Missing Videos

In May 2012, Numeric undertook to do a comprehensive mapping of the Khan Academy videos to the South African  CAPS curriculum.  And we discovered some interesting things.  Firstly, we discovered that Sal’s done most of the work for us.  That is to say, Sal’s videos cover over 75% (we estimate closer to 79%) of the material that is expected by the CAPS curriculum.  Secondly, and this really is the sweet spot of Khan Academy, we found over 300 videos that cover the basic material that learners should be covering between grade six and grade nine (these we call BASICS).

So what about the other 21-25% of videos, the ones that are missing?  Well, there are some really important topics here, like Functions and Trigonometry.  And we’re looking for gifted teachers/educators to help us fill the gaps!  If you’d like to help out, please drop us a line on info@numeric.org with your name, qualifications, and interests, and we’ll let you know what you can do to help.

This histogram above illustrates where there is Khan Academy video coverage of the CAPS curriculum.  The green illustrates videos that Sal has already made, and the red illustrates the gaps in the Khan Academy material.

If you are a maths teacher or educator and are interested in helping us to fill these gaps, then please drop us a line on info@numeric.org and we’ll get back to you (usually within 48 hours) about how you can help.

So what’s missing?

The major topics that need addressing are the following:

Trigonometry:  Khan Academy does cover trigonometry.  However, Sal works almost exclusively with radians whereas in South Africa we use degrees.   We need to build a playlist that covers basic trig, reciprocals of trig ratios, trig equations and identities.  

Functions: In South Africa we do a lot of cool stuff with functions.  Shifting parabolas and hyperbolas, reflecting functions about axes, changes parameters in linear and quadratic functions to see how this affects the graphs, and of course trig functions.   We need a nice clean playlist of videos to cover this topic.

Financial Maths:  There is some material on finance on Khan Academy, but it is all premised on the use of e (Euler’s number).  So we need a playlist of videos covering simple interest, compound interest, inflation, and annuities. 

Making Videos

So, what does it take to make videos like the ones you see on Khan Academy or Numeric?  Financially, not as much as you’d expect.  Time- and dedication-wise, well, yes, it takes a bit of work and preparation.

Equipment

Camtasia Recorder (R2000) available from www.techsmith.com

SmoothDraw3 (Free) available from www.smoothdraw.com

Wacom Bamboo Tablet (R800) available from www.kalahari.net

Mac users can use Autodesk Sketchbook Express (free with Wacom tablet) instead of SmoothDraw3.