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I've heard countless people rave about Salman Khan and his teaching methods - both here and away from HN. The truth is, I had no idea why he and his teachings w

I've heard countless people rave about Salman Khan and his teaching methods - both here and away from HN. The truth is, I had no idea why he and his teachings were such a big deal...until now. I had seen some of his videos before and read some of the articles about the Khan Academy, but had never given them my full attention. To me, it was just another guy with his own teaching methods. But when I see him talk at TED, it makes perfect sense. Not only is he a superb speaker, he gets his points across clearly. Probably the best point of all is this one: "What I do is I assign the lectures for homework and, what used to be homework, I now have the students doing in the classroom." As radical as that may seem, this idea has TONS of potential. Do we really need teachers there in person if they are just lecturing? The real use of being there in person as a teacher is for interacting with the students. What better way to do that than by helping them with the work (i.e. homework) and letting the Khan Academy lecture when little interaction is needed. I am definitely going to hop on the bandwagon now and join everyone else in following Khan while appreciating his pure genius. In fact, the best way to describe him is to combine all the great things people here on HN have to say about him: > He's amazing. (joshu) > I really do think Sal Khan will revolutionize teaching. (solarmist) > Hero material. (MikeCapone) > Future of education. (omfut) > Really wonderful reminder of what just one person can set in motion. (runevault) > Simply amazing that a guy armed only with a tablet and a microphone can have this much impact. (keiferski) > He is a big inspiration for anyone looking to change the world. (omfut) The list could go on forever. And it's not every day you hear people talking about someone and their ideas in such a way like they are now about Khan and the Khan Academy. If people are saying it is amazing, then there's a pretty good chance that it truly is amazing.

