

Khan of Khan Academy at TED (video) - zootar
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTFEUsudhfs

======
solipsist
I've heard countless people rave about Salman Khan and his teaching methods -
both here and away from HN. The truth is, I had no idea why he and his
teachings were such a big deal... _until now_. I had seen some of his videos
before and read some of the articles about the Khan Academy, but had never
given them my full attention. To me, it was just another guy with his own
teaching methods.

But when I see him talk at TED, it makes perfect sense. Not only is he a
superb speaker, he gets his points across clearly.

Probably the best point of all is this one:

    
    
      "What I do is I assign the lectures for homework and, what used to be
       homework, I now have the students doing in the classroom."
    

As radical as that may seem, this idea has TONS of potential. Do we really
need teachers there in person if they are just lecturing? The real use of
being there in person as a teacher is for interacting with the students. What
better way to do that than by helping them with the work (i.e. homework) and
letting the Khan Academy lecture when little interaction is needed.

I am definitely going to hop on the bandwagon now and join everyone else in
following Khan while appreciating his pure genius. In fact, the best way to
describe him is to combine all the great things people here on HN have to say
about him:

    
    
      > He's amazing. (joshu)
    
      > I really do think Sal Khan will revolutionize teaching. (solarmist)
    
      > Hero material. (MikeCapone)
    
      > Future of education. (omfut)
    
      > Really wonderful reminder of what just one person can set in motion. (runevault)
    
      > Simply amazing that a guy armed only with a tablet and a microphone can have this
      much impact. (keiferski)
    
      > He is a big inspiration for anyone looking to change the world. (omfut)
    

The list could go on forever. And it's not every day you hear people talking
about someone and their ideas in such a way like they are now about Khan and
the Khan Academy.

 _If people are saying it is amazing, then there's a pretty good chance that
it truly is amazing._

~~~
andresmh
The Khan Academy is not _the_ future of education. Don't get me wrong, I think
they're doing a superb job and I'd encourage people to contribute to their
efforts. Khan is obviously a great presenter with a remarkable ability to
explain complex concepts using a new medium. However, the future of education
is closer to hacker culture than it is about new and better content delivery
mechanisms. Let me explain.

First, I totally buy the argument that a YouTube video can be a better method
of delivering content than a book or even, as Kahn says, a live teacher.
However, learning is much more than that. Learning is about imagining,
playing, creating, sharing and reflecting (Resnick 2007, PDF:
<http://j.mp/gqnc6f>).

To say that learning math is about watching a video and drilling on some
problem set, is like saying that learning Python is about doing a tutorial and
solving some exercises. _Hackers know this well_. You don't really learn a
programming language until you build some project, especially a personally
meaningful one. Creating something not only helps you learn the language but
also its community, culture, practices, how to ask questions and get feedback
on your work.

Think about it, would you rather hire a developer that has finished some
tutorials or one that has actually hacked some projects? The same logic
applies to most other fields. Artists and scientists know this as well: you
learn by doing in the social context of a community.

Unfortunately, schooling has taken the "hacking" away from learning and has
focused on improving content delivery, artificial problem-solving and test-
taking. Often using technology. I liked when he mentioned that the teachers
have more time to mentor students. However, their mentoring is most likely
still focused on the artificial and decontextualized approach of traditional
schooling.

Initiatives like the Khan Academy will probably play a role in the future but
to really improve education the system and the approaches should change. One
should look at exemplar learning environments like the hacker communities or
even the Brazilian Samba schools. Settings that are "real, socially cohesive
and where experts and novices are learning" (Papert 1980, Google Books:
<http://j.mp/dLNbGG>).

In 1971, Ivan Illich outlined an inspirational alternative educational
environment where "the child grows up in a world of things, surrounded by
people who serve as models for skills and values. He finds peers who challenge
him to argue, to compete, to cooperate, and to understand; and if the child is
lucky, he is exposed to confrontation or criticism by an experienced elder who
really cares."

Illich said that the four resources learners need are "things, models, peers,
and elders". In his 1971 vision, Illich said that "the operation of a peer-
matching network would be simple. The user would identify himself by name and
address and describe the activity for which he sought a peer. A computer would
send him back the names and addresses of all those who had inserted the same
description. It is amazing that such a simple utility has never been used on a
broad scale for publicly valued activity"(<http://j.mp/hNUVV8>). Sounds
familiar? When I read Illich, I think of HN, StackExchange, and the larger
ecology of spaces that hackers have created around social learning. My hope is
that these and other similar approaches scale up and get adopted more broadly
along with resources like the Khan Academy, OCW and others.

