Blog Post #14

Option 2,Action Reaction

For Khan vs. Karplus: Elevator Edition, he describes two Exhibits: A and B. Exhibit A is Sal Khan on elevators, the normal force in an elevator.It describes four scenarios happening in a sequence.The whole film is about four scenarios of speed in an elevator. It gives details about how the normal force changes when an elevator accelerates. Exhibit B consists of two videos and three phases. The whole exhibit is about his students constructing the conceptual and mathematical models themselves.Phase 1 is an exploration phase. Phase two is a phase about invention and bringing a scale up and down.The last phase is an application phase and task overview.The task overview is about a principals concerns about the elevators being unsafe for students and she wants to know if both the starting and stopping accelerations are too high.They are then asked to design an experiment to address her concerns.In his final remarks he says that,"the problem is the way Khan Academy is being promoted. The way the media sees it as “revolutionizing education.” The way people with power and money view education as simply “sit-and-get". He says that despite the fact that they are pseudo-teaching, he did not have a problem with Kahn Academy until just recently. Pseudo-teaching is "something you realize you’re doing after you’ve attempted a lesson which from the outset looks like it should result in student learning, but upon further reflection, you realize that the very lesson itself was flawed and involved minimal learning". The only problem with this is that it seems that very little learning is taking place.