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The Khan Academy And The Future Of Learning

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Salman Khan is a video sensation, teaching math, physics, and other subjects. We’ll talk with a most unlikely video star.

The Khan Academy videos on YouTube are viewed by millions of students around the world. (Youtube)
The Khan Academy videos on YouTube are viewed by millions of students around the world. (Youtube)

Salman Khan sent a video to his young cousin online, to help her with her math homework. A simple explanation, quickly sketched out. Then another and another, up on YouTube.

The next thing you know, a lot of other kids were paying attention. Using those math videos. Millions of kids. Including Bill Gates’s kids.

Now, Salman Khan is an education rock star, with videos up on math and chemistry and the Napoleonic Wars. Teachers are keying in. Classrooms. And it’s all free.

This hour On Point: we talk with the rock star famous video math teacher, Salman Khan.
-Tom Ashbrook

Guests

Salman Khan, founder and executive director of the Khan Academy.

Courtney Cadwell, 7th grade math teacher at Egan Junior High School.

Peter Norvig, Director of Research at Google. He is teaching a free online course "Introduction to Artificial Intelligence" at Stanford University this fall.

From Tom's Reading List

The Chronicle of Higher Education "Salman Khan, a former financial analyst, has created 1,400 educational videos and posted them to YouTube. "My single biggest goal is to try to deliver things the way I wish they were delivered to me," he says."

Wired "For years, teachers like Thordarson have complained about the frustrations of teaching to the “middle” of the class. They stand at the whiteboard, trying to get 25 or more students to learn the same stuff at the same pace. And, of course, it never really works: Advanced kids get bored and tune out, lagging ones get lost and tune out, and pretty soon half the class isn’t paying attention. Since the rise of personal computers in the early ’80s, educators have hoped that technology could solve this problem by offering lessons tailored to each kid. Schools have blown millions, maybe billions, of dollars on sophisticated classroom technology, but the effort has been in vain."

More

Salman Khan talk at TED 2011
http://youtu.be/gM95HHI4gLk

U.S. History Overview 3 - WWII to Vietnam
http://youtu.be/j2eKaxU-8kA

Elements and Atoms
http://youtu.be/IFKnq9QM6_A

Bill Gates talks about the Khan Academy at Aspen Ideas Festival 2010
http://youtu.be/6A07Pj71TUA

PBS NewsHour piece on the Khan Academy and Salman Khan
http://youtu.be/1kly25zVbco

This program aired on August 17, 2011.

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