Design Experiment #3

Khan Academy

When I looked at what this website had to offer I found it extremely lacking for the subject that I teach.  I teach US History (1877-Present), which is a STAAR tested subject in high school.  So I have to be very careful about the content that I show my students because the content needs to reflect the ability to pass the state test.  This is the unfortunate truth of the matter.  So when I first looked into the website I thought it was going to look very promising for turning my classroom into a flipped classroom.  When I finally found Social Studies, particularly history, I was very disappointed. The problem with the site is that it presents all of US History, which does not benefit my students at all.  Since we do not cover any topics prior to 1877.  However, the one saving grace about Khan Academy is the fact that I can choose the subjects that can be shown.  When I went to look at the subject "The Gilded Age", the problem that I found is that it did not talk about any of the TEKS that we had to follow for US History.  Even though I could not use this in a regular classroom, because it would not benefit my students I could use this in my dual credit class.  Since I have to go through all of US History and since I do not have specific TEKS to follow I could use them as a way to preview the content that we will discuss in class or as a review tool for them.  The videos are well laid out and are great for those students that operate under a higher learning standard.  

If I do use these as a preview then the students can watch and read overviews of the information.  The only problem with the overviews, is that they would be great for a online class discussion but they have to see what others have answered so it would not be strictly my class seeing what others have done.  However, since I would be mainly using this for a strictly content/review basis then ultimately what this would allow me to do more of is student-centered work in the classroom.  I would have them collaborate on analyzing primary source materials, and they could also collaborate in project based learning as well.  It would free me up to do alot more in the classroom.  So overall, for regular students Khan Academy social studies doesn't work well, but for higher education it would work for those students.

Online Content with Textbook

I did not find much on MIT Open Courseware that I could use for regular students, since I found something that will work for my dual credit students I wanted to find something for my regular students to use as well.  So I decided to look at the online content of the textbook that we use in my district.  I did find that there were some content that would be useful for students in the classroom, but it lacked in the area of content.  The videos would be good for a flipped classroom setting but none of the videos really discussed the topic, they were mainly hooks to draw a student into the content you would discuss in class.  They were strange off the wall videos and some of them lacked that engaging feeling to keep students attention.  I did find some activities, but many of the activities were something that you would do in class and then as a group discuss them.  So I came to the conclusion that I would do the activities, as a collaborative piece in the classroom.  Then as a whole group use them as a student-led class discussion.