Energy Points Store

I disagree with you and I also agree with you. I disagree that it would turn into a video game place. READ ALL THREE OF THE COMMENT PAGES YOU SHOULD NOT BE ABLE TO BUY POINTS BUT YOU SHOULD BE ABLE TO HAVE THIS. 

"What do you do with your energy points? If Khan Academy had an Energy Points Store, where learners could buy things like backgrounds and "second chance passes" people would be on Khan Academy more, so they could get rewards for their energy points. All energy points usually do is unlock avatars, but they don't even spend your energy points! Your points just sit there. Points that you could use! These days people love earning rewards! You could bring in more people to Khan Academy if you had an Energy Points Store! The items don't even have to be cheap! Like 50,000 energy points for a second chance pass. This encourages kids to learn more so they can have a reward!!!!!!!!!!!
WE NEED AN ENERGY POINTS STORE AT KHAN ACADEMY!!!!!!!!!"

here in the suggestions by every one, there were really good reasons for both support and against. so it would be really a difficult decision for ka so lets see what will happen further .

YES! We need this feature as it will help in making everyone study as well as compete 

This will get me going fr grinding EP's tbh  

They should make it so you d not get energy point from watching a video because you could do it over and over in 2x speed and get more points if they add this in.

Hi guys,

I'm a homeschool teacher, and I network with private, public and homeschool teachers, as well as parents.  I've been on KA for 7 years, and I recommend it to almost every teacher and parent I know.

None of us want a store. 

We don't want the kids to waste time playing videos for kindergarten if they're in middle and high school.  We don't want them playing random videos on their computers while doing other things on tablets or phones.  We want them to concentrate on the things that are actually worthwhile to them at the time (the other levels are worthwhile, just not at that time).

The skewed points are bad enough.

Look at the ELA courses.  Each video is 850 points.  The videos are exactly the same across the 3 units of each grade level, and then they're also looped for 2 grade levels.  That's 850 points times 6 times watching the same video!  Each of the lessons has a minimum of 2 videos, and some have 5.  Yet the exercises themselves are only worth 100 points.  That's a ridiculous number of EP for videos compared to the actual exercises.

Many teachers tie EP to offline rewards (I do).  There is very little value in virtual rewards, but physical rewards that the kids can earn make a world of difference.  I have a 4th grader who is in the process of earning enough to "buy" a 2 hour 1-1 trip through a wildlife sanctuary with a worker, but if given the opportunity to buy virtual rewards, she doesn't have the ability at this time to forego temptation everyday for the big picture goal.  However, as soon as she spent the points, she would be a basketcase, because she's earned 720k EP since August in pursuit of this goal.  She's incredibly motivated by this specific reward, as are other kids by physical/experiential rewards offered by teachers and parents for achieving a certain mastery level or amount of EP.

I'm fine with earned rewards (avatars, badges, backgrounds, etc.) that don't deplete EP.  Most of my students don't care about those, and I've heard the same from plenty of other adults.  I just really, really hope KA doesn't implement a way to buy anything and use EP, because it would ruin the motivation for so many kids.

they should add a point store and you can only go in it for 5 minutes or so and like 2 times a day (but if a parent as long as we want) i am really aiming for a store. also a cool feature to add if you add a store if we get a black whole badge then we get a special shop with rare stuff. and can you also make a egg feature were you can hatch a egg and it will give you an item or points or maybe a free egg (egg gives you common stuff, yellow egg gets you a higher chance of better stuff.) and i am a lover of space so please make a space egg that has avatars related to space(like maybe a astronaut) so please please add a store to khan

King Sky,

In my experience, students are unimpressed by virtual rewards. It’s too hard to achieve, too easy, there’s no meaning, etc.

Teachers who think that rewards would benefit their students implement rewards in their classroom, rewards that mean something to their students. High school students are typically motivated by grades, not rewards.

My concern is that some younger students will spend points accidentally or without thinking, when they are saving for something offline with their teacher. Especially for younger students, that type of mistake could cause less motivation to do anything on KA and more resistance.

With older students, many teachers show their own badges and EP. The students understand that EP can’t be changed (not going into grinding points!). Having EP that can be changed will change their view.

P Rossell,

I agree that this could have negative effects and it WILL have but, it could change their view in a good way. basically what I am saying is that good effects could outway the bad

P Rossel, I agree with you, even though im a student. When I read your comments at first, I was like "WHAT!!", but now that I think about it, a store is pretty worthless. Somebody might hack accounts for points, you could delete your account by accident (I honestly dont know about this) and lose all your energy points, and like you said "students are unimpressed by virtual rewards" that is kind of not true, but when students think about it, they WOULD be unimpressed because the store would be virtual and it is nothing. Just wasting energy points and time buying stuff.

Omg most of the reason why I want this is because the energy points just sit there and teachers can use this to give second chances and use them to help there students.

King Sky,

You want teachers to have students by second chances with points?! How is that helpful?

How would a virtual store that uses EP be used by teachers to help their students? I’m beyond confused...

