Need Guidance on How to Use Khan Academy Best

Okay, easiest answer first: you can monitor your students' minutes by clicking on the name of the class in your Coach Dashboard, then Progress, then Student (over on the right). Adjust the "Activity From" pull-down to "Today" or "Yesterday" or whenever you want. Their minutes on Khan will be listed by their name, in the third column (and is sortable by clicking on the little clock at the top of the column).

Now, how to use Khan -- that's much trickier.  I help out with teachers in grades 5-8 and I agree that early in the year, you probably want to "set the loose" in the prior year's Mission, rather than the current one (since you've taught them so little thus far).  But it's also a good idea to assign them the skills that you've recently taught them, too.

I'm not a fan of giving Khan practice as an assignment, because I want to see how students are using it.  I want to make sure everyone is doing math on paper next to their laptop, then putting the answer in. I want to make sure students aren't just changing their answer to another guess when they get one wrong (especially on multiple-choice questions), but are instead reading slowly through the hints.  I walk around with the Student Progress page I that I mentioned on my computer, refreshing so I can see when a student is struggling on something (the first column next to their name, under the red box, indicates that). Especially early in the year, I want to snap problems off in the bud.

But maybe things are different in high school -- you might not have the class time to be able to afford to do so, or maybe your school doesn't have 1-to-1 devices.  If so, then I would demonstrate to them that you can see their results -- that you can tell if they've done the work.  And click on a few students' names to show that you can see exactly what problems they did and for how long.  It's a little Big-Brother-ish, but I think they need to realize that practice on Khan is as much a part of their education as their time in your classroom.

Let us know what you decide to do and how your students respond!

Thanks so much Doug. I think I will try the Mission from 8th grade math since it is early in the year and simply ask them to spend a certain amount of time each week to work on Khan Academy. I will demonstrate to them that I can see their time spent on Khan and get my weekly updates via the Khan weekly email.

Thanks so much for the thorough and prompt response.

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Dustin
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