On a somewhat related topic, a while back a late-night show had two "texters" and two Morse-code operators competing head to head sending the same message. The Morse code guys won, hands down (no pun intended).l82start wrote: for an interesting comparison of literary skills, try reading letters to home written during the American revolution and civil war by the average solders in the field, the difference in skill level will shock and put to shame most modern internet posters and even many professional writers...
I am very impressed by the Khan Academy. I have been going through the Algebra section. My high school algebra was taken circa 1967 or so, and there is something soothing and nostalgic working through those old problems...
The format of the Khan Academy modules I've seen is wonderful - spoken words, written numbers, doing long division on screen!, etc. Very simple and very powerful. One advantage that I see with this approach is it is really one-to-one, a very good teacher and a single pupil, and it allows individuals to pace themselves and not have to work at the classroom pace.
The Khan Academy approach reminds me somewhat of the old SRA reading program. It was self-paced program where there were color-coded levels of progressively more difficult reading. In essence, each student was reading at an individual level rather than the collective classroom level.