Khan Academy Best Practices for Social Studies

Hi everyone, this is Jeremy Schieffen at Khan Academy. Thanks so much for joining us this afternoon or this evening. We're thrilled to have you online with Aaron Hill, an awesome social studies educator, AP expert, and general Khan Academy guru.

Um, as you probably know at this point, Aaron is one of our Khan Academy ambassadors. This means she's used Khan Academy even before this crisis started for years and years, so she knows the product inside and out and she can give you particular expertise about how Khan is used in the social studies setting.

As you probably also recall, if we've joined other webinars, we want to make these sessions as interactive as possible. So if you've got questions for Aaron about anything that pertains to the site or even beyond, you can ask those via the questions feature right in the GoTo webinar control panel.

So, that being said, before we get to the questions, I'd love to get to know you better, Aaron. So tell us a little bit about your own educational journey and what's brought you to this moment.

Yeah, um, my educational journey started with, um, a background in history. My degree is in history and I have a credential in social science. Um, I was fortunate to start teaching 24 years ago, um, specifically in middle school where I taught both English and history. So I was able to find the constant crossovers between the two subjects.

I came to Long Beach 20 years ago. I was very happy to come down to Long Beach and teach both English and social studies. Again, I was very fortunate to teach both AP English Language and AP US History. So I saw AP from different sides, but I also taught general history, general English, and also honors history. So a little bit of background on that.

Currently, I am the AP coordinator at Millikin High School in Long Beach. Very cool and such a perfect background because I know there are lots of questions not just about social studies but about AP. I believe you also have some SAT experience for folks who are curious about what's happening with that right now in this moment.

So yes, again, totally um, lots of great expertise on display here. Folks, if you want to talk social studies, AP, SAT, you've come to the right place. Fortunately, one of the great things, um, that I was— the way I was introduced to Khan Academy was through SAT.

Um, because we were told by our district, uh, superintendent Chris Steinhauser, um, we have this new vehicle that we want teachers to start trying out in their classroom. It's Khan Academy. They have this wonderful relationship with College Board to help prep for the SAT. A bunch of a small group just started running with it and expanded from there and saw all the wonderful potential for students in and out of the classroom.

That's awesome! And so in addition to sort of using Khan Academy's free SAT preparation tool, what other sort of Khan Academy pieces of content or courses do you either use or recommend that teachers in your school use?

Um, well, the teachers at our school at Millikin and throughout Long Beach have utilized Khan Academy for various levels of math, for English, for the different subjects within science. We even have some of our PE teachers using some of the health links within Khan Academy.

We have our computer courses utilizing Khan Academy specifically for some of the coding and AP communication science principles. Um, we have some of our business teachers utilizing some of the finance and marketing connections with Khan Academy. So across the board is really how Millikin and also Long Beach, by extension, is using Khan Academy in the classroom.

Very cool! I can tell that Long Beach Unified is definitely a Khan power user district. So it very much is! And it was not just because it came from the top down where it was introduced to us by, again, superintendent Steinhauser, but once the teachers started trying Khan Academy and seeing what was available to them, they started thinking about the possibilities of how it could enhance not just their lessons but also make some deeper connections for the content with their students.

Very cool! And so now let's sort of fast forward a little bit to the current moment that we find ourselves in. Imagine you're an AP US History teacher or a World History teacher. You're doing great getting ready for the big exam in the springtime and then all of a sudden this happens.

Yeah, if you were totally brand new to Khan Academy and just coming to this webinar for the first time, what kind of initial steps would you recommend that a teacher in those shoes takes to really get started with this platform or potentially use it to serve their students?

The first thing that I would recommend any teacher starting with is exploring what's available on Khan Academy. Just because they might be teaching AP US History doesn't mean that the questions or the content or the documents within the US History content wouldn't be beneficial to them or different aspects under government.

Because again, there's a lot of crossover with regard to the content. Exploring what's available, what are they already doing, and see what can supplement what they are already doing in the classroom. Because one of the great things about Khan Academy, in particular, is it's not replacing the teacher. It's not replacing the content.

It is, again, as I said earlier, enhancing what's already happening. It's allowing students to look at something from a different perspective and already build upon their prior knowledge or connections they have with a particular subject. Whether it is colonialism or the Great Depression or the Gilded Age, there are different aspects within it, whether it's a video, whether it is a document, whether it is multiple-choice questions, so they're looking at the content from different lenses and they're able to see what parts they understand and get that reinforcement of, "Oh, I know exactly what this is saying."