To me, a teacher helping a student means the teacher takes time inside or outside of class time to work 1-1 or with a small group. Other than that, we can pair up students who can help each other (works beautifully with one student who learns visually and another who learns orally), suggest a tutor or provide a worthwhile incentive. The only virtual incentive that I’ve ever seen really resonate with kids is learning a-z’s partnership with unicef, so that the kids can use their points to donate meals to children who are hungry. But again, that’s not truly virtual, as the kids understand that they are really giving food to other kids.

Or maybe we could get like a no homework pass, with a high amount of points (in the 5,000s) we could get a "skip lesson" where you could skip a question, lesson or video.

Uhhhh hi,

I am not 100% sure how you all came from talking about an energy points store to making this entire webpage a chatbox. Obviously, Khan Academy never thought about adding an energy points store since it has been over 5 years when this comment was created and I'm 100% sure that this isn't happening. But I am sure that Khan Academy appreciates all of the suggestions and feedback and are open to future suggestion on the website.

Another thing is that the entire reason that Sal(Founder of Khan Academy) even allowed energy points were not so that users can spend them because they are an ASENTIVE, not money that you go to a store and buy candy and ice cream cones with. While I do understand where you all are coming from but remember that this isn't a game, it's an academic learning platform that Sal created so that people can have an opportunity to learn anything, not so that they can grind energy points and go to a store and buy stuff. If you want to do that there are plenty of games that involve that. 

Also thank you P Rossell and others who understand the main purpose of Khan Academy which is so that you can learning anything.

Hi Nishant Bommuluri,

it may appear to be that way but based upon history there have been many changes to Khan Academy because users have founded ways to cheat and abuse energy points so if we were to add a store supposedly where you can buy certain stuff with energy points then users are going to only get energy points so that they can get more stuff. By estimate there are 38% of users on Khan Academy have literally chated so much with energy points that there is certainly no way to cheat. NOTE that (There are millions of users on Khan Academy)

I am not saying that this store will not stop users from learning, I'm am without sugar-coating basically saying that adding a store would be a very unwise decision and will cause many to find ways to get more and more and more EP; there are literally youtube videos on how to CHEAT on Khan Academy. But this topic is now irrelevant, clearly, this discussion is far from reality. Thank you for listening.

Oh, guys don't forget that Khan Academy gives us free-of-charge education that is an absolutely good and worthwhile thing .. So don't burden them just be thankful for that and don't ask for more things...

smh Dody Fouad I been on this webpage for a long long time and as the years go by there's always another person who somehow finds this webpage and request that they add a bloody EP store.

It is confirmed that Khan Academy isn't even considering this.

You guys are missing the point. You don’t BUY the points, you EARN them. What part of this makes you think you would have to pay for points? You get them from using the site, not with money. They are saying spend the ACTUAL points not spend money to get points. You can’t buy gamer score on Xbox, you have to earn it.

As much as this would be great on a different platform, Khan Academy isn't the type of website to have an "Energy Points Store." It sounds great, but think of the downsides too. Kids would feel more inclined to play around and attempt to find a vulnerability in the website for a free answer. However, the biggest problem is that kids will farm energy points out of the easier practices and then use them on the harder ones. Someone who has been using Khan Academy for years with millions of energy points could get free answers for nearly every question they answer. Assignments a teacher gives would be finished in a few seconds with these "passes" they get, regardless of whether they learned anything or not. I would call something like this a bit over the top, however, this doesn't limit the fact that they could try and add some other fun features into the site, like the streak feature they had taken away.

A points store has a good place for KA, but passes wouldn't be a good idea. A place to spend your energy points is great! But KA should make a limit to how many points you can make in a day from videos (e.g. 5000 energy points can be made from just watching per day)!

also based on your age certain grade levels only can earn you points! hacking tho would be a BIG problem, I would suggest adding a 2fa measure for when you log in on a different device! here is how it should be: it sends an email notification (if you signed up with something else like Facebook then it should send you a private Facebook message) and the email contains a 6 digit code (e.g. 127436) and you have to type it in, and there, problem solved!

P.S. Why in the world do people think you are buying energy points? It's not like you're paying 19.99 for 2,000 EP. It's more like 2,000 EP for a free hint (one free hint to help you and it still counts as you did it)

:D (don't mind me just being irrelevant)

I agree

https://support.khanacademy.org/hc/en-us/community/posts/208488838/comments/360010682691

Last I checked, impersonating a developer is against the rules. EP store is a bad idea, simply because the focus is taken off of learning KA content and placed onto a collecting type game of who has the best avatar.

I feel like an Energy Points store would be a bad idea. What I do think would be good is if Khan Academy added more PFP's, added back backgrounds and added more of them, and also continue evolutions. But, with a store, people might not be able to see how many Energy Points you have and how much you are dedicated. Besides, spending Energy Points is pointless (haha pun) because you can just unlock things and keep points. But I respect your opinion.

I don't like this idea. This would ruin the energy point purpose. We can just unlock things by getting more energy points. This idea could ruin Khan Academy's purpose. People could get greedy for energy points and play the videos while they are not there!

Another thing to add. People would try to cheat as much as they can and cheating is bad. Cheating ruin many things.

ENERGY POINTS STORE POR FAVOR(PLEASE)!!!

This is so true ADD ONE NOWW