Using Technology for Learning: Khan Academy

At some point over the last few years, I came across Khan Academy.  I was teaching a night class as an adjunct for a local community college.  My class met once a week and my students were struggling to get help with the concepts between class sessions.  They had access to the learning center, but many were nontraditional students and they lacked the free time to find a tutor when the learning center was open.  I did a few internet searches and located Khan Academy.  It is a powerful resource for learning.
Here is a short video explaining what is on Khan Academy before I talk more about it.
                                                      (from YouTube by the makers of Khan Academy)

When I first saw Khan Academy, I liked that there was such a wide variety of mathematics content on the site.  The problems are worked out in detail and presented in a way that people can understand.  Recently, they have added practice problems after a lot of the videos to check for understanding. 
This tool also contains material for many different content areas.  So, this is a site that can be used throughout a building.  Khan Academy videos have been shown for instruction when the teacher had to be out of the building.  I have recommended them to my summer school students when they needed a few more examples than their online software was providing.  Since these videos can be paused, rewound or fast forwarded, the students can rewatch parts they did not get the first time.  Sometimes, students need extra resources because they might not have understood the content the first time they heard it, but after listening to it be presented again, they have a light bulb moment.  Our goal as educators is to provide the appropriate resources for all of our students to learn.  I have noticed in the comments before that people ask questions when they didn't understand how something was presented in the video and others respond to help them.  So, it gives the effect of a classroom discussion even though they are talking to people around the country or world.  It goes back to those videos about using technology in the classroom when we were talking about collaborating with people from different school districts. 
I would recommend Khan Academy to those who are needing extra instruction to go with lessons already presented or to people who would like to learn about a new topic.  The content is sound so they would not have to worry about being led astray. 

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