I've never used a Khan Academy video but that's out of pure negligence on my part, not skepticism.
That said, I have always wondered how effective video is as a teaching tool for programming? I guess when I think about it, it's the same delivery tool as an in-person lecture, but in some ways, more effective since you can pause, rewind, etc.
See the comments on this article about how to do a Fibonacci recursive example (which seems to be well done; the teacher takes it as slow as humanly possible):
http://www.khanacademy.org/video/recursive-fibonacci-example...
The top comments are from people not knowing the difference between the equality and assignment operators:
"Why do I get an error with a single equal, but not with a double? This is what hung me up for a while."
...I don't know the history of this particular user, it's possible he/she skipped a bunch of the basic lessons and decided to learn recursion...but I wonder if there's a better way to somehow make sure people get the basics down, in an online teaching environment.
That said, I have always wondered how effective video is as a teaching tool for programming? I guess when I think about it, it's the same delivery tool as an in-person lecture, but in some ways, more effective since you can pause, rewind, etc.
See the comments on this article about how to do a Fibonacci recursive example (which seems to be well done; the teacher takes it as slow as humanly possible): http://www.khanacademy.org/video/recursive-fibonacci-example...
The top comments are from people not knowing the difference between the equality and assignment operators:
"Why do I get an error with a single equal, but not with a double? This is what hung me up for a while."
...I don't know the history of this particular user, it's possible he/she skipped a bunch of the basic lessons and decided to learn recursion...but I wonder if there's a better way to somehow make sure people get the basics down, in an online teaching environment.