Or look at maybe the idea of social harmonism in the Gilded Age, which is one of the very important areas within U.S. history. What are those connections not just within that time period but also making connections as the content moves forward into the different decades?

Very cool! And so you've talked about this sort of holy trinity, so to speak, of the videos, the articles, the exercises. If a teacher is starting to explore them and says, "Hey, this is pretty good content. This is pretty well aligned with our standards," how would you go about sort of incorporating that into your existing practice or even your new practice of doing remote teaching?

It depends on what the lesson is going to entail. If I am going to be having my students analyze different perspectives, I might look at the different documents that are available within a unit.

I can do a modified maybe gallery walk or a modified jigsaw where I can split my students into smaller groups or even assign individuals certain documents. As we go into a group discussion, whether it is through a webcast or an audio cast, I would have the students discuss what they have but also have the students upload the document to maybe the classroom or to the classroom locker so the other students can see the annotation and the document at the same time.

It becomes a larger learning experience where the student isn't just learning from me; they're also learning from the other students at the same time.

I love that! So really empowering the students to sort of direct their own learning, get their hands dirty with history.

Absolutely, absolutely! Yes! Oh, one of the things about Khan Academy that I've appreciated the most over the years is the fact that it does lend itself so easily to student engagement and interaction. It allows them to see where they are in the moment but also what they can do to move forward and to continue to build their knowledge and understanding of a concept.

Great! So we can definitely go into more depth as far as sort of executing how do you make an assignment or how do you give out an exercise? If folks want, they can definitely let us know through the questions feature. But let's actually move towards the AP context.

So as all the AP teachers out there know, AP is moving to this new online testing format for the spring. Any recommendations about how they can think about preparing for that, whether it involves using Khan Academy or not?

Um, I think that because a lot of the students and teachers might be uncertain about exactly what is going to be happening moving forward, even though the College Board has said, "Here's what we're going to be focusing on for different areas," for example, in AP US History and AP World and AP Euro, they will be giving a document-based question.

Well, Khan Academy has a lot of documents that are embedded into each of those subject areas. Again, whether it's documents themselves or multiple-choice or even aspects of the video, a teacher can look at the different units that the College Board will be covering.

Because it's a short time frame with which they're basing a document-based question, they can really hone in on what their students maybe need a little bit more review on and then find those documents that best fit a particular era.

If I'm looking at world history, I might want to look at documents specifically for civilizations that do a comparison of civilizations or changes over time, which are common themes within history.

Wonderful! And then finally, for the sort of SAT question before we move to questions from the audience, I know that may be the most difficult to solve, given that basically it looks like a very sort of bleak future in the short term as far as testing dates go.

Any advice that you're giving to teachers or to students who are trying to figure out, "Hey, how do I get my students prepared for whatever the future entails?"

Um, every time that I talk to a student about the SAT, it's really connecting them, linking their College Board and their Khan Academy account but not just saying we're linking them together. Actually going into their College Board account to look at their last score report, whether it was from a prior PSAT or the first time they took the SAT.

They can actually look at question by question from the PSAT. Unfortunately, they don't do that for the SAT because it's a more secure document, but for the PSAT, they can look at the actual questions.

But one of the things that I purposely do is you can look at the category of each question, whether it is words in context or the social studies or the science, whatever it happens to be.

Then the student themselves, empowering them, as Khan Academy often does, empowers the student to look at what are their own areas of need. Because even though Khan Academy gives them a look at where their current skill levels are, having the students look at their SAT score report, question by question, looking for patterns, what are their top three areas of need?

Then they go to their Khan Academy SAT areas, whether it's the reading and writing or the math, and now they have what are their three areas of need instead of more past... I mean, you know, the recommended questions are wonderful, and I love those, but giving the students the chance to really choose, looking at what their scores are and knowing inside themselves what they really need to focus on, then they can go through the SAT practice and become really down into the detail of where their areas of need are.

Cool! I love that theme of sort of giving students agency during this tough time because if ever there is a moment when we need them to get involved in their own learning.

Absolutely! And one of the things is, even though students will get our printed score report, it doesn't give as much detail as the online score report. And that's really where the power comes in, of not just the College Board link but also the Khan Academy connection.

Cool! Well, I think this is a perfect moment to switch over some questions from the audience.

Uh, Renee is saying hello from James Berg. Hello, Renee! Thanks for joining us.