~~~
ThomPete
I think you are missing the point here.

Learning math is not like learning programming. Math has a quantitative
evaluation process.

The kind of scenarios you are talking about both have a quantitative and a
qualitative evaluation process.

I.e. you can be creative in your programming and the "answers" but not so much
in math.

Also I don't think Kahn Academy is in any opposition to Seymore Paperts
"Mindstorms". In fact you could imagine the videos being used to teach
children to get started before they go on to hack together their little
programs.

What they have done is for the first time made a system that quantifies the
learning process so that it benefits the student rather than the school.

Pretty significant if you ask me.

~~~
Dn_Ab
I disagree with you assertion on creativity in maths. Maths allows creativity
and is very open ended. You can do things that are not required but are
creative - leveraging identities and properties to vastly simplify a problem,
reframing the problem to make it more tractable etc. And programming is very
useful to learning maths. Any topic that requires some form of calculating to
build familiarity will benefit greatly from playing by programming.

Consider complex numbers. You usually first meet them with imaginary numbers
and polynomial equations. But they are extremely obtuse. But if you look at
operations on them in terms of vectors, lateral extension of the reals to make
the picture in terms of solvable polynomial equations complete, or in terms of
polar coordinates, rotations, trigonometry, and e you start to get a fuller
picture. But if you really want to get them you program a simple system
(scaling and rotating triangles for example) that allows you to leverage all
those properties. You build in the identities and operations. And then you
experiment. Play with it. Play is vital to learning. With that, you get
motivation and a fuller understanding than a mere that is just the way it is.
With that deeper more intuitive understanding you are able to remember and
internalize it better. Making the future topics easier but more importantly,
developing the ability to draw connections rather than merely leaving each
concept in isolation.

That is why maths is so hard. So much of it is completely divorced to how they
were originated and completely unmotivated and magical. With no intuition
future learning is further crippled, building apprehension via a negative
feedback loop.

~~~
ThomPete
You are confusing learning math with the field of math.

Again I am a big proponent of Seymores work but that is not the point here.

The point is that Kahn Academy allows you to learn math in your own tempo and
that is the future of education. That doesn't mean that other things wont be
important too but to say that it's not the future of education is simply
missing the greater point IMHO.

People who have never been able to understand it before now suddenly do. We
don't all need to be math wizards.

~~~
Dn_Ab
I was arguing your assertion that maths is not creative, even in the basic
level. I completely agree that non uniform pacing is a really great
breakthrough and do not argue the efficacy of these videos. Nor their impact
on the future of education. But saying there is no creativity in maths is the
type of thing that hurts the education of the subject - with teachers
punishing kids for doing things unlike the book says.

I also think, especially for learning kids maths, not to underestimate how
powerful learning as playing is in motivating concepts. I do think such a
thing done right, where you would replace a bunch of videos with one game
would be even better than the videos as the future of education. As that type
of active learning allows not just variable pacing but also variable
exploration and creativity. And by building a repertoire of stories for
concepts, it counters how alien and not straight forwardly relatable to real
life experience more abstract maths is. A fact that makes learning maths hard.

As a first test of this idea I hope to someday make or see a game where kids
program little battling bots and in the process learn concepts from high level
physics and maths. as a side-effect. without realizing they are learning. I
guess based on personal experiences, I feel there is still a class of kids
that the khan academy style won't reach.

