

Why I Love the Khan Academy - thirsteh
http://patrickmylund.com/blog/why-i-love-the-khan-academy/

======
teilo
I love the Khan Academy because I am finally grokking calculus... at the age
of 37.

------
kn0thing
After just talking about it for a while, I'm finally starting an online
campaign to get Khan on the TED stage. He has an idea very much worth
spreading. Hell, they even let me speak at TED, so please take a minute or two
to nominate Salman Khan here on TED's speaker nomination form:
<http://www.ted.com/nominate/speaker>

And if you've got another minute, nominate Paul Graham, too!

(edit: I'm an employee of Y Combinator, making PG my boss, but I'd nominate
him regardless of that fact.)

------
sbaqai
Why I think the Khan Academy works so well:

1/. Videos are short, 10-15min digestible bits. Long enough to teach a
concept, short enough not to lose my attention.

2/. He's a huge advocate of teaching intuition behind concepts instead of
memorization. This makes learning less stuffy and more informal.

3/. Everyone has "holes" in their knowledge, but they are in different areas.
Schools have a hard time to individually address weak points in each student's
knowledge (particularly if you should have learned them in a prerequisite
course). Videos organized by concepts allow you to address these weaknesses
systematically.

4/. He makes mistakes! Those mistakes are quite insightful and give a glimpse
into an art of solving problems that usually isn't presented in most lectures.
You usually see a problem, and a solution thats a finished product.

5/. He doesn't have an ego. He's not breathing down your neck or thinking
you're an idiot if you don't understand anything the first time. You can
pause, google something, repeat, watch it anytime, etc.

------
snth
Though I'm a fan of Feynman anecdotes, I've always disagreed with the point of
the one used in this article. Names _are_ important. You know what you get by
knowing the name of the brown-throated thrush? You get an identifier by which
to look up all the collected knowledge of humanity on the brown-throated
thrush, and you gain the ability to talk about it with other people.

In the online SICP lectures there's a nice point about names and how they give
you power over things, but I couldn't find it right away.

~~~
SteveC
Feynman's brown-throated thrush anecdote isn't saying that names don't serve a
valuable purpose. As you've shown in your examples names are a tool to help us
reference knowledge, but they are not the knowledge itself. Unfortunately
people don't always make the distinction. This way of thinking may lead them
to collect many references but very little real knowledge. That's the point I
think Feynman was trying to make.

~~~
three14
I find this point the trivial one. The surprising point is that names really
do matter. I had no idea how many sycamore trees there are in NYC before I had
a name for them; having a name also meant having a set of characteristics that
let me label a tree as a "sycamore" - being able to apply a name to a thing
also means recognizing the thing, and being able to communicate about it.

(Actually, probably London Plane trees, but don't let my ignorance get in the
way of my point.)

~~~
dedward
He wasn't making a comment that the names don't matter - he was trying to
rationalize why he gained an interest and appreciation for the deep-knowledge
of science - not just how to look up reference material.

Names obviously matter - language and communication matter if we're going to
collaborate on anything - but when it comes to science, to make new
discoveries, the ability to look something up in a book is useless without the
ability to understand how things actually work and fit together... and
sometimes, books, and even the majority of people, are actually incorrect...

It's disingenuous to take that Feynman quote out of context and argue that
it's an argument against naming... it's certainly not.

------
mjfern
The Khan Academy content is currently concentrated in areas such as math,
science, and finance. Do you think the approach can be applied to other
disciplines; e.g., programming, business (other than finance), other social
sciences? And how about more advanced levels of skill development?

In short, are there boundary conditions to the Khan Academy approach? And if
so, what are they?

~~~
icegreentea
Khan Academy currently heavily depends on examples. Anything that you can
teach by example is probably fair game. For example (ha!), his history stuff
right now, while perfectly fine, I find no more engaging/effective than
reading about.

That doesn't mean it won't work, just it probably won't be as effective for
some other stuff as it has been for math and such.

~~~
dillydally
I think it just becomes story-telling.

------
jacquesm
mr. Khan and wikipedia are the two best things to come out of the web as far
as I'm concerned. Project gutenberg third but at considerable distance.

Between Khan Academy and wikipedia education is pretty much limited by the
amount of time you have to invest.

There was a character in a book that tried to learn by memorizing an
encyclopedia, which as 'learning by rote' is not the most useful thing. But in
wikipedia everything is interlinked, and you can dig down in to a subject as
deep as you want, the references will give you the background. It's quite
amazing how much you can learn about something just from there.

The Khan Academy is another part of education embodied in bits, a really good
instructor that knows how to make subjects both interesting and
understandable.

~~~
dinkumthinkum
The Khan Academy is great. But, and I'm not really making any accusations at
all, I hope amidst all this praise for what an admirable job he is doing and
all the opportunities this affords for underpriviledged people that he stays
on top of the quality and accuracy of the material. I just remember there
being a few questions about some of his stuff on linear algebra. I also hope
he will continue to add more advanced material to the various subjects, but I
think that is his plan.

~~~
jacquesm
I think that's what's great about the whole concept, if you want to replace a
lecture with a better one at a later date you actually can, so in the long
term it can only get better, this just establishes an initial baseline,
nothing will ever make it worse than this.

------
tmoertel
The success of the Khan Academy is by orthodox educational standards
_surprising_. That it _is_ surprising ought to tell us something: that the
orthodox understanding of how education should be "delivered" is at least
partly _wrong_.

We should be particularly suspect of the belief that higher production values
are worth pursuing. Before KA, if you suggested that you could deliver
unusually effective education through a series of ten-minute videos having
truly horrible production values, the mainstream education industry would have
ignored you. After KA, they can't.

What the success of the Khan Academy suggests is that production values are
not important and, perhaps, that the pursuit of high production values is
wasteful and even counterproductive.

Now that's an interesting hypothesis.

