
Bill Gates Enrolls His Kids In Khan Academy - cwan
http://money.cnn.com/2010/08/23/technology/sal_khan_academy.fortune/index.htm
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tommynazareth
I don't see how Khan academy is truly 'controversial', but obviously it is
threatening enough to the status quo for people to try and frame it in a
controversial light.

Since learning is my greatest love, school has always been my greatest enemy.
I've been enamored with the Khan Academy from about the first 30 seconds of
the first video I watched.

I've come across a few references to the idea that the biggest factor in
education is the skill of the teacher, and that there is no way of guessing
which teachers will be better than others. Apparently, there is no correlation
between teaching ability and experience or education level. The Khan Academy
model lets us leverage the impact of the greatest teachers and make excellent
education available to anyone who wants it.

[edit: typo]

~~~
thethimble
As a student at UCLA I can say that I have learned more from a handful of
Khan's Calculus and Linear Algebra video tutorials than I have from several
quarters worth of math courses at school.

Clearly there is controversy in this statement. Conservatives insist that
receiving a "quality education" at the university level should cost $40k+ a
hear. A man that shatters this notion by providing free videos superior to
many university courses cannot do so without creating an uproar from the old-
fashioned.

In any case, Khan has done a great service to this world. I hope this
publicity will help his videos reach the corners of the world.

~~~
keithwarren
I am a conservative/libertarian and dont think university level education
should cost 40K per year. I have no idea where you got that from or why you
injected politics into this. If anything the university establishment is
overwhelmingly liberal and would be the one taking issue with this.

~~~
donaq
Let's not forget the fact that "conservative" is an actual word in the
language and that it means "opposed to change". The change here would be not
paying 40k for a university education, and arguing for preserving the status
quo would by definition be a conservative position to adopt. I did not read
anything political in your parent post, though I could be wrong, but in any
case, why the knee-jerk reaction?

*I am not from the US and the word "conservative" does not carry political connotations for me.

~~~
keithwarren
He said he went to UCLA (so I knew he was from the states or at least
accustomed to the culture/lingo), he also used the word 'Conservatives' as a
label for a group of people which given normal conversational English here in
the states means he is referring to people who adopt a certain political
position.

For the record, conservative is actually a pretty poor adjective for the US
political movement that bears the name. While some old fuddy-duddy white dudes
may hanker for the days of old and wish we could go back - most people my age
are 'conservatives' because we are against the growth of government and its
encroachment into our affairs. We dont want to conserve anything, we want to
change it and make it better.

~~~
hugh3
I think political labelling, especially in the US, is fundamentally broken.
"Conservatism" isn't really about not changing things, while "Liberalism" in
the US sense has only a little in common with its historical meaning
(sometimes called "classical liberalism").

Meanwhile, "progressives" have somehow managed to capture a label which is
pretty much an unalloyed good, even though many folks would think that the
kind of "progress" which "progressives" want is not progress in the right
direction.

It ought to be possible to reframe the debate, but unfortunately that would
require people to fully and honestly comprehend the differences between
various political ideologies, and very few people seem interested in
understanding what their political opponents _actually_ believe.

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mcobrien
If the Khan Academy was new to you too, it's a giant library of training
videos produced by one clever guy, Sal Khan. Subjects range from algebra to
chemistry, finance and lots more. Looks great.

<http://khanacademy.org/>

[http://khanexercises.appspot.com/video/raising-money-for-
a-s...](http://khanexercises.appspot.com/video/raising-money-for-a-startup)

~~~
jules
It's great. I wish there was something like this on higher level subjects. The
pace of learning when sitting in a lecture is depressingly low.

~~~
sambe
I agree completely - I tried a couple on subjects I didn't know much about and
found them slow. But I think this is perhaps a more complex problem - even
advanced lectures at university sometimes seemed so slow as to be boring, even
when I found the overall topic quite difficult. Pacing needs to change during
lecture according to the individual maybe? Only easy solution is 1:1 teaching
I'd guess.

