Website Wednesday – Physics Classroom

Doing some research on something the other day, I happened across this website: The Physics Classroom.  It was a great site for an intermediary explanation of basic physics complete with tutorial, exercises, demonstrations and helpful graphs, examples, etc.  So I thought it was worth sharing.

• It had what I call “checking in” questions interspersed in the lectures (which I think are so key because there is nothing that cement a concept like doing a couple of problems in the moment).
• It has a complete Review section that has a series of MP questions and problems related to the different sections
• It has a lot of quick simple animations that help drive concepts home.
• Most of all, it is written largely in “layman’s terms”, which I find to be much more helpful and intuitive that what I will call “textbookease”.

A random screenshot...the Kinetic Energy tutorial

 

“Website Wednesdays”: Good Source for Interactive Biology Tutorials

Doing another post, I came across this useful site that has a large collection of interactive bio animations on a host of topics and thought it was worth sharing.

Interactive Biology Tutorials

1st “Website Wednesday”! – Khan Academy

So one of the things I am hoping to do with this blog is get into a rhythm.  Since I am a creature of habit, I thought what I might do is thematize (new word?) posts on various days to help start a rhythm.  For the first, I thought of…wait for it….Website Wednesdays! (inventive I know).  Website Wednesdays would be about websites that I find on the web that I at least think are cool and interesting, be it about biology, pedagogy (fancy word for teaching), or whatever.

So for the first, I wanted to share this website Khan Academy.  It is a way cool website started by this very interesting guy Sal (a former hedge fund analyst).

His mission is to basically provide free instruction on “everything” to whoever wants it.  It started out with him tutoring his nephew remotely, then the lessons went to YouTube and exploded from there.  He quit his job and now is funded partially by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.  I had come across his lessons (all short 10 min. segments) while reviewing for taking the Praxis tests.  He has got a really great delivery and has a real knack for explaining complex ideas in simple terms.  He is a natural teacher.  Here is a talk he did at TED a few years ago…

He is expanding the idea into a whole learning algorithm of levels, and tests, etc.  He has developed a whole back-end relational database too for tracking progress and the like.  There are even a few schools it seems using the system as a beta-test I guess.

While I am not sold on the tracking, he did mention one idea in his TED talk video that I found interesting.  The idea of flipping the classroom – homework relationship where “homework” was to watch a short content lecture, take notes, pause-rewind, etc. and the next day’s classroom work was implementing that lecture through activities, group work, problems, etc. with the teacher facilitating and helping out 1:1.  I was intrigued that it took the teacher out of a lecturer role and into an almost full-time facilitator role.  At any rate, it was intriguing…

So check out a few of his lessons – they are great and range anywhere from math, chemistry and bio to history and economics.  Cool stuff!  Keep it up Sal!