Editorial: Khan, Devlin & the Simpsons

In Clive Thompson's article about Salman Khann How Khan Academy Is Changing the Rules of Education he writes that some teachers are using his videos to "flip their classroom." That is, they are assigning Khan's videos for homework.

That might work if the students are diligent about doing homework, but my guess is that most will just go through the motions of watching and not paying close attention. Others will skip it altogether and watch the Simpsons (or something similar) instead. Speaking of the Simpsons, I got an idea. What if Kahn teamed up with the people from the Simpsons to produce videos, then homework would be much more interesting! (See Simpsons math and/or science.)

Wizard of Evergreen Terrace (Simpsonmath.com)

An even better idea is what Keith Devlin suggests regarding homework. A teacher would assign a student to reach level 3 (of a math video game or simulation) - as it is in this slide from a presentation he gave at this year's annual NCTM meeting.

Keith is still mum about the details of his "Apollo" project which include this idea.  I'lll post when I know more. In the meantime check out his book's amazon page and "Click to look inside."

Reference:
'Math Guy' Wants Video Games in Class