On the hunt for free educational websites and online resources? There are tons of them out there on the Internet. However, if you’re seeking a free online learning website for all ages and in various subject areas, Khan Academy may be your answer. Have you ever heard of this website?
What is Khan Academy?
If you are a fan of online learning, you must have heard it at least a few times. Khan Academy is an American non-profit educational organization. It was founded in 2006 by Sal Khan, with the mission to create a free universal school for all ages. It hopes to bring personalized learning experiences for everyone everywhere. When visiting this free online learning website, you can learn for free about:
- Science
- Art
- History
- Language
- Economics
- Finances
- Soft skills
- …
The website Khan Academy provides short lessons in the form of YouTube videos. Normally, these videos are created by recording teachers’ actions such as writing or drawing on an electronic blackboard. Besides, videos can also be short films or normal videos including moving pictures and sound:
The website is meant to be used as a supplement to its YouTube videos. It also features tools for parents and teachers such as assigning specific content to students, tracking progress and results. In addition to the website, there are also applications available for both iOS and Android operating systems.
Who Should Create An Account in this Free Online Learning Website?
Whether you’re a student, graduate, parent, or teacher, Khan Academy always has available resources or tools to satisfy you. With each different type of audience, the purpose of using the website may vary.
For Students, Graduates
Khan Academy offers courses in various subject areas covered in school for all grades, from kindergarten to graduate school. This will be a reliable free online learning website for students who want to self-study at home. Especially for maths or science subjects.
Besides, the choices for college or university students are also quite diverse. Students can find many useful courses in different fields such as:
- Information technology: Computer science, graphics, programming, Internet…
- Economics – Finance: Microeconomics, macroeconomics, tax, currency, inflation…
- Language: Reading, vocabulary, grammar, test preparation for SAT certification…
- History: World history, American history…
- Study abroad: For those who intend to study abroad but don’t know how to apply, you can refer to the College Admission course.
- And a lot of courses in the other fields.
For graduates, you can refer to courses for soft skills, including:
- Interviewing skills
- Presentation skills
- Career orientation
- Personal finance
- Growth mindset
- And other life skills
For Teachers
In Khan Academy, there are three kinds of accounts. There are learner, teacher/ coach, and parent accounts. However, the learner mode is always enabled for all users. That means a teacher and a parent can be a learner as well. They can also join courses as a student account. In particular, teacher accounts will be granted permissions as well as special tools to track learners progress and results.
In detail, after landing on the Teacher Dashboard, teachers can:
- Create separate classes for each group of students you teach. (If you use Google Classroom, you can import your classes with all students directly to this free online learning website).
- Add or remove students to/ from the created classes.
- Assign a course or a specific piece of content available in the website to a specific student or an entire class.
- Manage assignments such as creating, copying, editing, deleting them.
- View student’s performance and progress by student or by assignment through some kinds of reports. The Video or Article Competition Report allows teachers to see whether students have watched/ accessed them or not. Meanwhile, the Response Report will reveal the detailed information. It includes date completed, attempts, best score, answers students chose on their first attempt…
Through the report tools, teachers can identify the gaps in students’ understanding. Thanks to that, he can give tailored instructions that meet the needs of every single student.
Can Teachers Upload their Courses?
Unfortunately, teachers only can use the courses available on this free online learning website. They cannot upload courses designed by themselves. In case teachers want to create their own eLearning courses, they can refer to the content of the courses here. Then, build their own eLearning lessons with an eLearning authoring tool such as ActivePresenter 8. Later, teachers can upload courses, enrol students, and track results in ActivePresenter Online. This is a Moodle-based LMS customized by Atomi Systems, Inc. It provides you with 200MB of personal storage space and a maximum of 100MB for each course uploaded.
For Parents
The Covid-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on student’s activities. Many schools are closed and switch to online learning. Therefore, parental supervision may be essential for kids during this time. Khan Academy allows you to create your parent account and your children accounts:
Parents can assist their children in logging into student accounts and starting a course in this free online learning website. After that, you can follow your children’s progress from the Parent Dashboard. All activities of your children such as doing assignments, watching videos, taking quizzes… are recorded. You can not only see the activity names but also their starting time and the duration.
Especially, if your children participate in activities that involve practicing a skill or answering questions, you can see their Mastery level. For example, leveling up or down during the activity. Besides, you can see how many correct answers they got versus the total number.
How Qualitative Are Courses in this Free Online Learning Website?
Khan Academy is an open online learning platform. The site offers completely free courses for everyone. However, this fact doesn’t mean that the courses are not qualitative. 90% of US teachers who have used Khan Academy have found it effective. The website has also received positive feedback from those who attended courses here.
That’s the detailed information about the free online learning website for all ages – Khan Academy. Hopefully this article has given you a good suggestion for an amazing online eLearning resource. If you want to know more about free educational websites and online resources, keep following our website to update the latest articles.