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Unfortunately, I have been hearing a lot of negative conversation about Khan Academy recently. It does not seem right to put down someone who has done so much to help others in an extremely proficient way. There are so many great uses for what he (and others) have created. If not at the center of a flipped classroom model, the videos can be used as reference by students who may not have completely understood a topic initially. In this example, Khan becomes the classic textbook example on steroids. My daughter occasionally watched a Khan video this past year to help her with a calculus topic. It must have been useful because she recommended the site to friends. One of the tasks of students (and teachers) in the near future will be to keep track of the virtual teachers who may provide them the best outside help. It would be great to have a site similar to Netflix for learning, with suggestions and recommendations based on your "favorite" virtual teachers. Along with teachers,...

No guarantees With the advancement in authoring systems, the wide array of web content creation tools, and the variety of available Web 2.0 applications online lesson creation is within every teacher’s grasp. But just as the fact that a teacher is given the material and steps into the classroom does not guarantee learning will take place, the ability to create a lesson and post it online does not guarantee success. Several factors play a key role in e-learning and educators must understand how those factors relate to the lesson that is intended. In a meta-analysis that was conducted using over 650 empirical studies which compared distance learning that involved media with traditional learning, the findings concluded that achievement was more strongly correlated to pedagogy than it was to the media itself (Handley et al, 2008). It’s the content AND presentation The ability to post class notes, a presentation, or even an audio or video lecture online has existed for some time. But “t...