Happy Friday.

We've now officially made it through

not only the full week, but a full month of all of this.

So please give yourself a huge pat on the back,

for surviving and progressing

in the face of everything going on.

Vladimir, same to you as well.

And a special thank you actually to Vladimir here,

who was one of our All-star Khan Academy Ambassadors.

So he has an AP Bio, excuse me,

AP Chemistry and AP Physics teacher,

based in West Palm Beach, Florida.

Even though he roots for the Miami Dolphins

and I'm a Buffalo Bills fan,

I am still getting Vladimir a mad love today,

because he is taking time away from his own students

to make sure that you have everything

you need to serve yours.

And so as you know, if you've joined previous webinars,

you can ask Vladimir questions at any point,

by typing into the questions feature

of the GoToWebinar Control Panel

and after we sort of talked through

some of the basic stuff of Khan Academy,

Vladimir we'll take your questions live,

you'll actually be able to see on the site

how he works his magic, how he gets the students engaged

with chemistry and physics using Khan Academy.

So just let's start there Vladimir,

tell us a little about your background as an educator

and then how you got started with Khan Academy.

- This is my 21st year of teaching

and I teach mostly AP Chem and AP Physics,

but I also do Honors Chemistry and Honors Physics.

And from time to time I teach mathematics too,

which is kind of nice, I liked that too.

I have been working with Khan Academy

I guess from the beginning.

And the reason why I started doing this is

when I finished my doctorate degree,

my doctorate degree is in Educational Technology

and Instructional Design.

So I kind of saw that this was where the future

was going for us in education, I'll try to be concise.

And so matter of fact, back in 2000, 2001,

when I worked for Palm Beach County schools,

we created a clearing house

of materials free for all science teachers

and we actually began training teachers

in science and mathematics to use

the tools that we have just given at the moment,

which is very good.

Back then it was just kinda the beginning stuff

of using PowerPoint in the classroom

and using some tools in order to enhance,

the teaching of science and mathematics.

It was an easy transition for us in science,

because we had a lot of videos

and a lot of different things that we could do,

that will have a visual representation

of what we do in science.

Because sometimes it's incredibly complex

to show for temple, let's say

for example, a picture of an atom and people question,

"How in the world do you see an atom?

"How do we know that it exists that way?"

But then we can show mathematical models

and we can show 3D pictures,

and for the students to grab a better understanding

of very abstract components of science and mathematics

that we see from time to time.

So a biggest thing for a longer time.

- Very cool and you're getting a little love here

from April, who says Miami Dolphins rule.

Whereas Janet says, she's a New York Giants fans

so she has no judgment.

Even though they tore our hearts apart in Super Bowl 25,

but hey, that's ancient history now.

Okay so that being said, let's cut to the chase here.

I think folks right now are hurting in the sense

that every educator in this country,

every educator in this world frankly,

is being forced to do things

that they were not trained to do in most cases.

When it comes to remote learning, using tools like this.

If you were just getting started today,

if you didn't have the advantage

of a track record with Khan Academy,

what would you do, if you were trying to serve

your science students tomorrow or on Monday

using a tool like Khan Academy?

How would you start?

- The way that I will begin is,

obviously there's a wealth of information

that we can find online.

Especially when we need something

that shows results and that is clearly delineated

and that it is already broken down by subject,

not only by subject but also by topic.

And that it has resources,

that also has a wonderful program with the community

where you can ask questions,

and there are a number of people who are involved

and who can answer any of your questions.

What I would do is, I would begin just showing my students

just a basic understanding and creating a classroom

in Khan Academy where my students can log on.

Because it is a wonderful compliment to any classroom.

I've been using it for a long time

and I use it in my AP courses all the time.

And is just being really a...

It really is a game changer

and the fact that we can deliver

a location at any point and time,

where we can create courses

and we can create even assignment

where the students can go at their own pace.

You can integrate into any of your courses,

because it perfectly aligns with

whatever it is that you're looking for.

To me it's the best resource that I've used.

That's why I got really excited about it

and I wanted to know more

and I wanted to pass it on to other people.

I have trained all of the science department in my school

and the use of Khan Academy

and everyone is already using it to assign

to create courses, just to use that as a compliment

for class, especially for AP courses.

It's just unbelievable, it really is amazing.

- Cool so, I've shared that community resource

with everyone in the Chat.

So if they want to talk to other Khan Academy Ambassadors,

like Latimer, they can do that through that group.

As far as talking to your students,

it sounds like what you're saying is,

you might actually do a Zoom meeting

or Google Hangout meeting with your students now.

And actually just pull this up on your screen and say,

"Hey, here's Khan Academy,

"here's what an exercise looks like."

And that way they can see it,

before you ask them to do anything, is that right?

- Right, well yes I'm sorry, I kinda went a little further.

I'm coming to thinking of myself and the way that I done it.

But you're exactly correct

and that is what I have pulled my teachers through,

the teacher that I've trained to do it.

The first thing you have to do is

you have to go with your students very easy,

maybe two or three days, where they can have

a basic understanding of the navigation

and all the things that are available in Khan Academy.

But if you can set up a Google Hangout meet,

actually I think it's called Google...

They changed the name I believe.

- Yeah, Google meet or whatever, yeah.

- Or assume, for example, if you can use that

and go step by step and showing your students

how to sign up, how to find the resources,

where the assignments are going to be located.

But it's actually pretty intuitive to use.

Once my teachers have used it for two or three times,

they say, "Oh, I'm old."

Some of my students would probably get it in

one or two tries and then it becomes a wonderful resource.

Once they begin using it more and more,

the more proficient you become at it

and the easier it is going to be to integrate

into your own classes.

- Very cool and so, maybe you show them an exercise,

which you can always find just by searching at the very top.

So just like I did, I went up to courses and I said,

"Show me the AP Physics content

or the AP Chemistry content."

You can obviously search for anything in particular,

so if you want to do Thermodynamics,

knock yourself out, right?

- Right, absolutely.

- In terms of sort of getting students

up to speed about the exercises,

'cause in some ways that's the heart of Khan Academy.

How do you recommend that they tackle this?

Do you say, "Hey, just go through it and do it once."

Do you tell them to use hands or watch videos,

how is your students think about this?

- Well that's kind of interesting question,

because I use it in a number of ways.

And one way that I found very effective a couple of,

maybe about a year ago or so is that again,

now it's a little more complicated to do it

because we're in a virtual environment.

But I had tried it already and it actually works

the same way that it will work in the classroom.

And soon you can create small groups.

Again, I haven't used a Google Meet too much,

but I have done it in Zoom

where for example, I assigned eight people

that has already preloaded

into my Google classroom assignments

and my students will work to access that.

And what I do is actually,

I watched the video on Khan Academy first

and I get the exact same question that they have used,

and I used that question on just a Word document.

What I do is I create the actual video link, as a QR code

and once they begin answering the questions,

then we all do a question first in different groups,

and then we all come together again

and we discuss the question

and when I ask them to do after they have actually

completed the question, then we click on the QR code,

either do it on their phones

or they do it straight on their computer.

And then we can see how the question's actually done

and then we talk about it and we compare the answers.

And my students really, really liked that exercise

because again it's a lot of confidence, once they say,

"Oh really, I can do this,

"or oh, this is what I went wrong.

"Maybe I need to go back and review what I did

"to make my corrections."

So it works really, really well in that sense.

- And just to give folks a sense of what's possible

in addition to the videos, if you wanna actually

look at some of those exercises together,

you can come into your classroom.

So let's say you've created a biology classroom

or a chemistry classroom,

you're coming to your assignment section

and your score section, and you could actually look at

those student answers as a class and say,

"Hey, I noticed that half the class

"got the wrong answer here, let's talk about that."

So I bought the mistaken assumptions behind that

and really tackle it as a class

as opposed to you're on your own, good luck.

(cross talking)

That's a fair way of explaining, yeah.

- Yes, absolutely 100% correct.

Not only that, but I also like

the fact that you can go into any of the assignments

that you have given to your courses.