my "A" students. They will learn if I put them in a closet. I believe that the real challenge of education is to reach the kids in the middle to help them achieve and learn to love education. Adler said, "all children are educable". I believe that. And I hope experience can validate that.(4 votes)
- are these only in America?(2 votes)
- Yes, unfortunately most things that are officially related to KA are.(2 votes)
- My daughter is very much interested in doing this next summer. How much is the fee, when does registration starts and what are the ages? She got interested in learning from this site prior to starting kindergarten as soon as she knew that her uncle Omar Rizwan was an intern.(3 votes)
- there is no cost to khan academy. Khan academy is a free learning site that contains the subjects of math, science, economics, humanities, and test prep. Khan academy contains videos and exercises to stimulate the brain. To conclude, khan academy also has a badge system, Although that is all I can say, To not ruin the fun...... You should really consider this as a early first step to knowledge!(1 vote)
- Are the Khan Academy discovery lab activities available/accessible on the website for teachers to use in their classrooms?(2 votes)
- There may be things from the lab activities which have been incorporated into the Coach and Teacher Resources. Check out the playlist, etc. at:
https://www.khanacademy.org/coach-res
Also, there are some great ideas on "Partner Content" part of the "Learn" dropdown menu. A lot of hands-on ideas at this one, for example:
https://www.khanacademy.org/partner-content/Exploratorium
Good luck! :-)(1 vote)
- i want to be there in the summer! seems so cool.(2 votes)
Video transcript
>>Minli Virdone: It feels great
to get students engaged. Innately, I believe that
they're already engaged. And what we're trying
to do is just inspire and really make the
topics really interesting so students get excited
about learning more. >>Karl Wendt: We've got robotics. And there's going to be
trading games and stock market-- it's going to be amazing. Today it starts off fun
and it gets even better. >>Minli: Welcome, welcome,
to the Discovery Lab. >>Karl: You guys excited to be here? >>Students: Yeah! >>Karl: All right! >>Minli: Well done, well done. So we're really excited
to have you here. >>Minli: At Khan Academy,
we felt that we needed to have our own version of the summer
camp, because we had so many ideas that we wanted to test out. What we're really driving
towards is individualized and mastery-based learning. One would think that a Khan Academy
Summer Camp could be be just kids sitting in front of their
computers watching videos. There are videos, and videos are
extremely important to help students with self-paced learning. But that goes hand-in-hand with
hands-on projects and activities that really drive the intuition,
and really get people excited. The Discovery Lab will include
robotics, computer science, mathematical geometry,
probability and economics. And even more things
that we'll add in. >>Student: I'll give you a dice. >>Sal Khan: Based on this, do you
think countries should trade with each other? >>Students: Yes. >>Sal: So why should they
trade with each other? >>Student: Well, maybe we
could trade to prevent wars. >>Sal: Well, you brought out
an interesting point that a lot of people do bring up
between trading countries, that it often makes the
countries more stable. If we're reliant on your country for
our food, and you're reliant on us for your oil, we're not likely
to go to war with each other, because we need each other. You know, it's fascinating,
people do PhDs on this. >>Sal: You can't learn
these things with lectures. You have to learn -- pretty much
almost everything you have to learn by doing it, by struggling
with it, I mean, because that's what
the real world is. The real world, you just engage,
you jump into an experience. And your brain starts to draw
connections, your brain starts to struggle with it and says,
"Well, hey, how does this work? Can I see any patterns here? Can I make any reason out of it?" >>Minli: And the other thing
that's really important that's not content-based, is resilience. These topics are complex topics. And students are going to have to
work really hard to be successful, and they just have
to try and try again. The summer camp is one of those
places where we can allow them to try and try again, because we're
not set by a particular date where you have to have
an examination. We'll say, "We'll give
you tools to guide you, but you have to learn
how to figure this out." >>Karl: Right now we're going to
assemble a three-dimensional version of Sierpinski's triangle,
which is a fractal. >>Karl: It's a chance to take a
two-dimensional construct and go into three dimensions and give
the students a chance to sort of experience it in a way
that they probably wouldn't if they were just learning
about it in a textbook. >>Mohan: In school, I've
heard about this stuff, I've read about it,
but I never did it. But today, I've been doing it, and
now I can honestly see what it is. >>Julia: It's more interactive,
and you're doing more stuff. You're not sitting down
with a piece of paper and a textbook doing math problems. It's more fun here. >>Karl: As we get further along,
they'll get a chance to see math in a different way, because it's
more applied and more hands-on. >> I call them quadripoints. >> I'm going to look cool... >>Minli: There's something to be said
about just doing it with your hands, and taking out the conceptual world, even though it doesn't necessarily
translate into an immediate increase in test scores or anything like that. It does translate into some level
of excitement in the student. And that is something that
you don't measure very often, but it's still really important. >>Students: Good! Woo! >>Minli: Discovery Lab, it's a
laboratory not only for the kids, but it's also for us at Khan
Academy, because what's important for us is not to just
run a summer camp. What's important is to
understand what it is that works, and if we find activities that work
really well, we can try it again in a different summer camp
or in a different setting. We believe that we can
package this together simply, so that there's a curated set of
projects that are high quality, highly interactive for teachers to immediately be able
to use in the classroom. >>Sal: This is all
a work in progress. Khan Academy is a work in progress,
the summer camp's a work in progress over the course of this year,
but definitely by next summer. We're going to have summer
camps that go much deeper. Summer camp in writing, summer camp
in filmmaking, summer camp in music. We really want to explore the
experiential side of things -- not just in traditional STEM
subjects -- really across the board. >>Minli: Great! Thank you everybody! Onward!