经济学人下载:电子教学-跃然于教室间

But lectures, whether online or in the flesh, play only a limited role in education. Research shows that the human brain accepts new concepts largely through constant recall while interacting socially. This suggests that good teaching must “de-emphasise lecture and emphasise active problem-solving,” says Carl Wieman, a winner of the Nobel prize in physics and an adviser to Barack Obama.

然而，无论是在网上还是在课堂中，这些课程都只能起到有限的教育效果。研究表明，人脑主要是通过在互动中不断回忆来接受新鲜概念。这也就是说高质量的教学必须像Carl Wieman说的那样，要“弱化老师授课，着重鼓励同学主动解决问题”， Carl Wieman是物理学诺贝尔奖得主，也是奥巴马总统的顾问。

To KhanAcademy’s fans, the flip that Mr Khan advocates helps to do just that. As a tool, KhanAcademy individualises teaching and makes it interactive and fun. Maths “is social now,” says Kami Thordarson, as the 10-year-olds in the 5th-grade class she teaches at Santa Rita Elementary School huddle round their laptops to solve arithmetic problems as though they were trading baseball cards or marbles.

对于Khan学院的粉丝们来说，Khan先生所倡导的转变就是要增加互动。Khan学院将教学变得个性化、互动化和娱乐化。数学教学“充满了合作与互动”， Kami Thordarson说道，在她教授的Santa Rita小学五年级的课堂上，一群10岁的小学生挤在电脑旁，他们做数学题的方式就好像在交换宝石或是棒球卡。

The system has its detractors. First, it may not be much use beyond “numerate” subjects such as maths and the sciences; KhanAcademy does have a few history offerings, but they are less convincing than the huge number of maths and science ones. Second, even in these subjects KhanAcademy implicitly reinforces the “sit-and-get” philosophy of teaching, thinks Frank Noschese, a high-school physics teacher in New York. That is, it still “teaches to the test”, without necessarily engaging pupils more deeply. Worse, says Mr Noschese, KhanAcademy’s deliberate “gamification” of learning—all those cute and addictive “meteorite badges”—may have the “disastrous consequence” of making pupils mechanically repeat lower-level exercises to win awards, rather than formulating questions and applying concepts.

这种模式也招致了一些批评。首先，在除了数学和科学这样“屈指可数”的学科之外，这种做法鲜有用武之地。比如比起大量的数学课和科学课来说，Khan学院网站虽然确实有一些历史课程，但数量较少，难以证明这样的方法对这个学科依然奏效。再者，纽约的高中物理老师Frank Noschese认为，即使对数学这样的学科来说，Khan学院暗中强调了“填鸭教育”的教学思维，也就是说，它还是属于“应试教育”，并没有让学生们参与到学科的更深层次。更有甚者，Noschese先生还说，Khan学院有意的使学习“游戏化”，这会产生灾难性的后果，比方说所有那些既有趣又让人上瘾的“彗星徽章”会诱使孩子们为了赢得奖励来不断机械重复低水平的练习。

The teachers now using KhanAcademy counter that it is meant to be merely one, not the only, teaching tool, and that by freeing up class time it also makes possible other projects that do exactly what Mr Noschese promotes. In the fifth-grade class at Santa Rita, the children have made a tile floor (requiring fancy maths to estimate sizes, shapes and numbers). When this correspondent visited, they practised on KhanAcademy but then played SKUNK, a game involving probability.

使用Khan学院网站的教师则表示反对，他们认为这只是其中一种教学手段，而非唯一的选择，而且由此节省下来的课上时间恰恰可以投入到Noschese先生提倡的其他活动中去。利用这段时间，Santa Rita学校五年级的学生们完成了地板制作，这项活动要求同学们发挥想象巧用数学来计算板砖的大小、形状及数量。在记者采访时，孩子们正在做Khan学院的网上练习，随后他们玩起了“臭鼬”游戏，这个游戏包含了概率的原理。