(video, 20 min)
A reader of the previous post sent me this amazing link. The Khan Academy offers a glimpse into a significant part of the future of education. Salman Khan started uploading video tutorials on YouTube to teach his cousins math and science. The tutorials became so popular (53 million views by May 2011) that eventually Khan quit his job as a senior analyst at a hedge fund and started the Khan Academy. In addition to the tutorials, the site offers self-paced exercises.Salman Khan and colleagues did a pilot study in 5th and 7th grade classes in Los Altos. They tested supplementing the math curriculum with video tutorials and web-based exercises, with promising results. These web-based methods do not replace traditional education. Instead they essentially automate repetitive work, such as one-size-fits-all explanations and problem solving in the classroom, leaving the teacher to do more creative work. The most valuable metric in the classroom is student-to-valuable-human-time-with-teacher ratio.
Additionally, these methods allow the students with very different learning speeds to pace their own learning. The tools in the pilot study also offer teachers deep insight into the exact mechanics of how students learn, with real-time graphical views of exactly how proficient each student is at each learning module.
The Khan Academy won a $2 million award from Google. And the inspiring talk at the TED conference ends with a standing ovation!
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