Khan Academy Kids

Khan Academy Kids is a fantastic FREE app for young learners. Embedded in the app are opportunities to create, as well as books, educational videos and engaging learning games that meet both math and ELA standards. If used purposefully and tied to content, this would be a great option for stations/centers in your classroom.

We used this app in kindergarten today, and the kids and teachers LOVED it! However, this app is currently set up more for parent than teacher use, and as such doesn't have a great onboarding process for teachers. Currently, in order for your kids to access it on their iPads, teachers need to create a free account, and then sign into the account on each iPad using their email address and password. Teachers will need to add each of their students as a user so that each student has their own profile. Once this is done, students will stay signed in. Each time they use the app, they'll choose their name/profile from the dashboard and then begin to play.

The other piece I find a little confusing is the main menu once students select their profile. There is a large PLAY button in the middle; this takes them to a learning path game (that they don't select). However, if they click on the book in the lefthand corner, it actually opens a large menu of books, learning videos & activities to select from.

At this time, teachers cannot assign specific activities to their students, or view student progress without individually going to each iPad. On each iPad, they would see student progress marked in checkmarks (green, yellow or orange).

Eventually, the developers of this app plan to have a better onboarding process for teachers to enroll students without having to login on each iPad. They also hope to develop a system where teachers can assign specific activities to their students, and view progress from a teacher dashboard. In the meantime, you might use the icons for each of the activities to guide students on what you'd like them to do for that day (i.e. if you'd like them to read during centers, I would highlight the "Books" icon and show them that's what they should select today).