[kictanet] Khan Academy: from a B to an A*

[robert yawe]

Hi Listers,

This post is intended to serve to objectives, the salient one which is to brag that my son pasts his Year 11 exams with flying colours 5 A*, 4 A and 2 B and two of those A*s were in Mathematics, he could have made it 11 As but that would have meant sending him to Kumon/boarding school instead we opted to allow him to develop his film making skills, skate boarding skills, basketball hock shots and world of warcraft/Assassins Creed gaming levels.


The second and less salient point, from my point of view, is that this might not have been possible if it was not for the availability of the Khan Academy web site and pocket friendly fixed price Internet access in this case provided by Zuku (thanks Kamande for picking my calls when I needed to vent, the link works brilliantly).

Before putting my son on a strict regiment of Khan Academy he was a strong B performer especially in Pure Mathematics, a few times I was forced to burn the midnight oil polishing my rusty mathematics to be able to assist him with some of the difficulties he would encounter.  All this ended after Khan came to the rescue and I am proud to say that I have been having my recommended 8 hours of sleep, at least 4 days a week.

As my son started appreciating that going to Khan Academy instead of playing world of warcraft with his European based team, at least for an hour every day, was more to his benefit than mine, he would come home after school and go through the lessons on Khan that related to what was covered in class to re-enforce the learning after which he would watch a video or two on the topic to be covered the following day.  This increased his grasp of the subject much faster and also provided him with a private tutor called Salman Khan (MIT (BS, BS, MS), Harvard University (MBA) for revision at a price of roughly Kes. 5,000/- which includes amongst many other items electricity, dedicated internet access and 72 cable TV channels)


My son's use of Khan Academy at no time undermined the teachers in school but instead provided them with a better focused and value adding student, as we raise issues about the cost of electronic devices for class 1 and beyond let us make sure we do not loose the true return.

Regards


PS.  For those who might not know but Salman Khan is also the tutor for Bill Gates children, yes the one of Microsoft fame. 


Robert Yawe
KAY System Technologies Ltd
Phoenix House, 6th Floor
P O Box 55806 Nairobi, 00200
Kenya


Tel: +254722511225, +254202010696
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