BLEND IT LIKE KHAN: Fascinating experiment going on this summer in Oakland, Calif., to try to measure the effectiveness of "blended" learning, such as delivered by the Khan Academy. Two groups of 25 students are doing 2 hours of algebra a day--one with a traditional teacher, one with Khan Academy and the teacher serving as a coach. There are a gold-plated set of partners at work, including Envision Schools, Google, and the Stanford Design School. But what's really gold so far are the comments of the kids. You can follow the blog on their progress here. Some folks are questioning how much students genuinely learn through the Khan Academy. We suspect that the Oakland crowd has already hit upon the crucial difference between classic classroom instruction and mixing in technology. As the blog reports: "The game changer in Blended Learning is not the technology, it's the individualization that technology allows. The real potential lies in letting students go at different speeds and learn different content." Differentiation can indeed make all the difference.
