Welcome to KAWI at SEEDS – The Change Catalysts.
Khan Academy Without Internet (KAWI)
For a few months I had been thinking about making the Khan Academy system available to children/schools/institutions offline (without need for Internet or wireless). I have now experimented with the system and have it nominally working in my own lab — after disconnecting all internet.
What is interesting is that the prototype has not only the usual KA videos but also it has a built in system to generate exercises/tests for each individual student and keep track of their progress through the concepts/areas (however, only for the Math courses). A teacher can also serve as a mentor instead of the traditionally (and faulty) conduit for delivery of content only! This work also ties nicely with my earlier experiments with “Computing for the Masses (CfM)”, because this system can work on an individual computer or locally connected computers (the latter being what I had created as CfM).
It also has a bunch of college/+2-level materials including specialized training for IIT-Entrace exams, etc..
What is interesting is that the prototype has not only the usual KA videos but also it has a built in system to generate exercises/tests for each individual student and keep track of their progress through the concepts/areas (however, only for the Math courses). A teacher can also serve as a mentor instead of the traditionally (and faulty) conduit for delivery of content only! This work also ties nicely with my earlier experiments with “Computing for the Masses (CfM)”, because this system can work on an individual computer or locally connected computers (the latter being what I had created as CfM).
It also has a bunch of college/+2-level materials including specialized training for IIT-Entrace exams, etc..
We have just started several small experiments in Bhubaneswar, Brahmapur, Cuttack, and Rourkela in Odisha, Coimbatore in Tamilanadu, and one for Sri Lanka. We hope to learn some.
Some additional remarks:
1) The current videos and instruction pages are all in English. How and what to translate or voice-over in Odia vernacular. I met with a couple young chaps near Brahmapur who have been developing software in Odia and some for Odia-medium schools. Would like to watch and mentor..
2) what and how to augment in areas/topics that the base set does not include. Need people with Google appengine/python skills.
3) how to deploy and scale
4) how to get Khan Academy to help out and collaborate.
Environment Setup: Make sure Python 2.5 or 2.7 version is loaded on your machine. internet Explorer or Firefox works well as the browser which is your interface to this education system. I have included Python and Firefox programs in case you need to install on your computer. Install vlc-1.1.5-win32 in case you need the VLC viewer for the videos.
How to run: Double-Click on the file “run2.bat” in the top folder which will start up the server and load the local version of the Khan Academy homepage in your browser in a minute. If the display takes too long, just refresh the browser. You can also launch your favorite browser and set the URL to localhost:8080
Add a coach for your students: I have created a coach in the system with ID coach@seedsnet.org . Please ask each pupil using this system to “add a coach” and enter coach@seedsnet.org as their coach. This way the coach can login and see the progress of the pupils.
Using on multiple locally networked computers: If you have a locally networked group of computers, this system can be run on one powerful computer and all the other computers can access this system by pointing their browser to “<the IP or name of the first computer>:8080”. For example, if the first computer where you ran the system by clicking on run2.bat file has IP address on your local network as 192.168.0.1, then on the other computers in your network need to use http:192.168.0.1:8080/ in their browser to see the system and interact with it. Thus multiple kids can learn on the system in a school with multiple locally networked computers (with or without internet).
Note that you do not need to have internet connection for nearly all of the features and content of this Khan-Academy system.
Brief Description of how to interact with the browser interface:
The above is a snip of the main menu when the KIWA browser opens. The ‘Watch” link will take you to the categorized self-learn videos.
To practice extensive math exercises and chart your progress, click on ‘Practice” — but a pupil or coach should login first before the “Practice” feature can be used.
A pupil can add a “coach” for him/her, by clicking the “Coach” button above and following the instructions.
Note1: If you have internet access, then during math practice/exercise you will get a nice “knowledge map” on the right side of your browser window. That will show your “progress of knowledge” graphically and you can play with that interface to understand it more.
-Darshan Patra