

John Resig joins the Khan Academy - jasonrr
http://ejohn.org/blog/next-steps-in-2011/

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nhebb
I'm happy for John, and this is great news for the Khan Academy. But I have to
admit my reaction was mixed about his initial plans to focus on the iPad. On
one hand, this is tantamount to saying you want to ensure that rich kids have
better access to educational materials. Relative to the rest of society,
children of parents who can afford an iPad are probably the least needy re
educational tools. On the other hand, they're probably the ones who will make
the most use of the tools.

~~~
ig1
You don't plan for today, you plan for five years down the line. Tablet
computers are likely to become as ubiquitous as desktops or laptops, it's
purely a matter of time.

Tablets are a much more useable form factor in classrooms, etc.

~~~
nhebb
That line of reasoning makes sense. He specifically mentioned iPad - not
tablets in general. When I think of the educational needs of tomorrow, I think
of school districts like Los Angeles, where the drop out rate is ~33%. It's
really hard for me to imagine a scenario where tablets are wide spread among
students in the lower income areas of that district.

Hopefully the iPad is just a kickoff point. One of my philosophies is that at
least some part of your job should give you joy, and out of that great things
can happen. Maybe iPad development is just something he wants to do for the
joy of it.

 _NB: I know that John's not a one man army, and I'm not trying to lay this
all on his shoulders. I'm just thinking out loud on HN._

~~~
jeresig
"Hopefully the iPad is just a kickoff point."

That's precisely it. Being who I am, I'm going to be building everything with
Open Web technologies and most likely built on top of jQuery Mobile. The iPad
is just serving as a good initial platform to target and test on before
expanding massively.

I wouldn't be surprised if much of the work that happens on the tablet version
of the site gets back-ported to the main site itself (as things like tablets
and mobile devices tend to encourage minimalist UIs and a larger emphasis on
what the user is attempting to achieve).

I did work for the One Laptop Per Child project in the past, I'm a strong
advocate for getting useful resources out to as many people as possible -
regardless of their means.

~~~
jasonrr
John beat me to the punch here. We're thinking about a much more general
mobile strategy. My personal mission is to try to design an experience for
content, student interaction, and exercises that is usable on smaller screens
because, although the tablet market is booming (thanks in great part to the
growth of the iPad) the smartphone market is much bigger and growing more
quickly. They are also likely to become commoditized more quickly (if you want
to argue that they aren't there already). In any case, replace the word "iPad"
in his post with "mobile" and I think you are closer to what John, I, and the
rest of the team are talking about.

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tworats
It is awesome that Khan Academy has attracted so much top talent. Has the
potential to make a real difference in world education and thus in human
potential. Goes to show how much effect a relatively small investment can make
when joined with amazing, driven, talented people.

~~~
te_platt
I agree except for "Has the potential". It is making an improvement right now.
It is hard to describe how it feels to watch my 9 year old pop off months
worth of school tedium in one morning, moving up through long division into
simple algebra equations. Or my 14 fill in gaps that had been confusing her
for years. Comments like "oh, I get it now" or "that's not hard at all" are
common.

~~~
FrojoS
Awesome to hear! Can you give us any information on how their grades have
developed? Of course, kindling fun and excitement for education and science is
already a great, if not the most important, achievement. But I'm curious about
the effect, that was discussed here before [1]. Derek Muller claims [2], that
these videos give a false illusion of understanding. If I get him right: If
your kids don't feel a bit confused and overwhelmed afterwards, they might
have reinforced their prejudice about how think are and work.

Anyway, its great to see good people choosing a career in education!

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2348476> [2]
[https://fnoschese.wordpress.com/2011/03/17/khan-academy-
and-...](https://fnoschese.wordpress.com/2011/03/17/khan-academy-and-the-
effectiveness-of-science-videos/)

~~~
te_platt
The videos are just one part of the academy. There is a tree you progress
through by passing off problems. Ten correct in a row marks you as proficient
and you go to the next level. Every so often there is a review section with
random problems from any earlier level. The entire system of instruction,
practice, and review gives more than an illusion of understanding.

My nine year old's grades have always been really good. The fun for him is
just being able to go as fast as he wants. My 14 year old has moved from
struggling for c's to breezing along with b's. She just really doesn't care
about math but at least she doesn't hate it anymore.

~~~
FrojoS
Thanks! I wasn't aware of that system. Can't wait till my nephew can watch
Khan Academy ..

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chime
> I should note that I’ve made a personal decision to scale back some other
> aspects of my professional life. I’m no longer accepting any new speaking
> engagements...