~~~
jules
I think the 10 minute lectures are a big improvement already. You can skip
things you already know and even if you watch them all the pace is quite a bit
higher than university lectures.

One thing that would be absolutely fantastic is if there were physics lectures
that don't only list the facts but explain how the famous physicist got there.
For example in my quantum mechanics course they just put the Schrodinger
equation on page 1 and then derive things from that, never even mentioning
experiments. Surely that is not how Schrodinger did it. And frankly this way
of teaching is not very convincing. You get the feeling you're just learning a
bunch of stupid mathematical tricks.

This also applies to mathematical lectures. I'd love to see theorems
demonstrated experimentally and explain how the mathematician that got the
theorem invented it. For example if we prove that the number of primes less
than n is roughly n/ln(n) it would be lovely to have that demonstrated by
writing a computer program that counts the primes less than n (or do this as
an exercise), or to have some heuristic reasoning as to why it's true. This
shows that the theorem is really saying something about our universe, instead
of having just a bunch of steps in a proof.

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sbaqai
This has to be the most disruptive startups around. The videos are always
applauded, but I think not as many people know of the web applications Khan
has built for some of his videos.

I urge everyone to watch this video:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRf6XiEZ_Y8>

Khan lays out the future development goals for Khan Academy. There's software,
peer-to-peer learning, and better allocation of teacher resources.

It makes me realize that the way education is taught right now has to be one
of the most archaic traditions.

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breck
Sidenote - Khan Academy is hiring:
<http://sfbay.craigslist.org/pen/eng/1920729182.html>

~~~
benatkin
Cool! I hope they can get a better way of drawing text on the videos. It gets
a bit illegible in this one:

[http://www.khanacademy.org/video/introduction-to-
differentia...](http://www.khanacademy.org/video/introduction-to-differential-
equations)

~~~
winthrowe
That is one of the older videos done with MS Paint. there are newer ones
recorded in high definition with other software that I have never seen any
legibility problems. I believe he intends to redo the older videos in high def
with the newer software, but that has to be balanced against actually making
new videos.

~~~
dantheman
Redoing the videos could be done by someone else though -- the audio is
normally pretty good.

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jacquesm
Between the Khan academy and wikipedia, open source and a whole bunch of other
things the internet has realized a lot of its potential.

That the rest is turning in to a giant billboard is a pity, but those few
sites and the open source movement make it more than worth it.

They're some of the best things to come out of all this and for the most part
they were completely unpredictable.

The Khan academy is _the_ use case for youtube to put forward as to why they
exist. There are many more, but hardly any on that level of dedication and
quality of content.

Wikipedia does the same thing for text and has left 'old' encyclopedias in the
dust.

Now we need something similar for scientific papers that develops real
traction, so that those that use for instance the Khan academy have access to
all the underlying materials.

~~~
mkramlich
arxiv.org may be turning into that for sci papers

anyone in science care to chime in?

~~~
woodson
For the less "sciency" science of Generative Linguistics, there is another
arxiv.org-style repository at <http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz>.

People in this scientific community are quite aware of the advantages that
these kind of open repositories bring to their disciplines.

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bcrawl
Here is an interview with Khan done at Mixergy. Awesome guy.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQtXHp5wXLE&feature=chann...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQtXHp5wXLE&feature=channel)

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hop
I keep thinking he could use a better/smoother drawing method. A way to 2x the
speed would be good for my attention span as well.

Edit: looks like newer videos have better rendering -
[http://www.khanacademy.org/video/linear-algebra---
eigenvecto...](http://www.khanacademy.org/video/linear-algebra---eigenvectors-
and-eigenspaces-for-a-3x3-matrix) versus
[http://khanexercises.appspot.com/video/raising-money-for-
a-s...](http://khanexercises.appspot.com/video/raising-money-for-a-startup)

~~~
pjscott
A way to multiply the speed by 1.4x or 2x would be amazing. I mean, without
using a Flash video downloader and then viewing the downloaded videos in VLC
at higher speed; that's too much trouble for something that should be nigh-
effortless.

~~~
yesbabyyes
Flowplayer can play at double speed. It can also play YouTube videos, so it
should be a pretty easy hack.

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100k
I had not heard of Khan Academy before today. I'm impressed by the breadth of
his knowledge. He's a math expert so I understand that, but being able to
lecture on a high school level on all the other topics on the site is pretty
amazing.

I checked out one of the videos on the Napoleonic wars. It's a subject I have
interest in and have read about, but there's no way I could give a lecture on
it. Khan gave a very nicely prepared lecture with plenty of details.

