Thursday, April 15, 2010

Khan Academy--Good, FREE math help

Lisa C. here--if any of you have not yet seen the Khan academy videos on youtube, you really should go look just to see what is available for when you need it down the road. This is an email I just received from one of the local homeschooling groups, and thought it was good information you all might want to know, even (esp.?) if your kids are just starting out in math.

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Hi everybody,

I just had the thrill of interviewing Sal Khan of http://khanacademy.org . He's really cool and I'll be writing about his summer camp. In the course of our conversation, he pointed out something about his site that I hadn't noticed: he is working on an interactive tool that will let students assess what their proficiency is in all levels of math. It's really interesting and I'm sure he'd be interested in having as many people use it as possible, as he is just developing it. It's at http://khanexercises.appspot.com/ -- Each person using it will need a distinct Google account to use it correctly.

He said something that I am planning to take to heart: He said that if a kid doesn't learn the foundation skills solidly, then he'll have problems later that will seem like, for example, not understanding Trigonometry, but the core of the problem is actually in earlier skills that they didn't learn. My daughter hates, hates, hates to work on foundation skills. I just have to figure out a way to be more creative about it so that she enjoys it…

Suki

Susana (Suki) Wessling
Blog: sukiwessling.parentclickblogs.com
Examiner.com: Santa-Cruz-Parenting and Gifted-Children
Suki's Parenting and Education Facebook Page on Facebook

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