MIT & Khan Academy Team Up to Develop Science Videos for Kids. Includes The Physics of Unicycling

in K-12, MIT, Video - Science | May 3rd, 2012 5 Comments

Of course, the big news this week is that MIT and Har­vard announced that they’re join­ing forces to offer free online cours­es start­ing next fall. We gave you the scoop on that yes­ter­day. Now we give you anoth­er MIT announce­ment that has large­ly flown beneath the radar.

MIT is team­ing up with Khan Acad­e­my (whose founder went to MIT and will deliv­er MIT’s com­mence­ment speech this spring), and togeth­er they will pro­duce “short videos teach­ing basic con­cepts in sci­ence and engi­neer­ing” for K‑12 stu­dents. The videos will be pro­duced by MIT’s ever-so-cre­ative stu­dents them­selves and then be made avail­able through a ded­i­cat­ed MIT web­site and YouTube chan­nel. You can click the links to start watch­ing the first batch of videos, or watch an exam­ple above, The Physics of Uni­cy­cling. H/T @HKPerkinson


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  • Bill Aldrtidge says:
    May 4, 2012 at 5:11 am

    These lessons exem­pli­fy the worst kinds of teach­ing. Just because they are clev­er­ly done on mon­dern tech­no­log­i­cal devices does not make them effec­tice for learn­ing. They vio­late even the most basis ways that peo­ple learn science—experience first, name after­ward. They are expos­i­to­ry, not Socrat­ic, and they sim­ply are worse than tra­di­tion­al teach­ing because of the hype and rep­u­ta­tions of the insti­tu­tions involved. I might add that Both MIT and Har­vard (I have a degree from Har­vard) have a mas­sive ratio of pres­tige to qual­i­ty.

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  • jkop says:
    May 4, 2012 at 8:58 am

    I for one am hap­py for online cours­es like these, they’re much more effec­tive than hav­ing to enroll at some tra­di­tion­al insti­tu­tion where the risk of encoun­ter­ing bad teach­ers or ever­chang­ing trends of ped­a­gogy is rel­a­tive­ly high. Ped­a­gogues ruin teach­ing like fanat­ics ruin reli­gion.

    Reply
  • Barry Friedman says:
    May 6, 2012 at 8:21 pm

    I’ve been uni­cy­cling for 35- years… real­ly enjoyed this video. Final­ly, I know what I’ve been doing! Thanks for mak­ing it (even if it isn’t high­brow enough for Mr. Aldr­tidge — if that’s real­ly how he spells his name :)

    Reply
  • Mrs. Lawsho says:
    May 28, 2012 at 8:32 am

    lol…loving the com­ments! I like that I have a free sup­ple­ment to the teach­ing that I do at home. It won’t take the place of cur­ric­u­la but it could help in expla­na­tions. So…Yay!

    Reply
  • EEZ says:
    December 19, 2013 at 8:10 pm

    That’s why it’s such a par­tic­u­lar­ly delight­ful treat for my sci­ence-lov­ing home­school­er… who him­self uni­cy­cles. :)

    Reply

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