As many of you probably know, the Khan Academy has been piloting a managed version of ChatGPT they are calling Khanmigo.

You can join the waitlist at the link.  I joined it awhile ago and just received, as I assume many people did, an invitation to try it out for free over the next three weeks.

After that, in order to use it, I will have to pay $20 per month which, of course, I will not do.

Here’s how Ed Source explained their financial plan:

Khan is inviting individuals to join a waiting list and will let in several thousand in the coming weeks. Khan is charging them $20 per month to cover development expenses and OpenAI’s fees. The cost should come down substantially in coming months, and there’ll be no charge for low-income schools, he said.

I only spent a little time on it tonight, but here are some preliminary thoughts:

It’s a nice interface – one that is obviously more teacher-and-student-friendly than either ChatGPT or Bard.

When I asked it to help me write an argument essay, it provided some nice scaffolding prompts – I might characterize it as an interactive graphic organizer with sentence frames on steroids.  I told it I was an English Language Learner, and it simplified things further, and it also provided its support bilingually when asked to do so.

In comparison, ChatGPT will provided some of the same support, but users need to do much more of the “prompting.”  It will also do it bilingually.

Much of the teacher and student support that Khanmigo provides, likes speaking to historical figures and skills practice, is freely available at other sites.  But having a “one-stop” shop is obviously more convenient for teaches and students alike.

They obviously have big plans to expand it much further.

The bottom line for me?

If they offered it to our 100% free lunch school for free,  I’d certainly try a variety of experiments with it in the classroom.  At the same time, in general, I’ve substantially reduced the number of activities that require laptops based on student feedback – a lot of them seem, particularly in my ELL classes, seem burnt out on them.

So, I could see using it a couple of times a week (which is how often I plan to use experiment with ChatGPT next year).  Students also now regularly use sites like Quill that now offer similar (if not better, in my opinion) skills practice to Khanmigo, and I don’t see any reason to switch right now.  Of course,  in my ELL classes, I also have tons of real human peer tutors, so they get extra support from actual people.

So, my Khanmigo trial is now giving me the opportunity to judge it as I said I would last week, and it’s not overwhelmingly positive:

I am very open to hearing other perspectives, and learning that I may be missing a number of opportunities, so feel free to let me know what you think.

I’m adding this info to The Best Posts About The Khan Academy.

ADDENDUM:

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