khan

I’ve had lots of issues with the Khan Academy, and have collected a number of resources about those concerns at The Best Posts About The Khan Academy.

However, I’m not a math teacher, so I’ve always deferred to those educators whose judgment and experience I respect.

Two years ago, though, I saw a Khan video about history that was just awful (This Khan Academy History Video Is Just Awful). That post received many comments, including ones saying yes, it’s awful, but that Khan realizes that they don’t really know what they’re doing with history and that they’re hiring a bunch of experts to do it right.

I decided to revisit them this week and found, indeed, it appears they dramatically expanded their history videos.

I also found that they appear to continue to be uniformly awful.

They might have hired people who know their history, but they certainly don’t have a clue on how to teach or make an engaging video — they’re just dry lectures using the same image throughout the video with the instructor scribbling on a blackboard.

My God, with the all money they have you’d think they could create some engaging multimedia presentations!

To their credit, the “teacher” speaks slowly and the videos are closed-captioned, but I couldn’t subject my English Language Learners to such a thing.

If you want to access some decent history resources, check out:

The Best Websites For Teaching & Learning About World History

The Best Websites For Teaching & Learning About U.S. History

Check out this sample Khan history video and let me know if you agree or disagree with my critique (you can see all of their history videos here, if you want):


United States enters World War I: