Khan Academy: A One Man University Entirely On YouTube

Read this article written by Allison Yin from the Chronicle of Higher Education http://chronicle.com/article/College-20-A-Self-Appoint/65793/.  It talks about Salman Khan who quit his job as a financial analyst to make educational YouTube videos.  He calls his collection Khan Academy. 

Kahn's videos have hundreds of thousands of views and students rave that he makes learning the topics really easy  According to the article Khan's methods challenge university's beliefs that classes need to be taught in person, for hour long blocks, by qualified educators.  Mr. Khan has a vision of creating a middle and high school where students watch videos and complete self-paced quizzes to certify that they know the information. 

This article states that Khan's idea could change the way public schools are structured.  Do you agree with this? How do you feel about learning coming entirely from videos?  Post your thoughts.

A video Khan created about the phases of meiosis.

Web Site Design for Faculty and Students.

There are many tools out there to create professional websites, (Dreamweaver and Front Page to name a few).  There are also many tools out there to create classroom homepages and wikis, such as PB Works, and Wikispaces.  So far the only tool that I have found to successfully fit the need of both educators and students is Google Sites http://sites.google.com/.  Google Sites is an easy to use tool that provides a lot of options for creating dynamic websites.  Users can select from predesigned templates, such as classroom sites, portfolio sites, and project collaboration sites; or create their own web site from scratch.  Using this tool is as simple as using Microsoft Office tools.  There is a menu where users can add items (images, links, tables), and format objects such as text, and images.  Google Sites also provides the option of embedding videos from YouTube, and adding different apps such as a calendar, the weather, an MP3 player, a discussion board, etc.  Google Sites also has wiki functionality so that multiple people can edit a site.  Everything you create with Google Sites is automatically uploaded to the web once you save it, so you do not have to know anything about transferring files to a server or hosting a site.  Google hosts everything for you.

Here is an example of how to use Google Sites to create a course site: http://sites.google.com/site/csc170/

Here is a example of an electronic portfolio created with Google Sites: http://sites.helenbarrett.net/portfolio/

As a bonus, Google Sites has many templates to use in your personal life, such as family sites, wedding sites, and sites for groups and organizations.