Appropriate Use of Technology

Appropriate Use of Technology

Salman Khan was a hedge fund analyst who was helping his younger cousins with their math lesson. What makes him special is the unique and effective way he used technology. Khan, after giving his cousins a lesson in person, would then record a short Youtube video covering the same material, which was meant to be used as supplemental to the face to face lesson. However, what is remarkable is that Khan discovered that his cousins' preferred his video posts more than the face to face lesson. The idea here is that because everyone learns at a different pace and because we all are differently abled when it comes to attention span, a well crafted lesson that each of us have access to, can start, stop and rewind at will, means we all have our own personal tutor. This subtle but powerful notion is not meant to replace the traditional class room, but it is obvious that technology in this case is more than merely a conduit for supplemental information. With web 2.0 tools available, the Khan Academy has created a virtual learning environment where students are held to high standards of excellence, but are given the opportunity to fail as many times as necessary to achieve that excellence. This is something that only the most charismatic and talented teacher can do for a class of 40 or 50 students.


I found a tutorial covering the concept of indirect measurement using a given scale to measure the size of an object. This video used a simple picture of a helicopter and a small length scale a literal inch represents 7 feet in the image. The teacher walks the student through the thought process of answering various length question as he self talks through the problem. Then the video moves on to measuring the height of the Empire State Building based the relationship between its shadow and the the shadow thrown by a yardstick at the same time of day. I felt like this type of tutorial was very effective, because the visual aspect of online learning brings to bear the full capability of computers and technology with regard to resources that are rich and vibrant (in contrast to a piece of yellow or white chalk), combined with the audio of someone who is doing more than just lecturing, the teacher's in these lessons are also modeling their own thought process and methodology. Very powerful. As I mentioned earlier technology allows the use of more polished, interesting and thus engaging material than a simple chalk/white board can. In addition to this benefit of technology, with the use of streaming videos I can pause for a moment to take in a point the speaker has made without fear of missing out on the material that follows. This serves to reduce my stress level during the lesson. There are, or course, other methods in which this lesson could have been taught, but for the medium - the internet - this was very effective. I can see this lesson being taught by taking a class outside to get a more realistic view of scale and measurements, maybe with taking a model car that has been built in 1:25 scale and comparing it with the original. I honestly can't think of any fundamental way I would have delivered this lesson any differently. I thought the teacher in this case did a great job. Any differences would lie in my own style of delivery, that is my speaking mannerisms, not in the sequence or manner in which he delivered the material versus how I would deliver the material. I thought he was spot on.