I really like khan academy and I really wish you guys could offer an audio only option while playing on android devices so that I could turn off my screen and save battry and data life. This extremely helpful to those of us who have long car commutes and would like learn as we drive. Please and thank you.
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Did you know that you can get a charging cable for your phone that fits into a jack in your car? Check your owners manual for details as to where this jack is located. You can buy these cables at many stores. Yes, it’s one more thing to either have to carry around with you or leave in your car and expose to possible theft. But it is well worth having.
One thing that a car charger can help you with is, if your power goes out in your home, but your car is gassed up, you can go somewhere in your car and charge your device.
But if you listen to Khan Academy videos while you are driving, please do not give into the temptation to glance at an interesting-sounding segment of a video and become distracted from your driving!
Thank you Regina for your kind suggestion. I do in fact have a phone charger exclusively for my car. However the main issue here is not the temptation of looking at my screen during video playback. It's that it consumes A LOT of data even if you knock the video quality down. Think about the lives khan academy can change if people were able listen and learn in their car. The average commuter spends at least an hour and a half in their car daily while driving. Knowledge is power, and we can equip more people with that power just by offering an audio only playback feature. So please see and find the value in my suggestion. There are not many good alternatives to on the go learning and I think khan academy should get a jump on this to make education accessible to everyone.
Thank you,
Minola.
My Android Samsung smartphone's data plan is unlimited (with Sprint here in the U.S.). Sometimes, I forget that other people don't have unlimited data, or don't have data plans at all, relying totally on wifi. In fact, my iPad data plan is not unlimited (with Verizon here in the U.S.), so I should have been more sensitive on this issue. When I stream YouTube or Google Play in my car, I forget that not everyone has this unlimited capability.
I know that my iPad Khan Academy app has a download video feature. If your Khan Academy platform has this feature, and you can connect to the Internet in a wifi situation, perhaps you can download the videos you hope to listen to on your next car ride. I realize that one other consideration is that you may not have enough space on your device to store them. Maybe they can be deleted at the end of your ride to make room for more the next time.
No Regina, while your suggestion to pre download the khan academy videos on wifi is possible it doesn't make it better. That's like saying "Yeah, the microwave is broken but you have a stove so just use that." It's convenient. It's time that Khan catches up with modern technology. If youtube and tedtalks can offer audio only playback on their platforms why can't Khan academy? I want solutions not alternatives. If you don't want to fix the problem then hire someone that will.
I'm not part of Khan Academy. Those people have the designation of "Support Advocate" or something like that after their names when they post here. I was stepping in as another user of the site making what I thought were helpful suggestions, based on situations in which I have found myself in the past.
I'm going to have to explore YouTube to see how their audio-only playback works. Thanks for alerting me to its existence.
In the meantime, until Khan Academy decides to "catch up with modern technology" to "make it better", perhaps you and anyone else who is reading this can consider my suggestions to be a workaround.
To summarize, my suggestions are:
1. To conserve the battery, use a charging cable in your car.
2. To save on data charges, download videos ahead of time.
3. To save on your device's storage, delete the downloaded videos after you are done listening to them.
Regina, you are really something. Minola, I am with you. I would love an audio only option. For me the concern is neither battery capacity or data usage but rather for multi tasking. I do a lot of hands on work that I would like to just listen to the lessons on my headphones while I work. To accomplish this I have to ever so delicately put my phone in my pocket without touching the screen at all to pause the video because I can’t turn off the screen and continue playback. Please consider this khan.
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