aashpak1 16y ago
totally agree - making the self-learning part offline and creating more and better (teachers would know exactly where a particular student is having problems understanding) interactions is the best part of his model.
- solipsist 16y ago
  Yeah, the data from the students' interaction with the video could be sent back to the teachers and end up creating a comprehensive profile of each of the student's understanding on that particular topic. Then, in the classroom, the teacher would be able to walk from student to student (or form groups of students with similar strengths/weaknesses) and provide the help they needed based on their profiles. This help would be the help that relies on direct interaction between the teacher and student.
trickjarrett 16y ago
I can't convey what a difference this would have made for me in my schooling career. I was constantly bored by teachers who were slowed by others in the class, and as a result I resorted to clowning or doodling, or programming my TI-86.
ikujythujik 16y ago
Lecturers were necessary in the middle ages because of a shortage of books - so there weren't enough copies to go around. The teaching profession does occasionally take a while to catch up. This isn't exactly revolutionary - we have been doing it for centuries we call them tutorials.
andresmh 16y ago
The Khan Academy is not the future of education. Don't get me wrong, I think they're doing a superb job and I'd encourage people to contribute to their efforts. Khan is obviously a great presenter with a remarkable ability to explain complex concepts using a new medium. However, the future of education is closer to hacker culture than it is about new and better content delivery mechanisms. Let me explain. First, I totally buy the argument that a YouTube video can be a better method of delivering content than a book or even, as Kahn says, a live teacher. However, learning is much more than that. Learning is about imagining, playing, creating, sharing and reflecting (Resnick 2007, PDF: http://j.mp/gqnc6f http://j.mp/gqnc6f). To say that learning math is about watching a video and drilling on some problem set, is like saying that learning Python is about doing a tutorial and solving some exercises. Hackers know this well. You don't really learn a programming language until you build some project, especially a personally meaningful one. Creating something not only helps you learn the language but also its community, culture, practices, how to ask questions and get feedback on your work. Think about it, would you rather hire a developer that has finished some tutorials or one that has actually hacked some projects? The same logic applies to most other fields. Artists and scientists know this as well: you learn by doing in the social context of a community. Unfortunately, schooling has taken the "hacking" away from learning and has focused on improving content delivery, artificial problem-solving and test-taking. Often using technology. I liked when he mentioned that the teachers have more time to mentor students. However, their mentoring is most likely still focused on the artificial and decontextualized approach of traditional schooling. Initiatives like the Khan Academy will probably play a role in the future but to really improve education the system and the approaches should change. One should look at exemplar learning environments like the hacker communities or even the Brazilian Samba schools. Settings that are "real, socially cohesive and where experts and novices are learning" (Papert 1980, Google Books: http://j.mp/dLNbGG http://j.mp/dLNbGG). In 1971, Ivan Illich outlined an inspirational alternative educational environment where "the child grows up in a world of things, surrounded by people who serve as models for skills and values. He finds peers who challenge him to argue, to compete, to cooperate, and to understand; and if the child is lucky, he is exposed to confrontation or criticism by an experienced elder who really cares." Illich said that the four resources learners need are "things, models, peers, and elders". In his 1971 vision, Illich said that "the operation of a peer-matching network would be simple. The user would identify himself by name and address and describe the activity for which he sought a peer. A computer would send him back the names and addresses of all those who had inserted the same description. It is amazing that such a simple utility has never been used on a broad scale for publicly valued activity"(http://j.mp/hNUVV8 http://j.mp/hNUVV8). Sounds familiar? When I read Illich, I think of HN, StackExchange, and the larger ecology of spaces that hackers have created around social learning. My hope is that these and other similar approaches scale up and get adopted more broadly along with resources like the Khan Academy, OCW and others.
kul 16y ago
This is how we were taught at Oxford. The only problem was, the unmotivated/disorganised students (like myself) often didn't do the reading/studying in our own time and so had to have these extremely painful tutorials one on one with the tutor. Also, I remember when doing Economic Theory, I spent 40 hours reading/studying in a library per week and still couldn't get my head around some of the advanced math and game theory, and really wish I'd had a teacher to teach me those concepts before the tutorial where we'd go through the problems. It turns out I was lacking knowledge of some mathematical transformations that I hadn't been taught because I didn't specialise in double math when I was 16. Nevertheless, I favour this form of teaching.
- bradleyt 16y ago
  What's nice is that if the Khan academy system were implemented universally, you would have known right away that you lacked the mathematical background you needed.
  - pjscott 16y ago
    Dependency graphs are really nice things to know explicitly.
- georgi0u 16y ago
  > Also, I remember when doing Economic Theory, I spent 40 hours reading/studying in a library per week and still couldn't get my head around some of the advanced math and game theory, and really wish I'd had a teacher to teach me those concepts before the tutorial where we'd go through the problems. It turns out I was lacking knowledge of some mathematical transformations that I hadn't been taught because I didn't specialise in double math when I was 16. I think this point is actually addressed by the Khan Institute's method of teaching. Lectures are kept very high level, short, and tend to build on each other. So rather than learning in a waterfall fashion, you have the (encouraged) option to go back and learn fundamentals before proceeding. The comments section of his website is actually very good for this; for example, in your situation rather than reading a book in 3 hour stints to learn about, say, game theory, you'd instead be watching a handful of encapsulated 20 min lectures, during which, if you ever ran into trouble, you could query the community and get the more granulated information you'd need to be successful in learning the higher level concept. > This is how we were taught at Oxford. The only problem was, the unmotivated/disorganised students (like myself) often didn't do the reading/studying in our own time and so had to have these extremely painful tutorials one on one with the tutor. I actually think this idea (of which I am also a culprit) is also addressed by the Khan Institute. In normal lecture style learning environments this would happen to me, and the next day if I still didn't get the topic (due to a lack of motivation, aptitude, or both) the class would move on, and students like you and I either got screwed or forced into motivation - which one - screwed or motivated - was kind of random depending on the day. But in the Khan method, there's no reason for a student to move on if they don't get the topic, which still leaves the necessity for students like you and I to get motivated, but (in theory) completely removes the option of a student getting screwed by a class that's moving past said student's current level of comprehension.
EJE 16y ago
where are the computer science classes? they should follow the think vitamin method.

aashpak1 16y ago

totally agree - making the self-learning part offline and creating more and better (teachers would know exactly where a particular student is having problems understanding) interactions is the best part of his model.

solipsist 16y ago
Yeah, the data from the students' interaction with the video could be sent back to the teachers and end up creating a comprehensive profile of each of the student's understanding on that particular topic. Then, in the classroom, the teacher would be able to walk from student to student (or form groups of students with similar strengths/weaknesses) and provide the help they needed based on their profiles. This help would be the help that relies on direct interaction between the teacher and student.

trickjarrett 16y ago

I can't convey what a difference this would have made for me in my schooling career. I was constantly bored by teachers who were slowed by others in the class, and as a result I resorted to clowning or doodling, or programming my TI-86.

ikujythujik 16y ago

Lecturers were necessary in the middle ages because of a shortage of books - so there weren't enough copies to go around. The teaching profession does occasionally take a while to catch up. This isn't exactly revolutionary - we have been doing it for centuries we call them tutorials.

