It’s interesting to listen to different viewpoints from teachers on the recent development of high quality, free online courses available to everyone on nearly any topic. Some teachers see these courses as a clearly inferior education due to a lack of social interaction, hands on instruction and personal relationships. Other teachers are wary of alternatives to the classroom and see free online courses as a potential threat to their own livelihood. But there are those who see Khan Academy and similar institutions as potential enrichment activities, ways to integrate supplementary materials into class, or a way to reach and teach multi-leveled classrooms at an appropriate pace. And of course, there are some teachers who have never heard of online instruction-but they are not reading this article.

The method of instructional delivery in certain lecture-based courses found online will not replace what you can do in the classroom any time soon. And personal interactions remain the best way to collaborate on group projects with hands on materials. However there are some really nice interactive STEM tutorials, well-organized and fun that would likely enhance your courses, and give students an opportunity to practice key concepts at home. Carefully chosen online courses can make your teaching more efficient and engaging, and there is generally little need to rewrite lesson plans or worry about deviating from standards that you have worked hard to meet in your curriculum.

Computer science is interwoven into all the STEM disciplines on some level, and teachers who wish to introduce programming have an opportunity with the Khan Academy’s Computer Science. Computer science is all about problem solving, turning the abstract into the concrete, and experimentation. You can easily bring Common Core math into your courses in robotics,physics, art, or anything in between with computer science. Khan Academy makes this easy, and while it is just one of several worthwhile online resources, we suggest this one as a fine addition to your teaching repertoire. Here you will find an excellent introduction to programming Javascript, with a short video tutorial accompanied by an interactive panel that allows students to program on the fly. It consists of four modules: Drawing, Programming, Animation, and User Interaction. Since they are sequential, you can model an entire instructional unit around this series of modules. It should take 2-3 weeks to complete. After completing these modules, your students will have the basic skills they need to strike out further into the world of programming. They can explore other languages such as Python or move deeper into Java, its all there online. As the fall term closes in, consider giving it a try this year. See if going online doesn’t make STEM across the curriculum that much more achievable in your school.