Khan Academy

One of the important parts of my tutoring is Mathematics. Currently I'm capable of teaching Maths up to Year 8. There are sections of the Stage 5 curriculum that I can teach as well, but I don't know all of it well enough to teach so I can't advertise myself as a K-10 Maths tutor.

I currently have some Year 8 students who I will lose at the end of the year unless I know the Stage 5 curriculum. So there's a financial and personal motivation to improve my Maths skills. They're all great kids who I love working with. 

Consequently I've decided to do work to improve my Maths, I've picked up a copy of the fine instruction book Understanding Maths Years 9 and 10. I use some of their books with the kids anyway because they're well laid out and place a lot of emphasis upon clear explanations with fully worked examples. You can pick up a copy from http://www.understandingmaths.com/. I'll be using this to assist me in updating my skills in some of these topics.

The big focus of my efforts has been at Khan Academy. This is another site I use with my students and it's a fantastic site. It's completely free and is intended to remain that way. It provides Mathematics instruction from primary school level to the end of high school. It's also providing instruction in a few other subjects with the long term goal being to offer  "A free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere". It's not there yet, but it's a hell of a good site even so.

The site offers activities for you to complete about varying topics, to pass an activity you need to correctly answer 5 questions in a row. Instructional hints and explanatory videos are included to help you understand the topic. To master a topic you need to go through 4 levels, but you can complete Mastery challenges on subsequent days rather than completing another full activity. Additionally, you earn energy points for every activity and those energy points help you earn badges of achievement. You also earn badges for varying other things, such as quick, accurate work, persistence on a difficult topic, consistently working at the site on a daily basis, participating in forums, among numerous other things.

I like the motivational side of it and rather enjoy collecting points - I have 160 000 so far and hope to become a millionaire one day :) The hints work very well at explaining something if I don't get it. I find that the videos are of mixed quality, some of them explain the topic at hand very well, some of them simply haven't explained it fully enough, they've explained one part of the topic but not that part that I didn't understand!

I'm currently visiting the site and using it on a daily basis and I expect that to continue for a while as I'm having fun. It's all very well to have the long term goal of being a better qualified tutor but that isn't going to be enough to motivate me to do the necessary hours unless I'm enjoying the process of improving my skills. And I am.

Part of that is because it's a chance to put right what happened over a quarter of a century ago to my Maths performance in high school. At the end of Year 6 I was in the top 4 of my primary school in Maths, by Year 12 I finished about 55th out of 60 in 2 Unit Maths! And 26th out of 26 in Physics! OK, that was largely because I didn't do any work, apparently you need to work hard at new material in order to learn it - who'd have thunk it?

Nevertheless, pointing out that I wasn't working is the superficial answer - the real question is why wasn't I working? I was certainly suitably dedicated in all my humanities subjects and achieved results that reflected that. I've thought about this many times over the years, as I was a serious student, I may have been a bit lazy with the odd homework assignment, but doing well at school was important to me, being "smart" was the dominant part of my self-concept so it was  uncharacteristic for me to allow some critical subjects to go to pieces, it wasn't because I didn't value Maths in the way I didn't value Industrial Arts or some other subjects that weren't directly academic.

The problem was that I didn't know how to handle failure - I found some parts of high school Maths to be difficult and I didn't understand them, lacking anyone to explain them to me I decided giving up was better than admitting that I wasn't smart - 'smart' people should be able to get it right was my thinking. The idea that giving up on important subjects and failing them outright is the antithesis of smart never occurred to me :). I preferred to fail where I had a convenient excuse in that I didn't try as opposed to doing my best and still failing which was what I felt was happening.

That fear of failure leading to quitting something has turned up in other contexts subsequently so it's something I find I need to be watchful of when I'm trying to improve myself. But it hasn't been a problem so far because I have all these options to find out the information - beyond the resources offered by Khan Academy or my books, there's an ocean of additional resources a mere Google search away. So I feel very confident that if I can't work something out, that I'll be able to given some persistence.

Additionally, there's no pressure to pass exams and do a set amount of work every day, I'm doing it because I'm enjoying the learning. It makes little noises when I get a question right!  Yesterday I was looking at the topics that I will be studying once I finish my current Khan Academy mission and I'm looking forward to them. I never did get the hang of trigonometry at school and I only understood certain parts of calculus and I am excited about the prospect of finally being able to say that I can do it!

The ultra competitive little know it all that I was in high school is still cut about having failed at Maths, it still burns that I couldn't stand the heat in that particular kitchen.There's a little bit of redemption going on every time I log on to Khan Academy.

I don't get that from Bejeweled Blitz.

8 days ago, I said that I would keep the blog in easy range on my desktop and write as often as I felt like, without putting pressure on myself. Well, this is the 1st post, I haven't really felt like writing much.

But I have been very focused upon certain goals during that week. I added Khan Academy to my desktop and I have been doing loads of work on it every day, I signed up for a chess tactics server, chesstempo and I've been doing numerous tactical exercises. So I most definitely have been spending my computer time in a purposeful manner, it's just that it appears that regular blog writing isn't going to be a big part of that purpose.

I haven't been forcing myself to complete chess puzzles or Maths exercises, I've been doing it because I enjoy them. I like the fact that there will be long term gains from doing them, but that's not the main reason I'm doing them, I'm getting enough pleasure out of doing them at the time to keep me interested.

I can't see myself turning this blog into a full blown blog with daily updates. That being the case, it would appear that the primary use for this blog will be a personal blog, a place for family updates and occasional rants and comments that are too long to fit into a Facebook update.

I'd been envisioning using Silken Musings for that, but my greater emotional attachment to the Went Report title means that this would be a better location to use. So it will be used for that.

I'd been thinking of adding a few posts and then doing the work of including some links and advertising the blog as part of my online presence. But I'm just going to add the links over the next few days and start letting people know about the blog. I hope that a few people will stop by and say hello, but I'm not entertaining any great notions of it becoming a genuinely popular blog, because I'm simply not interested in putting in the necessary effort for that to happen.

The next couple of posts will be about chess and Khan Academy as they're my current passions online and are worth mentioning.

After the commercial break

Well, I'm back. For today, anyway.

I wonder if I will ever make this blog a fully functioning blog where I write regularly and develop an audience.

Still, let that become clearer over time. The last 6 months have not been a complete waste despite the absence of writing on my blogs. Silken musings is now back in my hands after being lost and both blogs are on permanent renewal so shouldn't be lost again!

I've made steady progress with my tutoring and now have the beginnings of a functioning business, although there's a lot of work to do yet to make some money. Still at hobby business levels currently.
www.lindsaywent.com for interested parties :)

I recently decided that if I was going to play chess, then I need to play it seriously as I've just been getting little enjoyment from playing quick games poorly. So I've started playing longer chess again and have been enjoying it much more. I've started studying and am enjoying the complexity of the great game once more.

I've been steadily developing my Maths skills at www.khanacademy.org as I seek to become more proficient at Maths. K-10 proficiency is the current goal and I'll re-assess once it's achieved. Obviously the better my Maths, the more students I can get for tutoring. Year 12  proficiency at 3 unit level is the holy grail, but is also a lot of work.

So, the current priorities are promoting my business further and doing a good job for the students I currently have, chess, Maths, Kristy and Cassie.

And maybe, maybe, this blog too.