Um, let's start with a great question from Joe, and this is like a really juicy question right now, okay? Which is, how would you recommend incorporating project-based learning with what we're talking about here with Khan Academy? Is there some kind of connection you can make, especially given the sort of difficult circumstances we find ourselves in?

I would! And this was a great piece of advice from one of the curriculum leaders in Long Beach, Natterfold, who's also very familiar with Khan Academy and has worked with it often.

Um, looking at projects and this new online learning as a field trip. What is this new exploration that the students are gonna get from this? Because you want to give the students that sense of connectedness but also give them that sense of what is it that we're going to explore? What is that question that we're going to be discovering? What is that essential question? What is that mystery that we're going to be solving?

If you're looking at a project, depending on what it is, um, you can have the students use the documents, use the questions, use the video to create their own lesson. Sometimes, it could be like a one-pager where they have created—what is an overview? In my mind right now, the Gilded Age—what is an aspect of the Gilded Age? Or what is a one-pager about the muckrakers during the Progressive Era?

What are some of the images that would best work? What are some of those quotes? What are some of those dates and details? If I were to use this as a study guide for other students, what would that look like?

And then the teacher can do is they can create a locker within their classrooms of the different student work, and now it becomes a resource not just for them but for the other students.

So, I was thinking more project-based of individual students to help other students prepare for an exam or to enrich their learning. Or because technology is so advanced, um, using maybe a Google Doc or Google Form, Google Sheet, whatever that happens to be, you can have collaboration within a project, whether that's slides or some other vehicle to get the ideas across.

So project-based learning, I don't think, should be shied away from. I think that it—like anything—can't just be thrown at the student, "Good luck! We'll see you in a month!"

There have to be—it would have to be broken into smaller pieces and in some cases, maybe allowing the students to decide what that final product may look like. But here are their parameters that the teacher has set for them and what aspects of Khan Academy they would want to incorporate into it.

So cool! Yeah, I was just imagining an amazing project around, you know, picking an era of American history that's parallel to today—whether it's the Gilded Age or the Spanish Flu of 1918—and pull together the similarities and the dissimilarities.

Yeah, absolutely! The continuities and changes over time, which is absolutely key in social studies.

Yeah, love it! Okay, so let's take a step backwards, actually. Catherine wanted to take you up on that offer of saying, "Okay, I am literally just getting started with Khan Academy. How do I even set up my class? Can I link it to Google Classroom? What are those steps?"

Yeah, um, so one of the things that Khan Academy has done for teachers is there's actually a section when you create your Khan Academy account where you click on resources. It will give you, it's how do teachers get started from something as simple as how do you create an account to how do you set up your class?

What are the courses within that class that you want to create? Do you want to connect it to Google Classroom? What are the parameters for setting an assignment? What are the class or classes that you want to give an assignment to?

So the way the teacher can get started is honestly watching the short videos on how to get started if you are not quite as ready to just go click—what I call click-happy—and just see how things go.

One of the things that Khan Academy also does with many other videos is they also give text instructions, so it's helping a teacher, a teacher however they are comfortable with setting something up to set the classroom that's going to best meet their needs.

So for example, some of the teachers will have multiple courses underneath one course. So as I said before, AP US History might also add U.S. Government, AP Government, and also U.S. History as aspects of their class, just because they might want to do smaller, different assignments other than different courses.

So I appreciate the fact that when you're adding a class and adding courses, that Khan Academy gives you the list of different courses available, and it's not limited to one area in particular. That it does allow for whatever support your students may need within that particular course, or if they need foundational support, um, it's also there for them too.

And thank you for showing that on your screen, inviting me to the Google Classroom, which is so effective not just prior to our current situation but even more so today because that is one of the ways that so many students are able to more easily get their information, and it also houses things in one place.

So you're not having the students go to five different sites to find their one assignment. And once a teacher sets up their classroom and they can give an assignment, they can set the parameters of when that is.

I like the fact that Khan Academy has set up the student homepage to be extremely user-friendly and intuitive so the students don't have to constantly search for what assignment is due.

So, and thank you for bringing up a student page! So we're looking at that. So what are the current assignments that the students need to be thinking about? But also if they are students who may have missed a deadline, they can click on past and go to the past assignments, and I like the fact that it has the status of that assignment in there.

And so for multiple choice or quizzes, things like that, it does give the percentage. Some teachers do allow their students to redo or retake quizzes to reach a certain percentage, which is nice.

And then on the left-hand side of the page, it will have the list of courses and all of their classes. So again, everything's in one place for the student, and it's extremely friendly.

