[mahdireilly]

A huge problem that the Khan Academy fails to address is the digital divide. Often the children who attend schools who are the most at risk do not have access to computers/internet at home and community centers are often hard to reach both due to their distance and the danger in their traveling there.

I, a CS masters student, and my wife, a PhD EE, who attend University of Texas at Austin run an after school program for middle school kids to teach robotics and programming using lego mindstorms.

The school is one of the poorest in the city, but also has an integrated math/science magnet program within it. Our students are a mix of both the local children and the magnet kids who are bussed in.

At the beginning of class we place logic problems on the board and we were surprised to find that often the kids not in the magnet program solved them correctly often on par with those who were supposed to be the best and brightest in the city.

However when it came to programming and using the computers, the non-magnet students lagged behind the others at a pace of almost half the speed. Though they both were able to mechanically develop and debug their robot equally well.

I meet with the parents throughout the program and the correlation I noticed most prominently with those that suffered with programming was if the kid had easy access to a computer outside of school.