Using technology in your classroom can be a huge change, so we wanted to share with you some tips
on the easiest way to use Khan Academy in your classroom.
And hopefully, this will help you to get started
rather quickly.
So, the first piece of advice that we have for you
is to use Khan Academy in a way that is completely supplemental.
Instead of being concerned about having a perfect match of a video to a lesson,
or, a perfect exercise that matches a lesson, or a standard you are teaching.
Instead, when you get started, have students use Khan Academy
just starting at the top of the Knowledge Map.
In this way, it requires no prep on your end. Students are immediately feeling
successful in reviewing basic arithmetic and math concepts that are important
for a strong math foundation. And it's giving you time to get familiar with
the coach reports and all of the data that comes through
on the students' end.
The second piece of advice we have for you, is to give the students a routine
amount of time every week, to use Khan Academy. And,
if you are using Khan Academy at school, whether it's in a learning lab,
or stations, or with a mobile card that you check out a couple times a week,
we recommend that the amount of time you give students is at least 30 minutes.
This is because it takes time to turn computers on, to turn them off... and 30 minutes will give
students time to go through those procedures while also having time to actually be on Khan Academy.
If you have a long amount of time -- 45 minutes or an hour -- even better. And we'd also suggest
that you give students 3-5 times a week to work on Khan Academy.
The third piece of advice we have for you, is to set small goals.
Here we're really thinking about the first month of implementation --
-- what should you hope to achieve? One of those small goals that we'd recommend
is to make sure that all of your tech issues are resolved.
In that first month you might realize that you don't have enough bandwidth,
or maybe the connection goes in and out --- all of these technical difficulties can be very
frustrating.
So it's important within the first month or two months to make sure that
those issues are completely resolved.
Along those lines, you wanna make sure that your system and procedures, become efficient and smooth.
This means everything from making sure that kids are not tripping over charging coords, and
that computers are returned to the right places,
and that students are really respecting the technology and using the time effectively.
All of those systems and procedures take time to figure out.
Another small goal that would be good to have in that first month is to start looking at data.
Maybe this means that you choose just one report -- for instance the
progress summary report. To start looking at every day, every week,
to become really familiar with it so that it can start to inform your instruction.
Finally, in this first month we think it's reasonable to open up time in your classroom
for peer-to-peer tutoring.
This will probably start to happen naturally, but we'd just like to
encourage you to allow this to happen in the classroom.
It's a pretty powerful thing to see a student -- not only show
mastery over a skill -- but be able to prove that mastery by teaching it
to another student.
So, these are all good goals to have for the first month or so.
We would say that these should be amongst your top priority for this first month --
-- instead of worrying about integration into the curriculum, or having things work
perfectly -- we would say: to start small and to just start, in whatever way,
makes the most sense for you, and your students.