Very cool! And then just to sort of add that final answer to Catherine's question: the whole classroom basically syncs up your existing roster with Khan Academy to save you all the pain and suffering of finding roster students in a remote learning environment, and it makes it so much easier.

And not just for the teacher but also for the student because as hesitant as we are to use technology as teachers, the students—if they're not instantly hooked into what that technology is—they're not going to want to use it. So having those resources ready readily available, seeing what their classes are, knowing what active and past means, immediately helps the students understand how this resource is going to help them.

Very cool! So going back to this idea of doing comparison in the social studies context, we actually had a really interesting question from Daryl. Daryl says, "My class and I are working on the Second Industrial Revolution. There's some way that allows me to attach two different readings or videos or activities so students can compare those two different topics side by side. For example, U.S. Industrial Revolution compared to British Industrial Revolution. If I were to think about things at once, how do I do that?"

Absolutely, absolutely! And so under assignments, this is where you can—this is where it's really great that you can have more than one course within your Khan Academy classroom.

So you can look at the resources in U.S. history or AP U.S. history under industrialization and then look at world history under industrialization and really pick and choose which assignments or which documents within each of those courses. So they can be side by side, and in assignments, you would want to make sure that you kind of have the same date and parameters, um, so that the students know they're connected.

And then, within the Google Classroom or if there's another platform that you use to give assignments, you can be more specific with the instructions on how the students are to connect those specific documents.

Very cool! Yeah, definitely make multiple assignments at once, yes? Students on their way.

Um, let's see here. So another really important question is coming in from B. Richards. B says, "Can teachers be notified when a student completes an assignment?" So that way, because we're all busy trying to scramble and make this all work, how do we keep track of what students are doing?

Yes, oh! Um, over the years, Khan Academy has done a really great job about asking teachers looking at the Khan Academy gradebook and how the gradebook can be formatted to best parallel what their current gradebook already looks like.

So they're looking at assignments and thank you for bringing that up. It tells you what kind of assignment it is. Um, just as the students are seeing these different symbols within their Khan Academy, the teacher is also seeing the same symbols in their gradebook. So there's a similarity which makes it much more user-friendly and memorable, whether it's a document or a video or a multiple choice.

And then they've color-coded it. So green, obviously, you've met the threshold of the minimum standard of percentage. Orange, we're kind of—we may have missed a few ideas. Then red, this is an opportunity that the student may want to revisit.

Or, as a teacher, this is where you would really want a student a chance to create those mini lessons of reinforcement and review, especially if you're noticing in your class book for that particular assignment there may be several students who may have not understood a concept within that in particular.

So as you're looking at the assignment scores, you can clearly see who has done it and who has not. But then if you click into a specific assignment, so if you can click—perfect! I apologize, these are math examples, but that's okay!

That's okay! It's the same idea. So don't be scared because it's math. Um, one of the things is Khan Academy really does a deep dive not just into the overall score for a student or the class, but what it was like for each individual question.

And so it's no longer a guessing game for the teacher or the student on what they understood or what they didn't and what needs to be reviewed or reinforced. So if I have, you know, five students in my class— I mean, say five students because, you know, I'm being completely unrealistic; there probably are, yeah, I only have five students in my world!

And three of them have missed the same question; I can see that instantly in Khan Academy. And that allows me to go back to that question. If I'm doing, say, a webinar and I'm showing my screen in Khan Academy, I can actually use that question and project it on my screen, and the class and I can actually go over that question again.

Not say, "Oh, we've all missed this," but hey, let's take a look at this again. What is the question truly asking? Okay, now let's look at the process of elimination. Why do we think this would be or would not be the answer?

Let's talk about that; let's come to consensus. And then if I wanted to, I can actually use another question or an assignment, and I can have the students do another multiple choice, or I can, you know, project what that answer is and why that's the correct answer.

So again, using the data, it's—I love the instant data aspect of Khan Academy because it is so powerful for students. But having the students look at a question not just one time but multiple times, I think also helps reinforce.

And then it also, if, you know, going back to the original question, what if a student doesn't do an assignment? If you notice the student doesn't do the assignment but it also happens to be a question where an area where a lot of students need extra support, that can then bring the student back into the conversation, not have them feel completely left out or, "I didn't do the assignment; therefore, I can't participate."

So finding ways to use the data as a way to get that interaction with students and reinforcement—I love that!

It really comes back to what you said at the very beginning: Khan Academy is not replacing the teacher; it's a tool to completely complement the teacher's strengths and expertise as you apply it judiciously.

