I wish I could be in my jammies and/or planning but I have been so busy! It never fails that just when you feel like you can't possible get any busier, you have to throw something else into the mix. My sweetie and I are in the middle of potentially buying a house (fingers crossed!) So, I have been running around like a chicken with its head cut off.
I feel like I've been so M.I.A. lately, and I must apologize! This sweet baby blog feels all types of neglected! What with snow days and 4 day weekends, when's a sister supposed to teach!? (SHH don't let the snow day gods hear me sayin' that!)
I come to you today to share with you a great website that my kids are just eating up this year. We are all so obsessed with it, and I promise I'm not getting paid to talk about it, I just love it that much! The website is Khan Academy and it is like an online math coach, tutor, game and data tracker all in one!
I'm breaking the posts about this website into 2 separate posts. One will be from the student's point of view and the other will be from the teacher's point of view. This particular post will be the student's point of view and I swear I'm not even scratching the surface. There is so much more to this website that I have yet to explore. This is just an intro! ;)
Essentially, the website allows students to work at their own pace to explore any math concept. They have the option to watch videos, complete practice problems, create goals and review past concepts. While doing this, they earn points and badges, much like a video game or app. With the points and badges, they get to do little things in their profile like trade in badges for different badges, or change their avatar to be a silly little creature. The more concepts you master, the more badges and points you receive. So, the students view this as a game. They see it like they're playing a video game or an app and they think it's the coolest thing ever. What they don't realize is that they are only do math practice problems and instead of doing them on paper and pencil, they are doing them on a computer. Also, instead of listening to me teach, the listen to a short video clip on the concepts. HA! (sorry is that sneaky of me?!)
While the students are in it, working and "playing" there is a tremendous amount of data being tracked for me, the coach. I get real-time data on concepts that students are struggling in, how many students still haven't mastered, for example, dividing decimals, which particular problem on which particular standard they got wrong, how many times they needed a "hint" in order to solve the problem and how long it took them to solve 3 problems in long division, for example. It is absolutely incredible and I now have kids working on Khan Academy at home and begging to go on it and all times at school. I'll save going into details about all of these data tracking goodies for the 2nd post.
Let me take you on a quick tour:
-First things first, you need to create an account as the teacher. Once you create an account, then all of your students create accounts and add you on as their "coach".
-I allowed my students to have gmail accounts at school for this, to easily sign up. Otherwise you may have to sign them up as their "parent" then click all of the links in your teacher email to start their accounts.
-Once the students log in, they get this prompt, and they get to navigate around their personal profiles.
If you are unsure of what you are doing, or would like a tour, it will show you around and share all the cool features with the students. Trust me, I was overwhelmed and felt like I needed to learn it before I let my students go at it, but your students will end up teaching you more than you think! They do best when they can just jump in!
Once the students are in their profile, they can click their name to change it and play with their avatar picture:
They can see where to keep track of their personal badges. Students earn badges as they master certain math standards:
Their profile also shows all of their "vitals" or real time data. Both the students and the coach (or teacher) have access to all this amazing data:
There are a few more cool features in the profile, but here is an example of one of my student's profiles:
Now that we have that fun profile business out of the way, let's get down to the nitty gritty! Each student has a "knowledge map" and this knowledge map keeps track of the concepts that students have:
1.) Not yet attempted (shaded gray)
2.) Attempted and mastered/proficient (blue with yellow star)
3.) Finished and mastered, but then spirals it back in after a while for review (orange)
4.) Suggestions on what to work on next/ currently working on (green)
Students can view their knowledge map in a real map-like format (outerspace-ish looking), or as a nice neat list on the left side. You can see on the left that this student is working on a few different things right now and hasn't "finished" or mastered any of them quite yet. I know she is a super high math student though, so I am not worried about this.
When students click on a particular skill to work on, this is what they might see:
You'll notice on the right hand side the "Need help?" section. If a student clicks that they would like a hint or would like to watch a video, it is noted in their data and the coach/teacher has access to this. Not a bad thing, but I may tell some students that they don't necessarily want to click the hint (can you imagine "hint", "hint", "hint" being clicked, just to get an answer). I tell my students to instead try to solve on their own, try to watch a video and use the hint as a last resort. The hint should help them solve it and if it doesn't, then they need to ask for help.
Students don't always have to follow this knowledge map. They can click on any particular standard they want, and can even use the search function to search for a particular concept. I often let my very high students just go off on their own to explore some higher level concepts, but I may tell a small group of students that they must be on for example, multiplication today.
Another neat tool is goal making. A few weeks ago my students took the STAR Math test as well as our algebra pre-assessment from our data binders. I handed them back some pretty great data from those assessments and students went through and highlighted areas they were not proficient in. I then had them use these areas to create KHAN Goals. They can abandon goals, create new goals whenever they would like and keep a list of goals they have mastered. I was surprised to hear all of the students that actually love this feature and asked if they could make their own goals after the ones I required them to make.
As you can see below, students can name their goals whatever they like (lol...).
Like I said, this doesn't scratch the surface! The beauty of this website is that when we go for our allotted computer lab time, I can sit about 5-6 students in one area of our large computer lab for interventions. I can peek over their shoulders and give quick mini-lessons when they need it on a particular concept. Then, these students take that mini-lesson, apply it on the spot and get immediate feedback. All the while, my higher kids are off doing negative number lines and algebra, and are learning concepts that are well above 5th grade, that I don't always have the opportunity to teach them. This website spans from telling time all the way through college level math, it is incredible. Really, it is a win, win and all of my kids have a blast doing it.
I will be back for part 2 to show you all the super organized data this website provides for both the student and the teacher.
You know we all love us some DATA! Stay tuned...
See part 2 of this post HERE!