andresmh 16y ago

The Khan Academy is not the future of education. Don't get me wrong, I think they're doing a superb job and I'd encourage people to contribute to their efforts. Khan is obviously a great presenter with a remarkable ability to explain complex concepts using a new medium. However, the future of education is closer to hacker culture than it is about new and better content delivery mechanisms. Let me explain. First, I totally buy the argument that a YouTube video can be a better method of delivering content than a book or even, as Kahn says, a live teacher. However, learning is much more than that. Learning is about imagining, playing, creating, sharing and reflecting (Resnick 2007, PDF: http://j.mp/gqnc6f http://j.mp/gqnc6f). To say that learning math is about watching a video and drilling on some problem set, is like saying that learning Python is about doing a tutorial and solving some exercises. Hackers know this well. You don't really learn a programming language until you build some project, especially a personally meaningful one. Creating something not only helps you learn the language but also its community, culture, practices, how to ask questions and get feedback on your work. Think about it, would you rather hire a developer that has finished some tutorials or one that has actually hacked some projects? The same logic applies to most other fields. Artists and scientists know this as well: you learn by doing in the social context of a community. Unfortunately, schooling has taken the "hacking" away from learning and has focused on improving content delivery, artificial problem-solving and test-taking. Often using technology. I liked when he mentioned that the teachers have more time to mentor students. However, their mentoring is most likely still focused on the artificial and decontextualized approach of traditional schooling. Initiatives like the Khan Academy will probably play a role in the future but to really improve education the system and the approaches should change. One should look at exemplar learning environments like the hacker communities or even the Brazilian Samba schools. Settings that are "real, socially cohesive and where experts and novices are learning" (Papert 1980, Google Books: http://j.mp/dLNbGG http://j.mp/dLNbGG). In 1971, Ivan Illich outlined an inspirational alternative educational environment where "the child grows up in a world of things, surrounded by people who serve as models for skills and values. He finds peers who challenge him to argue, to compete, to cooperate, and to understand; and if the child is lucky, he is exposed to confrontation or criticism by an experienced elder who really cares." Illich said that the four resources learners need are "things, models, peers, and elders". In his 1971 vision, Illich said that "the operation of a peer-matching network would be simple. The user would identify himself by name and address and describe the activity for which he sought a peer. A computer would send him back the names and addresses of all those who had inserted the same description. It is amazing that such a simple utility has never been used on a broad scale for publicly valued activity"(http://j.mp/hNUVV8 http://j.mp/hNUVV8). Sounds familiar? When I read Illich, I think of HN, StackExchange, and the larger ecology of spaces that hackers have created around social learning. My hope is that these and other similar approaches scale up and get adopted more broadly along with resources like the Khan Academy, OCW and others.

kul 16y ago

This is how we were taught at Oxford. The only problem was, the unmotivated/disorganised students (like myself) often didn't do the reading/studying in our own time and so had to have these extremely painful tutorials one on one with the tutor. Also, I remember when doing Economic Theory, I spent 40 hours reading/studying in a library per week and still couldn't get my head around some of the advanced math and game theory, and really wish I'd had a teacher to teach me those concepts before the tutorial where we'd go through the problems. It turns out I was lacking knowledge of some mathematical transformations that I hadn't been taught because I didn't specialise in double math when I was 16. Nevertheless, I favour this form of teaching.

bradleyt 16y ago
What's nice is that if the Khan academy system were implemented universally, you would have known right away that you lacked the mathematical background you needed.
- pjscott 16y ago
  Dependency graphs are really nice things to know explicitly.
georgi0u 16y ago
> Also, I remember when doing Economic Theory, I spent 40 hours reading/studying in a library per week and still couldn't get my head around some of the advanced math and game theory, and really wish I'd had a teacher to teach me those concepts before the tutorial where we'd go through the problems. It turns out I was lacking knowledge of some mathematical transformations that I hadn't been taught because I didn't specialise in double math when I was 16. I think this point is actually addressed by the Khan Institute's method of teaching. Lectures are kept very high level, short, and tend to build on each other. So rather than learning in a waterfall fashion, you have the (encouraged) option to go back and learn fundamentals before proceeding. The comments section of his website is actually very good for this; for example, in your situation rather than reading a book in 3 hour stints to learn about, say, game theory, you'd instead be watching a handful of encapsulated 20 min lectures, during which, if you ever ran into trouble, you could query the community and get the more granulated information you'd need to be successful in learning the higher level concept. > This is how we were taught at Oxford. The only problem was, the unmotivated/disorganised students (like myself) often didn't do the reading/studying in our own time and so had to have these extremely painful tutorials one on one with the tutor. I actually think this idea (of which I am also a culprit) is also addressed by the Khan Institute. In normal lecture style learning environments this would happen to me, and the next day if I still didn't get the topic (due to a lack of motivation, aptitude, or both) the class would move on, and students like you and I either got screwed or forced into motivation - which one - screwed or motivated - was kind of random depending on the day. But in the Khan method, there's no reason for a student to move on if they don't get the topic, which still leaves the necessity for students like you and I to get motivated, but (in theory) completely removes the option of a student getting screwed by a class that's moving past said student's current level of comprehension.

EJE 16y ago

where are the computer science classes? they should follow the think vitamin method.