~~~
ThomPete
I think I know what you are getting at but I think we are talking about two
different things.

That kids learn concepts from high level physics and maths does not mean they
learn formal math.

I am not saying that they need to learn formal math (in fact there are plenty
of arguments against spending so much time trying to teach kids any math)

But it's important to understand that if everyone have to learn concepts in
their own way they will loos the ability to communicate with each other.

The ability to transfer metaphors from something we understand into the world
of Mindstorms and through that develop conceptual understanding of various
areas does not necessarily transcend into understanding of math.

It might though create something else and quite wonderful. But formal math it
probably wont be.

------
georgi0u
After reading a few comments, I haven't seen this point made so I'm gonna go
for it:

    
    
      > The traditional model, it penalizes you for experimentation and failure, 
      > but does not expect mastery.  
      > We encourage you to experiment [and fail], but we do expect mastery.
    

This, in my opinion, is the most potential ridden idea made by Khan. Today,
middle schools is ~3 years, high school is 4 years, university is 4 years,
etc.; we discretize learning into these rigid chunks of time - partially out
of (deprecated) technical necessity - and in the process we isolate kids - the
so called dumb kids. When Kahn showed that graph of a so called _dumb_ kids
spending 2-3x as long on a single topic, only to resume the same learning rate
as the _smart_ kids after they understood the foundational concept they were
originally struggling with, it made me see how much potential there truly is
in this system.

Imagine a world where the baseline level of education is produced by a Khan
style system. Schooling wouldn't be as tractable (i.e., it might take 2 to 6
(or more) years to go through high school instead of a nice predictable 4),
but everyone that would come out of said system would have the same (ideal)
level of knowledge needed in order to move on to the next best thing (e.g.,
college, work, life's passion, etc.). There wouldn't be kids competing for
GPA's or stuffing their resumes, and there wouldn't be kids who didn't know
how to tie their shoes; there would be kids who KNOW calculus, kids who
UNDERSTAND physics, and kids who GET American history. The variation would be
in the idiosyncrasies of the topics, as opposed to the core concepts.

Now imagine further to what this does for higher education. In this proposed
system, it would simply be a fact that graduating kids would know - at mastery
level - what their school's curriculums listed off; it's the equivalent of
everyone having a 1600 on their SAT's. College acceptance becomes less of a
selectivity problem, and more of an efficiency problem; where are all these
geniuses going to study!

Ahhh, the potential is so exciting...

That being said, as sort of an aside I think it's noteworthy to say that the
idea of fixing the tuition-based University model is a bit more complex than
the high school model, but as user arjn said bellow, there are plenty of free
lecture repositories out there already; perhaps if prior educational systems
encouraged and indoctrinated students to be more self-proficient (as in the
Khan system), University learning becomes more about educating yourself, and
those free lectures will (naturally) replace the pay-to-learn model. I don't
know, but it's a thought...

~~~
pbhjpbhj
>and there wouldn't be kids who didn't know how to tie their shoes;

I've met at least a few people who, being charitable, I would be extremely
hard pressed to see passing a calculus exam. I'd agree that for some it's down
to motivation but the motivation may come 20+years later or not at all.

Certainly though I'm extremely wary of declaring that all people can attain
the same intellectual level which appears to be what you claim.

I'm not going to say it's impossible but I think you must have missed a step
where you do some sort of brain augmentation or injection of nanobots to build
knowledge pathways without any need to apply a learning process ...

~~~
georgi0u
My little rant is definitely meant to be more persuasive than quantifiably
accurate; take it with a grain of salt.

Regardless, I don't think the existence of can't-be-motivated learners
compromises the ideals of a Khan-like system. Sure there are kids that aren't
going to get it no matter what, but their productivity in any system is going
to be nill, Khan, tradtional, or otherwise.

