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(on Wikipedia)
www.khanacademy.org
A website for learning stuff, most notably mathematics.
Overall good, but definitely has room for improvement.
- See also KA Lite, an unofficial (though approved) offline clone of this website.
 Zero, because Santa doesn't real.
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 Oh so triggered.
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 I answered the hell out of those questions
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 So yeah.. that's a thing.
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2016-06-30 ∞
Overall this is a good website. However, Khan (the dominant video presenter) doesn't use hotkeys to change his pen colour, giving many moments of him moving off to the side to do so, and, more annoyingly, sometimes talking about it.
I feel that it would be far better to avoid a chalkboard presentation and use actual typing and any old image editor. Being able to draw perfect rectangles, squares, circles, etc would be faster and prettier. Having hotkeys or easily copy-pasteable shapes and lines would be better.
The learning itself is confusing when there is a testing regiment and a separate and unobvious linear lesson. I didn't even know about the linear lessons until using the website for a while.
- Childish use of sounds and badges, making it confusing and annoying.
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After a day it stopped loading problems, only giving me the spinning square.
- 2016-07-02 - It's working again. In the meantime I had restarted my computer and updated my browser. These may be related.
- The top-left "Subjects" dropdown doesn't list everything, and it's not obvious that the topics can be clicked. For example, Science & engineering.
- It was entirely unobvious that there was a step-by-step feature. I only got thrown into the various mastery/practice modes and had to fart around before bumping into the "proper" way to do lessons.
- The dashboard's "resume learning" does not have a complete list of the things I want it to remember. I have to bookmark topics.
- It's 2016-07-04 and I still have no idea what "energy" is for.
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When I view my dashboard/progress
- When switching topics, the numbers animation is fucking stupid. Stop that.
- There is no way for me to go and practice any item mentioned.
- When searching for something, I can select a result from the dropdown box, but then it gives me another page with a loading square.. and never shows results.
- There's no way for me to view my past notifications except by the dropdown box.
- I can't suppress the display of badge awards and only display conversations, or otherwise highlight conversations.
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I cannot view my conversations. Perhaps I might see one in my notifications and visit it there, but I don't know how many replies I might have missed.
- Conversations are buried in one's profile. Definitely out of the way and without a good interface.
- There is no way to know what badges mean what, while doing the actual assignment of badges.
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It's really nice to have immediate keyboard functionality for some things.
- The cursor is immediately placed in the first number field. Enter is then usable to give that as the answer.
- Radio buttons
(_)can be cursored up/down immediately. Enter is then usable to give that as the answer. - After completing a question, enter can be pressed again to continue to the next question.
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It's annoying to not have keyboard functionality for some things.
- Completing a challenge/etc and accepting the next one in the practice list.
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I have a grade done, but with one left at level 2. The subject says "no mastery available". I have no way to master it and get this to 100% complete!
- Perhaps it will get mastered when I get a challenge in a higher grade. I've seen previous grades appear in mastery challenges.
- Khan's voice and style lends itself to speed increases.
Cannot review a completed mission ∞
https://khanacademy.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/211099048
I finished early math:
https://www.khanacademy.org/mission/early-math
I mastered it completely (93/93)
I want to go back and practice some things.
I was able to practice a little bit, but now I cannot.
- Visit https://www.khanacademy.org/mission/early-math
- In the left column, at the "Mission Progress" section, click "Show all skills"
- A list appears underneath
- Hover the mouse over any square
- A popup preview appears
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Click that square
No change is seen.
I am expecting the item to appear on the right-hand side. This used to happen before I mastered this early math topic.
The work-alike is:
- Visit https://www.khanacademy.org/math/k-8-grades/early-math
- Click a topic in that list
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Find an item in the left colum (with a star), click that and complete it there.
Marking a video as read ∞
This is for people who have perfected the topic, but have OCD and want to mark such videos as watched.
When viewing one of the lists, such as a main topic like Addition and subtraction intro, where one of the items is grey.
- Visit the greyed item. For example, Relating addition and subtraction. You can do this in a new tab.
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Wait for the video page to fully load.
- You will see the Khan Academy blue "play" overlay. It is different from the regular YouTube play button.
- Click the play icon
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Skip to almost the end of the video.
- You can click at the bottom of the video to move the timeline.
- Be careful to not click too far to the end!
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Wait for the video to finish playing.
- You can increase the speed to 2x if you wish.
- You will see the Khan Academy blue "next" overlay.
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Wait a few seconds.
- This is important. It gives time for the information to get from your video playing tab to your online account.
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Refresh your main topic.
- You may have to do this a few times, if you were impatient.
- This example was using Addition and subtraction intro
Troubleshooting ∞
- Visit an earlier video in the list
- Click to the video which is still grey in your main list.
- Wait for the Khan Academy play overlay.
- Begin playing the video
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Quickly jump to the middle of the video.
- I've had success with both quickly jumping to the middle or letting it automatically continue where I left off, which is very near the end.
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Wait a moment
- This may have something to do with the video fully downloading.
- Jump to near the end, but not too close to the end!
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Wait for it to finish.
Notes ∞
My experience is with YouTube set to use html5 - I set it using https://www.youtube.com/html5.. however, even when I set it back to the default Flash player, Khan Academy plays webm video for me.
Skipping a video may not (not double-checked!) give you as much energy as you would get by fully playing a video. I've found that hopping around the video before letting it end will give me a little more. It's such a tiny amount of energy (10-100) for many early videos that I wouldn't bother with this, since just practising gives much more. For later videos it seems to be much higher, maybe 700.
Marking a video as read, and dark blue ∞
A video can be glanced-at but not completely watched. It appears in light blue instead of the dark blue that practice items are in.
Intentionally marking them as dark blue seems to be very difficult to do.
The best way seems to be:
- Open an item in three tabs
- Wait for all tabs to load
- For each tab, play the video and change the speed to 2
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Switch between the three tabs. For each:
- Hop the timeline forward
- Hop the timeline 1/2 back from your earlier position
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Keep going.
Even just letting the three videos play without hopping around or changing speed seems to work well enough. I'd bet even more tabs would be useful.
