From instructor Brit Cruise:
One of the most exciting aspects of joining the Khan Academy team was the potential to explore new ways of integrating video and software. As a new faculty member, I hope to deliver mini-courses as journeys. These journeys expose a user to a chain of concepts, ultimately leading to a field of study they will be encouraged to explore!
Instead of having the user answer questions after each video, I realized it would be beneficial to have them visually explore key concepts in real-time through exploratory exercises (Brett Victor does this brilliantly). I see this as a vital analysis phase in the experience; the salient aspects are a powerful learning mechanism.
Perhaps it’s because I grew up playing Will Wright’s video games that I was never a fan of right or wrong answers. Instead, the rewards are a result of your own discoveries:
With the help of David Sissitka (one of the many awesome volunteers who kick in @ Khan Academy), I was able to deliver some initial demos within 3 days of conceiving the idea:
Do you think you can mimic a coin flip?
and:
Have you ever seen your frequency fingerprint in real-time?
Check out these first two (of many) explorations that are intended to supplement the journey into cryptography series. This is just the first step in what I hope will be a long and exciting experiment in education:
