Teacher Tube vs. Khan Academy

Teacher Tube and Khan Academy websites are two very valuable resources for K-12 teachers. Both provide educational content ranging from video tutorials and lessons, to lesson plans for teachers and activity practice. They can both be useful in the classroom and at home, but I will speak specifically about what the advantages and disadvantages to each are. As a future social science teacher, I chose to focus on the topic of "Economics" while browsing both sites in order to compare the way in which they present material overall.

Teacher Tube is reminiscent of the popular website YouTube where original or borrowed videos can be uploaded by any user. Content uploaded to Teacher Tube also includes photos, documents and audio and all must be educational in nature. Browsing the website I was able to find video lessons, lesson plans and documents containing state standards in various subject areas. When I searched for Economics, I was given the option to search under videos, photos, documents or audio. Searching under video, I was presented with a wide range of choices related to economics. There were lesson plans but there were also humorous video clips from popular TV shows that alluded to economic concepts in some way. All in all, I found TeacherTube to be pretty comparable to YouTube in the sense that it hosts content that you have to search through.

Khan Academy is a website focused on providing structured lessons in various academic subjects through video content and activities. There is essentially one set of lessons for each topic that a student advances through. Upon searching for "economics," the result "Introduction to Economics" came up and when I clicked, I found that it was a step-by-step video module introduction of the topic. After watching the video which was hosted on YouTube, the website gave me "points" for completing the video lesson, marked my progress and prompted me to advance to the next topic, "Gross Domestic Product." I was curious to see whether math would be presented in the same way and found that for topics like Algebra, it offered warm-up activities, video lessons and then quizzes, all while marking and giving points for progress through the structured lessons.

Both websites have their advantages and disadvantages. TeacherTube is geared more for the adding of original content to the collection of videos and searching to find specific or supplementary content, whereas Khan Academy is aimed at skill-building through progressive lesson plans often grouped from YouTube. Both sites have an online community/classroom aspect but I focused more on the student learning experience. I would say that if teachers want to find content to present in their classrooms that is short and specific, or even use pop culture to present a lesson that has been curated by other teachers, Teacher Tube would be the website to visit. If, on the other hand, a parent, teacher or student is looking for a way to ensure students fully understand a topic following from Point A to Point Z, Khan Academy offers the structured lessons that they need. If I were a teacher, parent or tutor looking to recommend supplementary material, I would guide students to the Khan Academy website.