------
dmvaldman
As a university math TA, my students would often say "you're so much better
than the teacher, why don't you teach the class?"

Hearing this is definitely an ego stroke, but what the student really means is
that he learns better by practicing problems than by listening to theory. I
feel this is even more true in a younger school environment.

The teacher's and TA's roles are simply different in this respect, so I take
no credit for "being better than the teacher".

But what Khan Academy does is really interesting, because now the teacher
takes the role of the TA. I feel this is a much more effective way to teach.
And ultimately the student will benefit. Thumbs up to this philosophy.

~~~
solarmist
I think this is a really keen observation.

------
runevault
Really wonderful reminder of what just one person can set in motion. I could
easily see him becoming considered one of the most important people of this
century based on what he is doing for education and its globalization.

------
solarmist
Over the years I've found lectures less and less useful to attend in person as
profs and other presenters post their lectures and powerpoint slides online. I
can just watch/read those and get everything I need from those materials, then
when I'm in class I can ask much more useful questions and cover the details
that really make the difference.

I love how the Khan Academy is institutionalizing that idea. I can't see any
reason that lectures need to be done in person, but being able to work through
sticking points with someone. Now that is valuable.

I really do think Sal Khan will revolutionize teaching. At least in the areas
this model is applicable.

------
zmmmmm
This man is certainly one of my heroes. I love this part from the FAQ on the
Khan Academy:

    
    
        What topics do you plan to cover?
    
        My goal is to cover everything. Yes, everything! 
        ... My goal really is to keep making videos until the day I die 
        (which will hopefully not be for at least another 50 or 60 
        years). Should give me time to make several tens
        of thousands of videos in pretty much every subject."

~~~
GeorgeTirebiter
Very Asimovian, don't you think?

Isaac Asimov wrote either 506 books (or 515, say some sources) in his 72-year
lifetime. (Jan 2, 1920 - Apr 6, 1992)

~~~
enry_straker
Was about to make the very same point.

I used to, and still, treasure the books on science that Mr.Asimov wrote. It
was fantastic. I just wish that he had lived to see this phenomenon taking
place. I think he would be very, very pleased with Salman

~~~
Tyr42
Yes, I found some of Asimov's science books in the school library, and I think
the reason he wrote such good science fiction was that he could explain stuff
really well. He really _got_ his settings, and the same when he wrote about
real science. He was understandable.

------
DanielN
After viewing this video I logged into Khan academy to check out the practice
tracking features highlighted in the video. Mainly I wanted to see the
categorical branching of subjects that they showed.

Its a pretty amazing idea and execution. From one basic subject, addition,
they expand and branch out all the way down to basic calculus. It would be
really amazing if they continued expanding this out to the point where all
subjects where mapped out, even the less mathematical ones. Just to see the
path from addition to trigonometry is a pretty good refresher of what the
mechanics of the trig functions actually entail. Imagine seeing the path from
addition to linear algebra.

More to the point, imagine a world in which a student uses this system
throughout their educational career. I can't even fathom the difference that
that level of tracking and relational mapping between ideas would have on a
students understanding of material and motivation to tackle new subjects.

------
arjn
Khanacademy is neat but I find it odd that people on HN either aren't aware or
dont care about other earlier sources such as :

    
    
      - MIT's OCW
      - USNW eLearning channel on Youtube (esp Richar Buckland)
      - TIMMS (Germany, possibly the first of the video resources)
      - UCBerkeley youtube channel
      - Dr. Adrian Banner (Princeton)
      - Harvard (esp Michael Sandel's lectures, amazing)
    

The above can be easily searched for and are hardly a comprehensive list as
that would be large. Here is a website which is a sort of clearinghouse for
video lectures: www.cosmolearning.com

A search of HN shows less attention given to these original sources than
perhaps they deserve. In my opinion MIT OCW was the best known initiative till
recent times and started this wave of online video learning. _BTW, I highly
recommend Michael Sandel's lectures on ethics and politics, available on
YouTube._

~~~
keiferski
Khan Academy is miles better than any of those when it comes to design and
ease of use, _especially_ when it comes to presenting the material to
elementary/middle school aged children. I certainly don't think a MIT lecture
will appeal to 5th graders.

