Podcast Reflection #9 Salman Khan: Let’s use video to reinvent education.

In this podcast reflection I watched a video of Salman Khan talking about the website he started, Khan Academy.  Salman said that he started creating math videos and posting them on YouTube to help his cousins in another city.  These videos were meant to tutor his cousins, but still allow them to learn at their own pace.  After he started posting these math videos he started getting positive feedback from all kinds of people.  More people than just his cousins were using Salman’s math videos to learn math. 

Because of all the good feedback Salman decided to quite his job and start a non-profit organization called Khan Academy.  He has since created 2200 videos from very basic math to advanced calculus, physics, and finance.  All of these videos are posted on his website so kids can learn at their own pace.  Salman’s goal for Khan Academy is to have it used in schools to help kids get a firm grasp of concepts.  He wants teachers to remove the one-size-fits-all lectures and let kids learn at their own pace.  Salman says one of the reasons that good students all of the sudden start failing higher-level math classes is because they have “Swiss Cheese” type holes in their basic understanding of concepts.  He claims that Khan Academy will help to fill those holes from the start.                

Salman has taken his 2200 videos to the next level.  He has written exercises that generate as many questions as the students need until they get that particular concept.  When the students get 10 in a row then the exercises move on to more difficult concepts.  The students can use Salman’s videos to learn the concepts before they practice them. 

A Los Altos school is actually using this free program in their math classes.  The students come into class, watch the videos, and then do exercises.  Every student can work at his/her own pace.  The teacher can look at a dashboard to monitor progress.  Each row on the dashboard is a student and each column is a concept.  Green means the student has mastered the concept, blue means they are getting it but need more practice, and red mean they are stuck.  With this teachers can go right to the students that are stuck.  But before the teacher intervenes she can look at all of the data that Khan Academy has collected on the student to try and pinpoint the problem.  This way the interaction between the student and teacher can be as positive as possible.    

I think this is a wonderful tool.  It could really transform math education.  My favorite part about this tool is students can work at their own pace!  They don’t have to be embarrassed by having the entire class go ahead of them just because they don’t understand something.  I also like all of the information that Kahn Academy generates about each student.  Teachers can really monitor what the students are actually doing.