~~~
elai
Would you call his college level courses (high school in some countries) high
school level lectures? He doesn't really skip rigour compared to any other
college math course at that level.

~~~
jules
I'd call most of the math lectures, except the later calculus and differential
equations and linear algebra lectures high school (or lower) level. For
college level you'd expect a more rigorous treatment of limits and integrals
for example. The videos do seem excellent as an intuitive explanation.

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sekou
I truly believe that stuff like Khan Academy is a part of the real future of
education.

~~~
revorad
If you listen to Sal's talks or read some tesimonials, you will find it is a
very real part of education already. I hope the work of Khan Academy keeps
growing organically on its own merit and is not institutionalised in anyway.

~~~
sigzero
I have not done either of those. I did watch a couple of his math videos on
the site. It just so happens that we are teaching our son math this year. What
great timing for this post. The videos were very good. I had my son watch the
the "Division 1" video for a bit and he was tracking with it very well. Kudos
to Khan Academy.

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elai
Gates should donate to khan, even if its a few thousand.

~~~
tlholaday
You can donate to khan, even if it's a dollar.

~~~
elai
Oh I already have :)

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Empact
IMO, of the various videos & podcasts of his I've found, this is the most
thought-provoking & in-depth:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1C7FH7El35w>

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pragmatic
One downside. The wealthy (like the Gate's) will have a harder time signalling
their wealth if their children don't matriculate in a prestigious
academy/school. Will Gates refuse the high priced tuition at Harvard in favor
of a free internet school?

Or more likely, he'll simply augment his children's already (probably)
incredible education with some online lectures.

I don't think Harvard et al are in any danger yet. Too much vested in the
current status quo. Again back to the social signals, a cocktail party, were
did you go to school, etc. Unless you are uber-rich, this is important.

~~~
eru
Gates is ueber-rich.

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nasalter
John Udell ran a very interesting interview with Salman Khan:
<http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail4386.html>

~~~
dws
The interview with Udell theorizes a bit on why Khan's approach works. Key
bits: he approaches subjects conversationally; he doesn't appear in the
videos, which reduces distraction; most of his video segments last 10 minutes,
which is at about the point where attention gives out; the technology lets
people pause the lessons to look words up, something you can't do in a
classroom.

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gojomo
I have a few pet links I always post when this sort of radical refactoring of
education is discussed. Khan is doing via the net something a lot like a
'tracks and clusters' concept David Gelernter pushed in the 2009 Edge essays:

<http://edge.org/q2009/q09_9.html#gelernter>

Roger Schank's ideas about just-in-time, story-centric curricula may also be
interesting:

<http://www.edge.org/q2009/q09_print.html#schank>

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tommynazareth
Hopefully, Khan, and the people he inspires, can work towards a solution to
the larger problem in making education accessible to everyone: while the
resources for education are readily available to anyone who can get to a
public library, the culture of the least educated people often prohibits self-
improvement.

I don't mean this to be a prejudiced statement, I understand there are
prejudices and nuances, but I live in a very blue collar neighborhood, and I
hang out in the library and interact with the middle school and high school
students here. The percentage of people in my town who would feel comfortable
admitting an interest in watching a Khan Academy video is very low.

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tocomment
I love watching the videos on that site, but I find a month later it's like I
never saw the video. I'll revert back to not knowing how the immune system
works for example. Any memory/learning tips for that?