~~~
ibejoeb
For me, the presentation is just _better_. There's something about 10-12
minute lessons, and obviously the thought that goes into distilling it to that
size, that makes it digestible. (I'm really curious how much time goes into
making one 10 minute lesson.) It sticks.

One caveat: I've been exposed to this material before in other contexts, so
it's more like a phenomenal refresher. I can't know if this is a better way to
teach from scratch. But, frankly, it's been long enough, or I was just that
bad at it the first time, that it sometimes feels like I never learned it in
the first place. This gives me some degree of confidence that it's at least
one right way.

------
robertk
I actually swelled up in tears when he showed the spreadsheet of student
progress, and suggested having the students with red blocks (those who are
stuck on a concept) being given help from the students with green blocks
(those who mastered it).

That is _so_ beautiful.

~~~
yread
For me it was the moment where he showed the progress of students and how the
(initially) slow learner picked up the concepts faster and faster.

------
aashpak1
I found it very interesting how he applied data-analysis techniques [at time
12:33 in the video] to provide teachers with a better and correct
understanding of each student's shortcomings (probably from his insights from
his earlier profession on the Wall St.) that will take the student/tutor
interaction to a new level!

~~~
solarmist
What I found more interesting was that lack of those tools in current
teaching. I can't believe no one's made those kind of analysis tools available
to teachers before.

~~~
kamens
Can't agree with this enough. Every time we make a new chart I think to
myself, "Well that wasn't rocket science," and then when we show teachers they
go _absolutely nuts_.

~~~
snarknet
Maybe I'm just tired, but what do you mean by chart? A personalized one
tailored to a student?

Edit: Ignore this, read your blog, very insightful.

------
barkmadley
Here is a link because ted.com is just as awesome as youtube.com

[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)

Also is the youtube video a strange colour red for anyone else?

~~~
trystero
I can't wait for the subtitles to be uploaded, so that I can share with my
friends who can't be bothered to watch something which is not in their
language.

------
adrianbye
I worked with Sal when we were both at Oracle. one thing i think is that what
he's doing with khan academy ties directly to his strengths.

he was very good at explaining and teaching, and liked analyzing data.

------
singular
This is wonderful. Education is, IMHO, the most important thing in the world,
full stop, since it forms the basis for what we are able to do and more
importantly how we think.

Personally, I found school boring and tedious (and got pretty average grades)
until going to 6th form college where I discovered something amazing -
learning isn't defined by a failed teaching system - learning done right is a
joyful and wonderful thing (unsurprisingly my grades significantly improved at
this point).

The fact that learning is a joy is one of the most important discoveries you
make in life (or don't, unfortunately I think most people don't) and anything
that allows people to discover this is a vastly important thing.

(It's important to note that learning, as with everything else, isn't 100%
joyful all the time, but that the joy of it infinitely outweighs any
difficulty and pain encountered along the way).

I've noticed a pernicious worship of ignorance that pervades, at least, my
country (the UK) - the idea that learning is boring and there's something
wrong with you if you seem to enjoy it - that alone is to my mind incredibly
dangerous. Nothing could be further from the truth, literally. This is
nothing, though, compared to countries where ordinary people are simply unable
to access quality education or even any education at all where the Khan
academy is an example of the internet at its democratising best.

Go Sal!

------
omfut
It was a great talk. Future of education. I loved the way Bill interacted with
Khan.

~~~
joshbert
He has stated in numerous occasions that his children use Khan Academy's
videos.

I really admire Sal for what he's doing with global education. He is a big
inspiration for anyone looking to change the world. Specially hackers.