Um, one last question—this is a really important one from Pete. Pete says, "You know, even in this world of trying to get everyone online, make remote learning work overnight basically, right? I still need to keep in mind differentiated education, serving every student where they are. How can we do that in this new digital world using a tool like Khan?"

Um, I'm going to go back to Khan Academy and their relationship with the College Board and SAT where the practice is based specifically on the individual student score report. So that becomes differentiated right there.

So if I'm a teacher and I'm having my students—and by the way, every subject is an SAT subject. It's not just strictly an English or a math; it is every subject is SAT because every subject has reading; every subject has analysis. So you can use it in many different ways.

Going on that, I can have a student—I can have my students go to a specific practice, and it's already set up for where they are in their skill level within the SAT. And so it's not leaving anybody behind; it's not assuming that everybody knows everything or everybody is at the same level because that's unrealistic in any classroom.

Um, when I'm looking at the lessons, one of the things that I can do is I can look at the lessons and go, "Okay, I'm gonna, you know, have the students maybe do a little bit of a practice question beforehand."

And then I can—then I can look at the results, and then I can differentiate a lesson from there, whether it's reinforcement with a video, whether it's reinforcement with a document because we've done some multiple choice, and here's a document that complements it, or I can look at some of the key questions that may have been a little bit more difficult, and then I can break it down a little bit more.

So I am differentiating for students who may have difficulty understanding what a question is asking or having difficulty with a concept within the question. So for so many times, I've taken a multiple-choice question and I've projected it on my screen in my classroom or my whiteboard, actually, because it's a little bit more interactive.

And I will—I will literally project it onto my whiteboard, and we'll start writing all over it, and I will have the students working in groups, and one group will come up and they'll do that.

So, but in, you know, because we have this now, distance learning, having the students do that in their own way and there are some platforms that do allow that, but if we're on a webcam, it's a piece of paper and a pen or pencil, that can be our technology on how to differentiate.

And one of the things that a teacher can do is, by the results that students give, whether it's on the piece of paper or the multiple choice or the document, the teacher can start differentiating a little bit from there and scaffold some of the skills that they see need a little bit more reinforcement throughout that lesson.

Very cool! And so just to sort of illustrate that point here, if you realize that someone is weak in a certain core area—especially with the AP exam approaching—you can always assign that not to the entire class, particularly specifically.

Exactly! Um, okay, I know we're a little bit over time, so I do want to end with one final question, which is just, you know, if folks didn't get their questions answered today or your amazing expertise has opened up new questions they didn't realize they had before, where would you recommend they go for support based on your experience with Khan Academy?

Um, one of the things that I found is looking at that resource page because it gives ideas not just how to set the classroom but different ideas on how to look at Khan Academy for differentiation, for whole-class practice, for looking at remediation, and so forth.

That resource page is really phenomenal because it does empower the teacher, which in turn empowers students. And the big thing with Khan Academy is if you want to jump right into it, great! Start small!

You don't have to do everything on Khan Academy at the same time because that would be overwhelming for you and the students. Pick one thing! Start with one thing, get comfortable with that, and then add one more thing.

Maybe try one thing a week. This week, we're going to try multiple choice; let's see how that goes. Okay, so now we've done our multiple choice. Okay, how can we do some differentiation with that?

Okay, next week, let's take a look at some documents. Next week, let's take a look at how we can incorporate a video and start maybe a Socratic seminar based on that particular document. Start small, get comfortable, and build up from there, and you're gonna find that the more you get comfortable with it, the more you get excited about how to bring in more aspects of Khan Academy that you hadn't even thought of before.

Very cool! It's so parallel to how our students learn, right? They have to have that solid foundation before they can extend it and do even more incredible applications, and the same is true for us as educators.

Absolutely! Cool! Well, Erin, on behalf of the entire audience, I want to thank you so much for sharing your expertise today. Um, I think you've given us so many tools and resources during a very tough time, and for that, we really appreciate all your generosity.

Thank you so much for having me! I really appreciate it. And, um, thank you all for being willing to take on Khan Academy because it is—it is really exciting! And I was fortunate to wear, um, I've seen Khan Academy progress over the years to help students but also teachers, and Khan Academy continues to do that all the time.

They're bringing out new curriculum; they're bringing out new resources for teachers and students, and it's a really—it’s a really exciting time to see what's going to happen next with Khan Academy.

Very cool! Well, thanks everyone for joining us, investing in the session today. Thank you again, Aaron! Wish you all a good evening, a good night! Have a good evening!