~~~
pixcavator
The _popularity_ is surprising; the success is still to be proven (how?). But
you are right, its popularity can’t be ignored.

------
NZ_Matt
I recommend watching this video where Khan discusses his vision for the future
of online education.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRf6XiEZ_Y8>

~~~
bigmac
His social value calculations towards the end of that video are not to be
missed -- it was quite the pitch.

------
SpaceHobo
This kind of surprises me. I love Khan's lecturing style, and he makes good
use of a paint program to stand in for not having an overhead transparency to
scribble on.

But as to his teaching style, the videos I've seen have caused me to react
less like Patrick Mylund and more like this MetaFilter poster:

[http://www.metafilter.com/78770/Welcome-to-the-Khan-
Academy#...](http://www.metafilter.com/78770/Welcome-to-the-Khan-
Academy#2435418)

Perhaps there's an ordered curriculum you're meant to go through, but every
time I've sampled Khan's videos at random they've been structured as "if these
are the exercises you need to do right now, now you can see me solve one."

Sure he does a good job of narrating his steps, explaining details and side-
effects, and making illustrative mistakes. I just feel like he's all about the
how and never about the why.

------
lutorm
I watched a couple of those videos after reading about it here and, while they
were nice, they didn't stand out as something very special to me. Maybe it's
because his style feels close to the way that I like to teach, or maybe you
guys had way more sucky teachers than I did (though I don't think my math
teachers were particularly good).

I don't want to disrespect the effort he's going through setting up all the
online content, that's clearly something very useful to those that don't have
access to real people to learn with. But to hold him up as as especially
awesome and unique seems to ignore the thousands of equally awesome teachers
that are out there teaching like that every day.

~~~
jacquesm
I think you mis the most important part of what the Khan Acedemy is all about,
it is open 24x7 365 days per year and it is 100% free.

He doesn't have to be 'outstanding' or even 'great' to have an enormous impact
on the world.

~~~
lutorm
What you say is true, but that is _not_ what the article argues is the most
important thing about it.

There are books where you can learn physics and math, and while they aren't
free but neither is the computer you need to look at his videos...

~~~
jacquesm
I would say he hits the sweet spot between 'inanimate book' and 'personal
teacher' pretty much dead on.

Computers and internet connections reach places on the planet where very few
physics books go, and embody potentially every book ever written + all the
free content available out there.

------
Kilimanjaro
Take the khan academy, make a transcript of every course for those who hate
videos like me, and you have a winner.

Of course, make it interactive and with lots of visuals for better learning.

There you have it, a great idea for a startup.

~~~
pixcavator
You can check out my lectures here
<http://inperc.com/wiki/index.php?title=Category:Courses> (math only). These
are written lectures but they start at about the same place as Khan's (in a
real classroom though). Hundreds of illustrations but I haven't figured out
the "interactive" part yet.

------
readtodevelop
Khan Academy is a good resource if you haven't a good teacher and you have a
lot of time for learning.

With a good teacher you can learn more with less time. If you are in a small
group you can ask the teacher and you will learn that he can give you not only
the answer you are looking for but a new perspective about that subject.

So Khan Academy is a good resource in certain occasions, but never as a good
teacher should be.

------
vkdelta
Why I love ? Because almost after a decade from high school class, I realize
why it is that way. His lessons are short, engaging and teach you the basics.
I could only wish I had someone with quarter of Khan's talent to teach me math
and science.

------
flexd
I'm taking Math and Physics at uni in a pre-engineer year. Khan Academy is
making me learn a lot! My physics teacher is not that good, Sal however is an
amazing communicator. If you only visit the site shortly you will only see the
youtube videos but looking closer you will find the real gem: The application
guiding you through math and physics. If you can answer all the questions
correctly you know have learned everything you need to know to pass a exam!
:-)

~~~
weaksauce
I would highly suggest watching the Walter Lewin videos from mit. They are
what got me through a mediocre at best, terrible at worst teacher in physics.
I used him heavily for electricity and magnetism and some for the classical
mechanics stuff. Excellent teacher!

[http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/physics/8-01-physics-i-
classical-...](http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/physics/8-01-physics-i-classical-
mechanics-fall-1999/)

[http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/physics/8-02-electricity-and-
magn...](http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/physics/8-02-electricity-and-magnetism-
spring-2002/)

[http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/physics/8-03-physics-iii-
vibratio...](http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/physics/8-03-physics-iii-vibrations-
and-waves-fall-2004/)

~~~
jmatt
If you can manage to deal with silverlight, I'd add Richard Feynman's
Messenger Lectures. (Thanks Bill Gates)

<http://research.microsoft.com/apps/tools/tuva/index.html>

------
morphir
I struggle with proving big oh, thus I wonder if (Kahn) or anyone else can
help me prove that: t(n) <= cg(n) for all n >= 0 and here is the example I do
not grok, where I'm gonna prove this assertion: 100n + 5 ∈ O(n^2). This proof
goes like this: 100n + 5 <= 100n + n = 101n <= 101n^2 I struggle basically
with wrapping my brain around the proof there. What is going on?

------
pixcavator
According to my computations, the total amount of content isn’t that large.
It’s about 36 credit hours total and I am being generous here.

~~~
dinkumthinkum
That's probably about right. But he is only one person. :) He is planning to
expand. But I do hope he gets more upper level stuff in there.

------
jmtame
he was at sunfire offices last weekend giving a talk i believe. anyone here go
to that?