It is very hard to leave/scale-back unfinished business or commitments but it
is a very important step before starting something new and big. I know many
creative people who have tons of projects and commitments that they can't
bring themselves to leave and as a result, they never have enough time to
concentrate fully on their next big things. I highly commend John for making
the tough decision of leaving Mozilla and lots of personal projects so that he
could do something big.

~~~
quizbiz
I wish I could up-vote you to the top.

Just feel like without this comment, your comment might not stand out to many.

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StavrosK
I spoke to John Resig the other day after he fixed /r/f7u12's stylesheet (he
really earned his mod place!), and now I hate him with all my heart for being
more successful and more of a nice guy than I am. I bet he's also more
handsome.

EDIT: _And_ he's a year younger! Damn you, jeresig!

~~~
citricsquid
(completely unrelated buy why is historio.us down, did you shut it down? I
don't see any mention of outages on Twitter)

~~~
StavrosK
Oops, sorry, apparently the maintenance I'm doing killed some component due to
low memory. I'll reboot as soon as I'm done and it'll all be back to normal!

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GonzoVeritas
Bill Gates calls this the future of education. I think he is correct. I am
doing a project involving corporate training and this method has vast
implications for my work. I also have three school age children, and they will
be "attending" Khan tonight. This is the very first post I've read on HN and
I'm overwhelmed by its significance. Thanks!

~~~
aik
That's great. When you say "this method", could you explain what you mean? How
does it have vast implications for your work?

In addition, I agree that it will make a great impact in the future. However
isn't labeling it as "THE future" is going a little too far for now anyway? I
would like to see a study on the type of person this type of study works for.
If I'm not mistaken, it's not everyone?

~~~
evilduck
I think "this method" is letting people absorb the main lecture/explanation at
their own pace, freeing up teachers to focus on one on one assistance,
identifying people who are struggling, focusing classes on mastery instead of
minimum level competence (C students pass, but obviously have knowledge gaps),
etc.

~~~
aik
Cool. I'm curious how you'll implement it? Recently I took an Agile course at
work where they had a similar method -- there was a 3 hour video that everyone
was supposed to watch before the course. I'd say about 10% of people watched
it.

~~~
evilduck
It's not my method and I don't have any plans to implement it, I'm just
parroting stuff I've heard about Khan Academy in use.

I think in your case the problem was multifaceted. First, it was a 3 hour
video on Agile. Excessively long, probably boring, probably unnecessary (in my
own experience, the agile methods are mostly to get managers to see the light,
not the programmers). Second, there was probably little penalty for not
watching it either. I've been through Scrum training, it was boring and
"successful completion" mostly meant sitting in a room and not doing my actual
job for a few days. Failing the course would have required more effort than
completing it.

For schools, obviously they'll still be grading your work and ensuring mastery
of the subject where not watching the lectures would probably reflect on
homework and test scores pretty quickly as you advanced, they're also much
shorter than 3 hours, where your attention is less likely to wander.

~~~
aik
I definitely agree the problem was multifaceted. I also believe the problem
runs very deep at the same time.

Even if the courses were 10 minutes each like Khan, I doubt the view rate
would be increased by much in this case.

Also, it is true that there are no immediate and visible penalties for not
watching it, though at the same time, being penalized through completely
artificial means (chasing artificial targets, aka what happens in school)
isn't healthy for anyone and I believe contributes to one of the major
problems we're having.

Thirdly, I never was ensured mastery (or even pushed towards it) in any class
I ever took. I was ensured a good grade if I jumped through the right hoops
just how the teacher wanted it.

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mayukh
This is perfect. The alignment of terrifically smart, talented and passionate
people to come together for a worthy cause. Congrats and wish you the best.

With the recent startup boom, its sad to see some great talent spend time
building little features or apps; just wish they could use their amazing
talents to solve some really large problems..

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Smrchy
I wish the Khan Academy and everybody who is working for this awesome idea and
good cause all the best. It is these people that make me feel so proud of
mankind.

Getting the chance to work on such a project makes money and career fade far
into the background. All the Good this project is doing for the world makes it
worth it. And all without the need to charge for the service or display ads.

Congrats John on this excellent choice for a chance to make a change.

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rudasn
If I'm not mistaken Khan Academy is still hiring:
<http://www.khanacademy.org/jobs/dev> and
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2412000>

I'm sure there are many great minds in here who would love to join John and
the rest of the KA team

~~~
kamens
You're definitely not mistaken. Use either link -- applications welcome.

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spottiness
Wow! We're thrilled that this happened. Today is another great day for
education. The greatest day was probably when Salman Khan quit his job and
went home to upload his videos full time. We use Khan academy almost every
day, for our children and ourselves.

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boazsender
Congratulations to the Kahn Academy, and congratulations to John.

I am really looking forward to you building software full time. It is going to
be great for jQuery!

