The largest school in the world is run (and taught) by one man. Simple, direct, clear, no frills, no tricks. Just a computer blackboard, YouTube, a great attitude, a gift for straightforward teaching, and a love of sharing. Sal Khan is a new hero. Find out more about the Khan Academy.
Sal Khan at Gel 2010 from Gel Conference on Vimeo.
Roy Waterhouse
on 16 May 10Great video. Just finished an MBA program and now realize that this could have worked well for me. The big miss is the lack of interaction with other students.
Beck
on 16 May 10Jason, great video! (I guess there is a typo in the title of your post)
MI
on 16 May 10Thanks for the heads up, Beck. I fixed the typo.
Mark
on 16 May 10Dude’s got something good there, for sure. But I think it’s a but of a misnomer to call it a “school” though. Perhaps the world’s largest resource for studying. Maybe a next generation and/or perhaps improved “___for Dummies” series.
Mike G
on 16 May 10So what’s his business model? DHH and JF wouldn’t recommend this service to be given away for free…
mohit
on 16 May 10Thanks for the heads up
M. Drew Emmick
on 16 May 10Today I spent a couple hours watching his lectures on current ecomonics. This guy rocks! He’s simple and straightforward. No fancy diagrams, just factual and intimate teaching. He represents the future. Leaders of our educational system (in the US at least) need to take notice. I’m sharing this with my family members. Three of them are public school teachers.
@Mike G The way I see it – Sal Khan is using a non-profit model so he can reach those in poorer nations. Nothing I’ve read on this blog or in “Rework” goes against that approach. But maybe you’re being sarcastic?
thomas
on 16 May 10“Sal received his MBA from Harvard Business School. He also holds a Masters in electrical engineering and computer science, a BS in electrical engineering and computer science, and a BS in mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology”
wow
Henrique Carvalho Alves
on 16 May 10Hero.
Matt Kocaj
on 16 May 10Wow!
I can so relate to this guy. I was the same in school – desperate for a full understanding of concepts when my peers just wanted to ‘scrape through’ on each question. And he’s so right: when you finally “click” on something, even questions you’ve never seen before just make sense! Even derived principals come together before you learn about them. What a legend!
@Mark: “_ for dummies”!? Are you kidding? I think even the most educated people could learn from re-visiting fundamentals in a clearer way. “School” is exactly the word he should be using! I’d bet not even 5 percent of educational institutions school students at such a quality level.
Stefan Seiz
on 16 May 10What an great Person and awesome Project. Imagine if he had a usable website too. It seems to work well nonetheless.
Fenin
on 16 May 10This man deserves a Nobel prize for nobility!
Matt B
on 16 May 10Incredible, what an inspiration
Mark
on 16 May 10@Matt—I’m not meaning it as a literal comparison. What I’m suggesting is similar to what the first commenter stated, in that “school” suggests interactions between faculty to student and even student to student.
Don’t get me wrong, I think what Sal is doing here is absolutely brilliant, innovative and a game changer in education. However, in my opinion, school (especially for children) requires a social element, which this is missing.
I think the more proper way to see this is either as a break-through method of continuing education, study, or even a step toward better teaching in schools. But I don’t consider it a school in and of itself.
Talton Figgins
on 16 May 10I love how the Khan academy is tearing down the old stigmas and challenging the status quo. All too often in our education system we’re not inspired to be passionate about what we are learning and penalized for “not getting it” on the first go-around. By removing these social stigmas this type of education will open the floodgates for the young and old to learn comfortably.
This academy is enabling not just young students but older adults to reinvent themselves through basic education. I think a lot of the public is trapped in the mindset that they can’t go back and learn what they missed out on in high-school or college but these videos say they can!
Eric
on 16 May 10I’ve actually started putting basic videos up on youtube for really simple things that have to do with the outdoors, mostly aimed at young Scouts and those who have never gone camping before: how to roll a sleeping bag, set up a tent, start a fire, cook on said fire, etc. These videos are incredible (not sure how I didn’t find them before) but just knowing how successful my videos have been so far and seeing how successful Sal Khan’s videos are is further proof that there is indeed a hunger for these resources and a need to support people like Sal in their endeavors.
GeeIWonder
on 16 May 10In my opinion, anyone who thinks this is resembles a ‘school’ doesn’t understand what a ‘school’ actually is.
Nicole
on 16 May 10This guy is so amazing – I spent several hours today watching his interviews and some of his videos. What he is doing is so inspiring. It just makes you want to be a better person.