~~~
gms
You lose what you don't use. This is normal.

~~~
sp332
To be specific: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forgetting_curve>

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danilocampos
I am so giddy excited for this. I'm going to do this every night for half an
hour until I reclaim math as a subject I understand.

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zmmmmm
I think this guy deserves some kind of posthumous Nobel prize if he really
keeps this up, as he states he intends to, "until he dies" (ok, we don't have
to wait until he dies).

Cliched line but true ... : things like this restore my faith in humanity.

~~~
antipaganda
That won't be happening. The Nobel Prize cannot be given to a dead person.
It's in the rules.

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greenlblue
Khan Academy is awesome and I hope more people take notice of what he is
doing.

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kvs
I am now reading The Fourth Paraidgm in which Mark Abbott talks about "A new
path for science?" where he says discoveries and teaching will happen at the
"edges." I think Khan Academy is a good example.

~~~
aik
I'm reading the same book. What in particular brought you to the book if you
don't mind me asking?

~~~
kvs
A friend of mine recommended that I read it and find it interesting. He was
right.

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nav
Had a bit of time to kill. So quickly put together a quick re-design. Would
love to get thoughts. <http://screencast.com/t/MWMyNzRi>

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bliss
Khan!

~~~
bliss
i regret nothing ;-)

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rick_2047
OK this may get me a few downmods but I just have to say it.Before you click
that down arrow, hear me out please.

There is no denying that what Mr. Khan is doing is fantastic. But it would be
wrong to de-emphasis the value that a community of learners adds to your
education, like a university or a college. I am not a conservative (I not
exactly old enough to be a conservative), but I see the point in the
university model. First of all, I am not for the high fees and the
bureaucracy, nor am I for the heavy course work with no explorations and
grades for minimal work. I cannot loath them enough. But why do you want to
take away the community that a place like the university would generate?

You do not want to be a lone wolf just watching a few tutorial videos and call
it an education. We all know we learn more from each other than from anyone of
the faculty members. (Here I am talking about students who really want to
learn, not the one's who just want the elite degree. Thought the number is
less, but it may increase if we work on making the system reward excellence
rather than exam papers).

Also you may be able establish a lab for UG studies of software engineering or
electronics (upto a certain extent), but subjects like mechanical engineering
and Instrumentation & Control require quite expensive labs. Not feasible for
an individual to buy.

Why not pool many student's money and buy those. We would need a common place
to meet, so lets buy some buildings. Hey we would definitely need recreation
and food, so lets make a recreational centre and a canteen. All this can be
managed by students, but if not lets hire some MBA's to manage all this. WALA
you have a ditto university but without bureaucracy.

~~~
elai
And again, the community of learners can be better found in for quite a few on
the internet, (especially tech fields) than a random sampling of a university
classroom. Plus stuff like tech can be very solitary for large periods of
time.

~~~
rick_2047
I am not concerned about the tutorial sessions, but heck my main concern is
labs. How can you have a Bridge construction or fluid dynamics lab at our
home?

------
georgecmu
I'm not sure why one would choose lectures narrated by a single guy without
expertise in any of the topics over real lectures given by world-class faculty
and researchers.

Berkeley, MIT, Yale and other top universities in the past decade have made
hundreds of courses available in audio and video form. I've been hooked on
Berkeley courses for a few years now, actually wishing sometimes that my
commute were longer.

~~~
ewanmcteagle
Most professors at those institutions care very little about the teaching part
of their job. The incentives they face make it that way.

~~~
georgecmu
Do you know this from personal experience or is it just one of those things
that "everyone knows"?

My experience of both real-life lectures and podcasted ones suggests
otherwise.

~~~
lftl
Podcasted lectures probably show an enormous selection bias, in that
professors who don't care about teaching probably have no desire to make their
lectures available to a wider audience. That aside I will concur that
"professors don't like to teach" is probably much more anecdotal than evidence
backed.

~~~
danielford
You also have to be pretty confident about your teaching ability to put that
stuff up on the internet for everyone to see. I'd like to put some of my
lectures online in a year or two, but currently they don't meet the Khan
standard.

Regarding research professors, the chair of the department I was a graduate
student at once said that your teaching can only hurt your career; it can
never help it.