------
joshu
Saw this live. He's amazing.

~~~
MikeCapone
He is. Hero material. I have a feeling we'll be talking about him in decades
the way people talk about Feynman now. Making people want to learn and helping
them do it is a noble thing.

~~~
joshu
Yeah. Turns out I live in the town he mentions -- on the street for one of the
schools.

If I listened hard, I wonder if I could hear paradigms shifting.

------
paufernandez
Actually, I got so excited (and moved) when I saw his talk at GEL:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTXKCzrFh3c>

That I started my own channel for Programming in C++, for my students... I
have 74 videos already... (in Spanish, sorry)

<http://www.youtube.com/user/paueky>

------
modeless
I think what could eventually be even more impactful than the videos
themselves is the statistics tracking he showed. With that kind of data across
thousands or millions of people, you would see patterns of people who had the
same problems and questions in the same places, and you could redo the videos
to be more clear in those areas and answer those questions preemptively. With
a web-scale audience you could do A-B testing experiments and optimize the
performance of your teaching material. I think a curriculum optimized in this
way could eventually be dramatically better than even the best traditional
education has to offer today.

Today teaching is an art; this could turn it into a science.

------
Mizza
Because the site doesn't make it obvious, Khan Academy is an Open Source
project: <https://code.google.com/p/khanacademy/>

------
keiferski
Simply amazing that a guy armed only with a tablet and a microphone can have
this much impact.

------
raheemm
And it all started with him tutoring his cousins long-distance while
maintaining a busy work schedule. There is something real special about that -
willingness to spend "free" time, willingness to tutor in spite of the
distance (he was in Boston and his cousins were in Louisiana).

Either of these reasons would have been sufficient excuses for him to not help
his cousins. Lucky for them and for all of us that such an amazing talent was
so generous with his time and insistent on using technology to overcome the
distance barrier.

------
Kilimanjaro
Idea HN: Make transcripts of all videos in KhanAcademy and have them presented
with blackboard images and all, nicely organized in a web page with links to
original videos.

------
MicahNance
As someone who was often bored during school lectures, I think the idea is
great. One of the things I love about the Internet is that, in many cases,
only the best rises to the top. That means people everywhere can have access
to the best information on a subject, or in this case, the best video lecture.
I think that is awesome, because it seems that the smaller the
town/school/college, the rarer good professionals are.

There are a lot of problems tangled up in in this that also need to be solved.
His model relies on students watching lectures at home. Not everyone has
broadband; some don't even have a computer. What do you do for those kids? Do
you send home DVDs? What if there is no TV? (probably rare in the US, but
still) Do you give every student a free laptop? I understand Los Altos is a
pilot program, but quoting Wikipedia: "It is one of the wealthiest places in
the United States." What do you do in the inner city or in very rural areas?

Obviously the people behind this are very smart and I'm sure they are
considering all the issues involved, this is just my brain dump after
watching.

I like the lecture-as-homework idea. It seems that less of everyone's time
will be wasted with that method. Teachers/parents will have a much better idea
of how long the "homework" will take, because the video is a fixed length +/-
the rewinding/fast forwarding. In the classroom, everyone gets the attention
they need.

Things I'm curious about: What about the students who work faster than the
rest? I guess they eventually reach the end of the curriculum for that
particular course. Do they move to the next classes' topics or is there some
set of optional topics that they can choose based on personal interest?

What kinds of tests are there? He talked about the current models
shortcomings(some student fail the test, but the class moves on anyway), but
are there any big tests or final exams on the model? Or, is it entirely
"quizzes?"

Have the teachers noticed an improvement in student behavior? Do they spend
less time on disciplinary action due to the more interactive sessions?

------
Rickasaurus
As a kid I had ADHD, I found myself staying up all night programming and
sleeping in my classes. The skills I leanred then have served me well but if
the classroom was more engaging maybe I wouldn't have had such a difficult
path.

I hope this spreads like wildfire.

------
econner
I've been looking at the Khan Academy site a bit.

I find the exercise dashboard kind of strange. Is math the only available
subject? And do you have to go through all the prerequisite exercises to
progress to the next ones?

~~~
kamens
At the moment, yes, math only. We're working to entirely cover K-12 math
before moving on.

You can jump to any area or exercise you want at any time. We suggest
exercises, but I've seen plenty of 5th graders jump to Calculus and play
around with Limits just because it's interesting/challenging and they saw
their friend try it.

~~~
econner
Ah, that's really cool and thanks for your reply. You guys are doing some
incredible work.

One thing you guys might be interested in:
<https://courseware.stanford.edu/pg/concept_map/index/41601> Daphne Koller is
a Stanford CS professor who has been teaching her course CS228 on
Probabilistic Models in a similar format for a couple of years. She has the
lectures online by chunks of about 10 minutes and then uses in-class time for
more interactive sessions. (I'm not sure if you can access the videos if you
don't have a Stanford login though)

I really think this method of learning makes so much sense for any level
student. Can't wait to see it progress!

------
tammam
I believe his method has a ton of potential. First saw Khan on This Week in
Startups: [http://thisweekin.com/thisweekin-startups/this-week-in-
start...](http://thisweekin.com/thisweekin-startups/this-week-in-
startups-94-with-salman-khan-founder-of-khan-academy/) and was impressed to
learn that Bill Gates invited him to talk. I think his method works for many
people and could change the way many people learn.

------
chsonnu
The record keeping is a double edged sword. Maybe one day institutions will
start using your Khan record as a metric for employment/admissions. And that's
the day people will start cheating. I guess this means standardized tests like
the SATs and GREs aren't going anywhere.

------
hanifvirani
The long standing ovation at the end was so well deserved. I had a smile on my
face as I watched it.

------
sili
Besides other good things about shifting teacher's work from lecturing to
actually spending time with kids that were mentioned here, I would like to
point out that some teachers are really bad lecturers. My most vivid
impressions are from early collage math courses but it is as valid for high
school as well. The professor can lead the lecture at million words a minute
constantly erasing the board so you don't have the time to copy the material,
let alone let it sink in. The professor can have heavy accent, so you spend
most of you attention just trying to understand his words.

------
pacomerh
I love this idea. I've been watching the KhanA videos for a while now, and
learning about the U.S history ;) economy, and what not (I'm from Mexico), I'd
love to see these videos in multiple languages.

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yannickmahe
I thought eLearning was something impossible to do efficiently - before I saw
this video.

A compelling argument, and a great method! I can't count the startup ideas
that could come from this.

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tRAS
I think most people miss the point that the statistics provided by the Khan
Academy is equally kick-ass as its videos. He mentions of a "teacher driven"
design process.

TDD? ;)

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teyc
I admire Khan. Although he is not unique in his approach, he is uniquely
positioned to deliver this message. By quitting his job and giving away his
time, he is an ideal ambassador to the message of "scalable pedagogy". As he
has described, if Isaac Newton had recorded his lessons on Youtube, Khan
wouldn't have to.

By giving alway classroom tools like test management and monitoring, he is
also equipping teachers to become more scalable and as he described - data
driven.

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dr_
This is great, but I wish there were some lessons on coding. Computer
programming at some basic level at least should be required of all students -
even if they don't make a career out of it, being able to work snippets of
code will come in handy across all disciplines in the future - finance,
medicine, media, or repairing that broken fridge in your e-home.

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semerda
He has great videos on his site esp on "Valuation and Investing" and "Venture
Capital and Capital Markets". After you watch those everything just makes
perfect sense.

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harscoat
Beauty of the graph at 13'50" - It is good to believe in children/people and
do sthg about it as Khan does.

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wyclif
Awesome speech. What's wrong with the YouTube video quality, though?

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thenicepostr
nice post wb. does he use prezi for his presentations?

