Posted by
Jonathan Z. Greene on Saturday, December 13, 2008 5:58:29 AM
When University of Central Florida junior Nicole Nissim got
stumped in trigonometry, she checked out what was showing on
YouTube.
Nissim typically scours the video-sharing
Web site for clips of bands and comedy skits. But this time she wasn't
there to procrastinate on her homework. It turned out YouTube was also
full of math videos. After watching a couple, the psychology major
says, she finally understood trig equations and how to make
graphs.
"I was able to watch them at my own pace and
if I didn't get a concept, I could easily rewind it," Nissim says. "It
was a lot clearer once I watched the video."
YouTube
is perhaps best known for its cavalcade of homemade performances and TV
clips, but many people like Nissim are turning to it for free tutoring
in math, science and other complicated subjects.
Math
videos won't rival the millions of hits garnered by laughing babies,
but a YouTube tutorial on calculus integrals has been watched almost
50,000 times in the past year. Others on angular velocity and harmonic
motion have gotten more than 10,000 views each.
The
videos are appealing for several reasons, says Kim Gregson, an Ithaca
College professor of new media. Students come to the videos when
they're ready to study and fully awake - not always the case for 8 a.m.
calculus classes. And they can watch the videos as many times as they
need until they understand.
Viewer comments reflect
that. On tutorials posted to YouTube by the not-for-profit Khan
Academy, for example, reactions include: "Now why couldn't my calc
instructor explain it that simply?" and "I was just about to leave my
physics course. You saved me." One viewer went as far as to declare to
the man behind the videos: "You are god of
mathematics!!!"
What's creator Salman Khan's trick?
Keeping it simple, he says. He takes a laid-back approach, focuses on a
single concept and keeps the videos to a digestible 10 minutes. He says
he purposely did not create clips featuring himself standing at a
whiteboard. He wanted something more akin to sitting next to someone
and working out a problem on a sheet of paper. He uses the low-tech
Microsoft Paint sketching software, with a black background and
brightly colored lines and equations as he works through his
explanations.
"If you're watching a guy do a problem
(while) thinking out loud, I think people find that more valuable and
not as daunting," says Khan, a California hedge fund manager by day and
math geek by night.
Educated at Harvard and the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Khan developed his tutoring
hobby when a younger cousin was having trouble with sixth-grade math.
As word of his knack for teaching spread among relatives and family
friends, Khan got tired of explaining the same things over and over, so
he created videos and posted them on YouTube. He formed the Khan
Academy, currently a one-man show, with the long-term goal of starting
a school that uses technology to customize learning for
students.
Khan's video clips have developed a
following far beyond that immediate circle of relatives and friends,
and now he gets dozens of e-mails a week from around the world -
including requests for videos on specific topics and help solving
particular problems. He now claims about 600 videos on subjects
spanning math, physics and even the tanking
economy.
Khan says the heartfelt feedback motivates
him to keep churning out the clips, which he works on for about three
hours a night.
University of Miami education
professor Walter Secada, who specializes in how math is taught, praises
Khan's personable style. But while Secada says the Khan videos he
reviewed are accurate, he's concerned about how Khan uses an example to
define a term, rather than defining the term more generally. Secada
says he can envision some students becoming confused when having to
apply a concept to a different example.
"It may seem
like a small point but it lays a foundation for later problems," Secada
says. "That's the strength and the weakness of this. In an eight-minute
video, you can only do so much."
YouTube's potential
for instruction is one reason Internet search leader Google Inc. bought
the video site for $1.76 billion two years ago. Google founders Sergey
Brin and Larry Page realized that certain search requests could be
better fulfilled with how-to videos than with written explanations. But
they didn't have a good way of filling that need until YouTube landed
in their laps. Now Google includes YouTube videos when it delivers
search results.
Not all tutoring videos on YouTube
are created equal, however.
Central Florida sophomore
Jacqueline Boehme found that out quickly when perusing biology clips.
Some had poor video quality and were blurry or too
small.
"There are definitely some that are better
than others, so it's always useful to look at a few," says Boehme, who
has looked up videos that explain processes like protein synthesis.
Boehme says the 3-D representations have helped her conceptualize what
she's learning in class.
Secada would like to see
math faculty incorporate some videos in their teaching, or recommend
clips that have been vetted. He cautions students not to depend solely
on what they find online.
"There's a point at which
kids do need to double-check with their textbook" and professor, Secada
says. "Before you need to quote this in your test, you need to look at
this and check if it's right."
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