As regular readers know, I’m not a fan of the Khan Academy (see The Best Posts About The Khan Academy). Several of the posts and articles on that list question the basic pedagogy used in how Khan teaches math, and one teacher has even produced their own alternative video highlighting those problems (and there are, of course, many other problems with how the Khan Academy is being used by “school reform” advocates). Though I have agreed with those critiques, I’m not a math teacher and have been a little reluctant to provide my own analysis.

However, now Khan is beginning to produce videos in other content areas, including history. And they are just plain awful. Here’s an example of one:

It’s a disembodied voice listing “just the facts, ma’am” with minimal, if not horrible, media to support it — lecturing at its worst. With all the much more engaging content that’s online (see my U.S. History Class blog), why in the world would anyone use this kind of video?

Help me out here — am I missing something?