Hello! I am César and, just like the rest of my teammates, I am this week’s Star! I am going to analyse Khan Academy Kids as an educational tool. In order to do so, I am going to use a rubric provided by our teacher and the Common Sense® Privacy Program database for educational tools.
Khan Academy is a popular platform that provides its users with a massive supply of educational resources for free on all topics. Many teenagers and adults use it to expand their knowledge or as a hobby. This tool cannot be used by children due to the high level of the contents in the platform. However, the creators of Khan Academy have also created Khan Academy Kids, a platform similar to Khan Academy that provides content at a more appropriate level for children from ages two to eight. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the popularity of Khan Academy Kids has skyrocketed due to its accessibility.
Firstly, I am going to apply the Rubric for eLearning Tool Evaluation provided by our teacher to Khan Academy Kids.
Khan Academy Kids allows teachers to provide students with tasks and assignments individually and as groups. The user interface is very intuitive and easy to use, and if there are any problems, the website offers an email address for any concerns and problems with the program. Sadly, Khan Academy Kids does not include almost any ways for users to interact between them.
Khan Academy also fails to check all boxes from the W3C WCAG 2.0 Accessibility standards, as it cannot be used with only a keyboard and does not include captions, so it cannot be used by everyone. If these aspects of the program do not cause any difficulties for any student, at least, Khan Academy does not require any special external physical resources (with one exception, explained in the following paragraph), and all of its features are absolutely free of charge.
On the technical side, Khan Academy Kids can only be accessed from a mobile device, so its components cannot be embedded in websites -- In fact, it can only be accessed through its own app. If a student does not have access to a proper mobile device to use Khan Academy Kids, the student can use a program like BlueStacks to emulate a mobile device (this is the only external resource that Khan Academy might require).
Continuing with the mobile design of Khan Academy Kids, it can be accessed from almost any mobile device (the app is available for Android and iOS devices, but not for Windows phones). After testing it on a mobile phone, I can say with confidence that the developers did not take into account the smaller size of mobile phone screens -- The text is very small and uncomfortable to read in some sections of the app. The platform also does not offer an offline mode, requiring permanent connection to the Internet.
For the privacy part, the tool requires users to create an account and, although users maintain ownership of content published in Khan Academy, they also lose control over their personal data introduced in the site. According to the terms of use, Khan Academy can perpetually and irrevocably “host, transfer, display, perform, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, use, make, have made, import, and otherwise exploit” the users’ User Content. Lastly, data in the app can be shared between devices, but cannot be automatically exported and/or imported.
On the social side, Khan academy allows for asynchronous opportunities via tasks and assignments,but does not offer choices for synchronous activities. Other users’ inappropriate submissions can be reported, and Khan Academy tries to create a safe studying space safe for everyone. Khan Academy is not extremely popular although, as we have stated before, it is very intuitive and easy to use.
As stated before, the tool offers very limited communication tools between students and teachers, so it is hard for teachers to keep track of their students’ activities and problems during the tasks. The tool also cannot be customized to individual students and is designed for asynchronous learning, with the chance of being used in a real, physical classroom in a synchronous environment. Moreover, Khan Academy Kids offers teachers a way to keep track of their students’ results and other statistics relating to the tasks they have completed.
To close the Rubric, Khan Academy Kids also struggles to reach a positive evaluation in the last section: Cognitive Presence. Although it makes some tasks easier by breaking them down in smaller terms and helping students understand somewhat complex concepts in a more enjoyable way, it does not go beyond that. It does not provide students with tools to measure their own progress, and does not include enough tools for students to exercise their higher-order thinking skills.
It is sad to discover that Khan Academy Kids is such a restrictive and inaccessible tool compared to others available. Still, it is completely free, so we cannot really complain -- Simply, use it only when the classroom context is suitable.
Now, I will check Khan Academy Kids’ rating in the Common Sense® Privacy Program database. This database applies a test to all resources and websites possible and gives them a rating (“Pass”, “Warning” and “Fail”) depending on how well they respect the users’ privacy.
Even after the below average rating that this platform has got in the rubric, Khan Academy Kids scores a surprisingly high Passing - 71% score. The subsections of the test are as they follow:
· Data collection: 50%
· Data sharing: 75%
· Data security: 67%
· Data rights: 75%
· Data sold: 75%
· Data safety: 0%
· Ads & tracking: 100%
· Parental consent: 83%
· School purpose: 100%
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