Khan Academy founder: “Helping people is more important than making money”
Sal Khan, a YouTube phenomenon, is on a stage talking to higher education professionals about how he’s disrupting their business. How he got here is an interesting story that has everything to do with money. “I can’t claim to be a Mother Teresa, but the fact that helping people is more important than making money is just reality,” he told us. In 2006, Khan was working in the world of hedge funds. To help his young cousins who were struggling with science and math concepts in grade school, he started tutoring them remotely via a series of YouTube videos. This work, which became known as the Khan Academy and has turned into his full-time job, was less about financial profit and more about helping people who desperately needed a higher quality education. Today, five years later, Khan has made more than 2,600 micro-lessons and posted them on YouTube. When he started the Khan Academy, he said, “Helping people felt good. “But it’s obvious there’s room for change.
Brain Games & Brain Training
Khan Academy Triples Unique Users To 3.5 Million
Today at The Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, Founder of Khan Academy, Salman Khan, took the stage to share a few quick stats on the growth of his online video education platform. For those unfamiliar, Khan Academy is, as John Batelle noted this afternoon, one of Bill Gates’ favorite educators. It also happens to be one of mine, but I thought you’d probably resonate a bit more with Bill Gates. But Khan Academy is the institution of Salman Khan, who brought the idea of educating young people, self-starters, people who learn at their own pace — online. While Khan is a not-for-profit organization, the Academy has received donations from The Gates Foundation and also won Google’s “Project 10^100″. It looks like all the publicity and traction Khan Academy has been getting of late is really starting to pay off, which is great to see.
College from scratch - Scratch Wiki
[ edit ] See an idea you like? Hate? Don't understand? I would try to get the important parts right, then go ahead and start it. to @cshirky from @buildership - are you familiar with Debategraph.org wiki tool to visually map and discuss issues? [ edit ] Organizational Model Partial distillation of ideas: for-profit (@openworld) students vested to degree they enrich curriculum (@openworld)+++ 3 years X 11 months (@hc)+ 1 yr required community service pre-college (@jsonin)+-- fees: 2% of lifetime income (@hc, @jthessert )-- funding/admissions like public K-12 (@studentactivism, @jsonin)- tenure limited to 8 yrs (@jakewk)+++ project-based classes (@jkeltner, @JoeBorn, @smithtk)+++ game-like classes (@schirra, @jakewk) self-directed learning emphasis on doing with learning best achieved as a byproduct (@maxmarmer) + applied labs (@digiphile) recreate published experiments (@fare) @theadamrocca Quoting "1 yr required community service pre-college" by @jsonin. @rkabir: LifeCollege: only teach life lessons.
The Cassiopeia Project: Free Science Education Online
by Maria Popova What a mysterious retired physicist has to do with the future of learning. In 2008, The Cassiopeia Project began quietly publishing high-definition videos exploring in an intelligent yet digestible manner nearly every corner of the science spectrum, and releasing them online for free. We believe that if you can visualize it, then understanding it is not far behind.” The project, operating under the slogan “No science teacher left behind,” is funded by an adamantly anonymous retired scientist who, after weighing the benefits of helping academic institutions versus helping teachers, he chose the latter and made it his mission to champion science literacy in the US. All the content is open-source and educators are encouraged to edit, remix and otherwise customize the footage. Sadly, the effort appears to be in stagnation since 2009, but we sincerely hope to see it resurface with more fantastic content. via MeFi Share on Tumblr
College 2.0: A Self-Appointed Teacher Runs a One-Man 'Academy' on YouTube - Technology
By Jeffrey R. Young The most popular educator on YouTube does not have a Ph.D. This upstart is Salman Khan, a 33-year-old who quit his job as a financial analyst to spend more time making homemade lecture videos in his home studio. "My single biggest goal is to try to deliver things the way I wish they were delivered to me," he told me recently. The resulting videos don't look or feel like typical college lectures or any of the lecture videos that traditional colleges put on their Web sites or YouTube channels. The lo-fi videos seem to work for students, many of whom have written glowing testimonials or even donated a few bucks via a PayPal link. Mr. He started with subject matter he knows best—math and engineering, which he studied as an undergraduate at MIT. If Mr. Some critics have blogged that this learn-as-you-go approach is no way to run an educational project—and they worry that the videos may contain errors or lead students astray. But to Mr. College From Scratch Mr. Mr. Mr.
Virtual Schools Booming As States Mull Warnings
DENVER -- More schoolchildren than ever are taking their classes online, using technology to avoid long commutes to school, add courses they wouldn't otherwise be able to take – and save their school districts money. But as states pour money into virtual classrooms, with an estimated 200,000 virtual K-12 students in 40 states from Washington to Wisconsin, educators are raising questions about online learning. States are taking halting steps to increase oversight, but regulation isn't moving nearly as fast as the virtual school boom. The online school debate pits traditional education backers, often teachers' unions, against lawmakers tempted by the promise of cheaper online schools and school-choice advocates who believe private companies will apply cutting-edge technology to education. Is online education as good as face-to-face teaching? Virtual education companies tout a 2009 research review conducted for the U.S. Still, virtual schooling at the K-12 level is booming. Online:
Research Center: Achievement Gap
Published: August 3, 2004 Updated: July 7, 2011 The “achievement gap” in education refers to the disparity in academic performance between groups of students. The achievement gap shows up in grades, standardized-test scores, course selection, dropout rates, and college-completion rates, among other success measures. It is most often used to describe the troubling performance gaps between African-American and Hispanic students, at the lower end of the performance scale, and their non-Hispanic white peers, and the similar academic disparity between students from low-income families and those who are better off. In the past decade, though, scholars and policymakers have begun to focus increasing attention on other achievement gaps, such as those based on sex, English-language proficiency and learning disabilities. Students’ high school course-taking patterns provide a slightly more positive progress picture. Under President Barack Obama’s Administration, the U.S. by the Annie E. Annie E.
