No Internet, No problem.

Teaching in a correctional facility usually means sacrifices. Say goodbye to field trips, sunshine, Bunsen burners, and oh yeah, internet.

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Now I won't sit here and debate whether residents in correctional facilities should be on the internet. That is a different discussion involving a lot of different people from the commissioner on down.

What I love discussing, and doing, is taking tools from the internet and making them accessible for my students. The one I want to talk about is probably the most widespread in mathematics education right now, Khan Academy.

Khan Academy is wonderful for a number of reasons. Students can target what they need to learn, track progress, and feel good about what they accomplished as they accumulate points. It also provides the ability to watch videos demonstrating skills and concepts along the way.

Looking to differentiate for a group of students in mathematics and not kill yourself doing it? Khan Academy is the answer, well, if you have internet.

Thankfully for us teachers stuck in this predicament, the Foundation for Learning Equality has created an open source offline version, Khan Academy Lite.

Offline version of Khan Academy which runs on most web browsers.

I installed this on my classroom set of Macbook's which were provided by the Maine Learning Technology Initiative.  Since June, students have been creating offline profiles and tracking progress.

What have I noticed? Every student without exception has shown better discipline in working through math concepts. Students know immediately when they are missing a concept, and better yet, they finally want to know why. We can diagnose together what happened, and make the necessary adjustments. Throughout the summer students earned stars and gained confidence as their mastery levels increased. I was equally happy since students are spending more time with concepts, and becoming better at learning. The only downside...the "video guy." Students absolutely hate Khan's narrations. Well maybe this is an upside, I have a better engaged audience to teach!

Now I would never suggest only using this program for math instruction. A comprehensive mathematics education involves a multi-faceted approach, but when it comes to preparing for GED tests, and practicing skills, I fully support implementation of this program and letting students work at their own pace.

KA Lite is pretty simple to install. Use the installation wiki to get a step-by-step breakdown. I used the Mac OS X installation, and later updated my version when the latest version came out in August. Once it is set-up, it will be accessed through a web browser (even though there is no internet, just navigate to the address they provide).

I recommend downloading it onto one computer and installing. Then download all of the available videos for the program. All of this does require internet access to accomplish but it only needs to be done once. Simply move the entire program from your hard drive to an external hard drive and you can quickly put it on other computers(Mac to Mac). You will have the same administrator account for each computer which is nice. This will save some time.