Nicole
on 16 May 10Why are people getting so hung up on the word “school”? What a great example of elevating form over substance.
GeeIWonder
on 17 May 10It’s not the word. It’s the functions that the word describes. And it’s not elevating form over functions, it’s emphasizing the distinction between that group of functions and an equivalent or perhaps alternative (as evidently viewed by some) that has something in common with one of those functions.
You can cook dinner with a hair dryer but that doesn’t mean we should call it a kitchen. Or that it’s a particularly good idea, either.
Elliott
on 17 May 10Khan creates a wealth of supplemental learning material and his material is well-presented. His ‘school’ will reward those motivated to study. His videos make studying easier and opens the doors to knowledge to those not adept at certain study-skill like note-taking, etc.
Is Khan’s school a replacement for the traditional brick n’ mortar? I doubt it. Are the 3D schools delivering $40k per year worth of value? No.
Resources likes Khan’s fortify basic skills a knowledge. There is something to be said for the ‘personal’ transmission that happens outside the facts and figures that a traditional education provides. This can never be mass produced cheaply.
It will fun to see how this plays out.
BS
on 17 May 10If you think of a school as something that delivers an education and you believe an education as the following…
Education in the largest sense is any act or experience that has a formative effect on the mind, character or physical ability of an individual.
... then you have to consider that Sal has created a School.
However, if you think a school has to be a social setting where people gather and learn from a teacher, then this is obviously not a school. This would also beg the question… Are online universities, like the University of Pheonix, considered a school? Most would say so. Then how is it any different than what Sal is doing? Oh, you get a nice piece of paper that says you are smart. Ah, then schooling means getting a degree.
Regardless, I think what Sal has done is fantastic. My 14 year son is studying chemistry right now and has been telling me about what he has learned. Since it has been 20+ years since I cracked a chemistry book, I have no idea what he is talking about. So, I watched a couple of Sal’s chemistry videos and now I can talk to my son with some intelligence about chemistry.
GeeIWonder
on 17 May 10It’s an impressive endeavour. Echoes of Stanley Kaplan.
If you start with a strategy where you train through repetition people to write tests in a certain style, you can get them to be pretty good at it. If you train people solely through watching 5 minute videos what do you suspect they will end up being pretty good at? Where are the next Sals going to come from?
No one should confuse this with ‘an education’, which I take, BS, to be inclusive of all those elements in your definition. Schools do lots of things, one of which is provide part of an education.
Forget the degrees. A well educated population is especially important in America, especially today. Yes there are the usual issues with accreditation etc, but these are not the salient point here.
If you’re going to change the world, it helps to know how the world works. Pitching Sal as a substitute for schools in Africa shows a complete misunderstanding of the context there.
He’s doing something that could obviously be useful to some people. Stanley Kaplan didn’t go around saying he would make you smarter though, or provide anyone anything approximating a substitute for schools or an education. Like Kaplan, Sal has so far focused on a group of people who are already used to the paradigms. Unsurprisingly, some of them probably love an alternative approach at this point to complement what they’ve already been equipped with.
Mark
on 17 May 10@BS – University of Phoenix is an accredited institution. Khan Academy, while probably a better education, isn’t.
BTW: UoP also has physical campuses.
That’s your difference.
M. Drew Emmick
on 17 May 10@Mark – I’ve taken several online courses through two State Universities and Khan’s simplified approach surpasses the instruction I’ve received. The University courses have been weighed down with busy work and bureaucracy instead of good video instruction.
Is there a strong focus on video instruction through the University of Phoenix’s online courses?
Joseph D. Novak
on 17 May 10Sal is doing almost everything I have learned to do in 55 years as an educator. His record speaks for itself. However, I think he can augment what he is doing by adding concept mapping to his program (see http://cmap.ihmc.us) The excellent software is free and there are thousands of examples online.
Best wishes—Joe Novak For more, Google Joseph D. Novak
Stephen
on 17 May 10Dr. Novak, check out http://khanexercises.appspot.com and see how he has conceptually laid out all his videos. He relates the mathematical concepts on a “need to know before” style basis.
Perhaps this is what you meant, or maybe you had something else in mind.
Btw thanks for inventing this stuff as I use it daily in my business!
Ad Khan
on 17 May 10What Sal has made possible, is access to this world class education to the third world, where the teacher is just a notch above the student, and can’t even answer a proper question! Sal’s content is free, and there are people out there making local servers where his entire content library is available to remote areas (without any internet access) and poor kids.
I think he deserves noble prizes in more categories than one.
David Andersen
on 18 May 10Sweetness.
This discussion is closed.