~~~
MatthewPhillips
This is seriously the best thing that can happen for JQuery Mobile, assuming
he does release some apps. If anyone can push the technology as far as it can
go, it's John.

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kenjackson
Congratulations John and Khan Academy! Khan Academy, as I've said before, I
think is one of the most important pieces of technology I've seen. I think
maybe one day on par, in terms of impact, with the web itself. Great news.

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gary4gar
Noble Cause. But I am curious to know will Khan Academy give a basic salary or
he working for free? in which case, I salute you

Congrats!

~~~
leftnode
When Bill Gates uses your product to teach his kids, asking for some grant
money probably isn't much of a problem.

~~~
evilduck
I don't know their relationship, but in Salman Khan's TED Talk[1], Gates
performs some closing remarks with him.

In the talk, he mentions that they're doing a pilot program with the Los Altos
school district[2] as well, which I'm sure wasn't for free since it involved
custom development.

[1]
[http://www.ted.com/talks/salman_khan_let_s_use_video_to_rein...](http://www.ted.com/talks/salman_khan_let_s_use_video_to_reinvent_education.html)
[2] <http://lasdandkhanacademy.edublogs.org/about/>

~~~
jasonrr
Actually, it was totally free in terms of the school not having to lay out any
cash. The reason we chose to work with them, however, is that they committed a
ton of time from teachers, students, administrators, and parents to help us
make the Khan Academy work better for the classroom use case.

The experience working with them has been fantastic. The teachers are fearless
in the face of the significant uncertainty that introducing something like the
KA in a classroom can create. They've been creative about experimenting with
different ways of integrating KA into the classroom (trying things we didn't
anticipate). Speaking as a UX designer, having nearly unlimited access to
teachers and students for interviews and observations has been invaluable.
Plus the teachers aren't shy about letting us know if something isn't working
out. If anything, it feels like we should be paying them.

~~~
evilduck
That's awesome. Kudos to you and everything Khan Academy is doing.

Is it mostly grant money that funds everything then?

~~~
jasonrr
Sorry for not addressing that first time-round. We are funded by the Google
and Gates Foundation grants plus private donations. As far as "most", I am not
totally sure. I have very gladly stopped worrying about the particulars there
as we've got some great folks (Sal, Shantanu, and Jessica) focused on making
sure we're funded well enough to keep making progress at the rate we want.
That frees up me and the rest of the developers to focus on building the
product. Charmed life, eh?

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clu3
I discovered Khan Academy about 1 year ago and since then the website has not
changed that much, except for some polishing on the site. Here is a snapshot
of the site in June 2010
[http://replay.web.archive.org/20100601053141/http://www.khan...](http://replay.web.archive.org/20100601053141/http://www.khanacademy.org/)

The site is currently quite hard to navigate around or search. Now that even
talents like John have started to join the academy, I'm pretty sure, the site
will definitely provide a better experience. Good for Khan, the academy and
the education system

~~~
jacoblyles
Just hope they don't "pull a Craigslist" and keep a crappy UI for the sake of
nostalgia, then call it "minimalism".

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nir
Awesome to see someone this talented put his skills into a real, valuable
product.

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hendrik-xdest
It's a bad day for Mozilla. Resig and Dion Almaer announce their leave for KA
on the same day.

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zackattack
When are we gonna see more advanced math covered on KA? It would be great to
see Fourier transform or even music theory!

~~~
rayvega
Discrete mathematics is definitely what I've been waiting for.

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kodisha
voted without reading - and i'm even not jQ or John Resig fan.

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palguay
<http://twitter.com/#!/jeresig/status/65450991423733760> announcement on
twitter

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Shakakai
Makes me wonder what this says about Mozilla. Perhaps not the exciting place
it used to be 5+ years ago?

~~~
Symmetry
Given how exciting Khan Academy is, Mozilla could still be pretty darn awesome
and not stack up.

~~~
spudlyo
Agreed. Mozilla may have helped change the browser landscape, but the Khan
Academy could change the face of education in this country. Both worthy places
to pour one's energy but I'd give the edge in excitement to KA.

~~~
Mafana0
>but the Khan Academy could change the face of education in this country.

It's not just one country. I sincerely can't express my gratitude enough for
Khan Academy guys, their very rich educational materials have and are helping
me tremendously in my education and my career. I'm from a developing country.

