

Khan Academy Competitor? Alison.com founder on the future of Online Ed - daviday
http://www.wiredacademic.com/2011/09/khan-academy-competitor-mike-feerick-of-alison-com-talks-about-future-of-online-education/

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ashamedlion
The whole site feels really cheap. I closed it at first because I thought I
typed the URL in incorrectly and had landed on a parked domain.

The best thing about Khan Academy is its personality, which makes the learning
very accessible. It's a no bullshit content delivery system, but this feels
like it's straight out of Generic Corporate Designer™.

Also, if you want a clickable url: <http://alison.com>

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benregn
I agree with you on the site's looks, very uninviting... And that damn
animated button in the right corner drives me crazy.

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acangiano
I went to the site and it was virtually empty. A split second later I realized
I had AdBlock Plus on. I disabled it and what I've seen looked like a spam
site. I think the comparison with Khan Academy is extremely unjustified here.

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maxjaderberg
I agree the comparison is unjustified. What makes Khan Academy so good is the
quality of Khan's explanations and teaching on the videos.

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sandGorgon
I actually want to see an educational process/technique that produces content,
even half as good as Khan Academy, _repeatably_.

My question has always been - will Khan Academy lose relevance after Sal Khan
? Or is there a recipe that allows the creation of more Khan Academys.

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StrawberryFrog
_My_ question has always been - will Khan Academy lose relevance outside Sal
Khan? He can't be an expert in everything. In order to scale, I'd expect that
he'd have to be able to pick people who are great teachers and also domain
experts.

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bugsy
And he's not an expert in 90% of the things he teaches. He's just quite good
at understanding things quickly and explaining it to others, like Feynman was.
Being called Khan Academy is apropro, it's mostly about his teaching and he is
irreplaceable. Fortunately, video lives forever and most of the subjects are
not transient.

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StrawberryFrog
Feynman only taught physics. Sal Khan teaches maths, astrophysics, economics,
history, etc etc...

The potential for misinformation from someone who is teaching a subject that
they are not an expert in, and have just "understood it quickly" is quite
worrying. he has been criticised on this before, see
<http://www.nas.org/polArticles.cfm?Doc_Id=2029>

Economics is a lot like maths, and there is crossover so it's no surprise that
he is good at both. But History is a different kind of subject.

If he is really irreplaceable, then there are severe limits on it. I hope and
expect that even if Sal Khan is a trailblazer, others can do follow his
example.

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bugsy
I've learned about a lot more than physics from Feynman. I also see little
evidence that classes are taught by experts in their subject matter except at
the university level, and even then only rarely.

But let's post a link to Khan's comments/rebuttals to the claims of the NAS
article you cited.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2633796>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2634324>

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Mizza
Non-free content? A scrolling marquee and pulsating Join Now buttons? And
calling your well established and much-loved competition 'buzz-heavy'.. yeah
right. This isn't going anywhere.

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imp
If anyone is interested in a less corporate, more fun version of Alison, I
started Curious Reef a while back. It's a social learning website.

For an example of someone actually learning something, here's a post by
someone who just finished the MIT 6.00 Intro to Comp Sci class on Curious
Reef: [http://curiousreef.com/class/mit-
opencourseware-600-introduc...](http://curiousreef.com/class/mit-
opencourseware-600-introduction/forum/topic/just-finished-the-class-100/)

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mythz
It looks corporate and soulless - not fun at all.

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0x12
This is the polar opposite of what the Khan Academy is all about: reducing
barriers, open transfer of knowledge, transparency, no middle men.

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bugsy
This article seems to be an ad for this guy's product, which is non-accredited
college degrees from an online school. There's a lot of organizations doing
online degrees, this is not very unique.

The comparisons to Khan are bizarre.

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troymc
I am happy to see innovation happening in how people get 'an education'. As
usual, some of the most interesting stuff is being done by people outside the
established providers (cf. _The Innovator's Dilemma_ ).

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fapi1974
It's interesting - Khan Academy has such massive following, but from a
technology standpoint I've seen much cooler stuff... www.smart.fm comes to
mind.

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adeelk
Sometimes, clear and intuitive explanations can go a lot farther than
technology.

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akarambir
how can they win UNESCO award. Besides design, they are only promoting there
diploma courses(paid) everywhere.

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Sigi
Khan Academy provides an easy way to download content for later offline
viewing. This site, however, seems to try to do the exact opposite!

Using flash to restrict consumption and bugging users with registration offers
is not a better way to learn.

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dimitar
Competing in what? They don't offer the same courses!

Alison has stuff like "personal development", "touch typing" and even adobe
products and a bit of Mathematics and Science, while Khan Academy is mostly
Math and Economics in detail.

