9 ms·

John Resig joins the Khan Academy

585 points by jasonrr 15y ago

GonzoVeritas 15y ago
Bill Gates calls this the future of education. I think he is correct. I am doing a project involving corporate training and this method has vast implications for my work. I also have three school age children, and they will be "attending" Khan tonight. This is the very first post I've read on HN and I'm overwhelmed by its significance. Thanks!
- aik 15y ago
  That's great. When you say "this method", could you explain what you mean? How does it have vast implications for your work? In addition, I agree that it will make a great impact in the future. However isn't labeling it as "THE future" is going a little too far for now anyway? I would like to see a study on the type of person this type of study works for. If I'm not mistaken, it's not everyone?
  - evilduck 15y ago
    I think "this method" is letting people absorb the main lecture/explanation at their own pace, freeing up teachers to focus on one on one assistance, identifying people who are struggling, focusing classes on mastery instead of minimum level competence (C students pass, but obviously have knowledge gaps), etc.
    - aik 15y ago
      Cool. I'm curious how you'll implement it? Recently I took an Agile course at work where they had a similar method -- there was a 3 hour video that everyone was supposed to watch before the course. I'd say about 10% of people watched it.
      - evilduck 15y ago
        It's not my method and I don't have any plans to implement it, I'm just parroting stuff I've heard about Khan Academy in use. I think in your case the problem was multifaceted. First, it was a 3 hour video on Agile. Excessively long, probably boring, probably unnecessary (in my own experience, the agile methods are mostly to get managers to see the light, not the programmers). Second, there was probably little penalty for not watching it either. I've been through Scrum training, it was boring and "successful completion" mostly meant sitting in a room and not doing my actual job for a few days. Failing the course would have required more effort than completing it. For schools, obviously they'll still be grading your work and ensuring mastery of the subject where not watching the lectures would probably reflect on homework and test scores pretty quickly as you advanced, they're also much shorter than 3 hours, where your attention is less likely to wander.
        aik 15y ago
        I definitely agree the problem was multifaceted. I also believe the problem runs very deep at the same time. Even if the courses were 10 minutes each like Khan, I doubt the view rate would be increased by much in this case. Also, it is true that there are no immediate and visible penalties for not watching it, though at the same time, being penalized through completely artificial means (chasing artificial targets, aka what happens in school) isn't healthy for anyone and I believe contributes to one of the major problems we're having. Thirdly, I never was ensured mastery (or even pushed towards it) in any class I ever took. I was ensured a good grade if I jumped through the right hoops just how the teacher wanted it.
palguay 15y ago
http://twitter.com/#!/jeresig/status/65450991423733760 http://twitter.com/#!/jeresig/status/65450991423733760 announcement on twitter
boazsender 15y ago
Congratulations to the Kahn Academy, and congratulations to John. I am really looking forward to you building software full time. It is going to be great for jQuery!
- MatthewPhillips 15y ago
  This is seriously the best thing that can happen for JQuery Mobile, assuming he does release some apps. If anyone can push the technology as far as it can go, it's John.
tworats 15y ago
It is awesome that Khan Academy has attracted so much top talent. Has the potential to make a real difference in world education and thus in human potential. Goes to show how much effect a relatively small investment can make when joined with amazing, driven, talented people.
- te_platt 15y ago
  I agree except for "Has the potential". It is making an improvement right now. It is hard to describe how it feels to watch my 9 year old pop off months worth of school tedium in one morning, moving up through long division into simple algebra equations. Or my 14 fill in gaps that had been confusing her for years. Comments like "oh, I get it now" or "that's not hard at all" are common.
  - armandososa 15y ago
    It's also incredible that it made me understand trigonometry at 30, after mexican education failed to got me interested in math.
  - niels_olson 15y ago
    how do you get them in front of it? I am reluctant to "make" my 9 yo or 6 yo do it, but it competes with flash games and whatever else they find online. In a related question, do you use OpenDNS or any other access controls?
    - zem 15y ago
      present it as an alternative to her textbooks, during designated study time.
    - te_platt 15y ago
      With my nine year old I said he needed to pass off one level before he could play his regular video games. He just took it from there. There is a concept of points for doing certain things. I didn't think much of it but he keeps track and somehow he cares (something like karma here I suppose). My 14 year old had a very different reaction. She just uses it to fill over gaps in what she is doing at school. I have a degree in math but no matter how gentle I try to be I think she feels embarrased to come to me for help. Maybe I get too excited and try to explain too much. Either way she is keeping up much better now. My six year old watches for a few minutes and then breaks into song and dance. I'll just let him be for a while.
gary4gar 15y ago
Noble Cause. But I am curious to know will Khan Academy give a basic salary or he working for free? in which case, I salute you Congrats!
- abbasmehdi 15y ago
  They get tons of grant money, use that for salaries.
  - AdamTReineke 15y ago
    I couldn't find a number for how much he got from the Gates Foundation, but he got $2m from Google for their 10^100 contest.
    - abbasmehdi 15y ago
      He's indicated before somewhere that he is good with $1mm/year for operating costs (I think he said something along the lines of "If KA has $1mm/yr in revenue we’re good!", think it was in the Globe and Mail). His lectures are hosted on YouTube (free) and he could crowd-source dev, design and QA. Also I think he is always going to be the only teacher - he seems to believe (not passing judgment here, just making an observation from what I 'sensed') that he's got a captivating charisma that people respond to, hence he’s best suited for conducting the lectures. I have enjoyed every lecture of his and think he has a point; he really is a good teacher. Also, from his TED talk I got that his vision is a universal classroom - very noble. He might need translation, but again, that can be crowd-sourced too.
- leftnode 15y ago
  When Bill Gates uses your product to teach his kids, asking for some grant money probably isn't much of a problem.
  - evilduck 15y ago
    I don't know their relationship, but in Salman Khan's TED Talk[1], Gates performs some closing remarks with him. In the talk, he mentions that they're doing a pilot program with the Los Altos school district[2] as well, which I'm sure wasn't for free since it involved custom development. [1] http://www.ted.com/talks/salman_khan_let_s_use_video_to_reinvent_education.html http://www.ted.com/talks/salman_khan_let_s_use_video_to_rein... [2] http://lasdandkhanacademy.edublogs.org/about/ http://lasdandkhanacademy.edublogs.org/about/
spottiness 15y ago
Wow! We're thrilled that this happened. Today is another great day for education. The greatest day was probably when Salman Khan quit his job and went home to upload his videos full time. We use Khan academy almost every day, for our children and ourselves.
kenjackson 15y ago
Congratulations John and Khan Academy! Khan Academy, as I've said before, I think is one of the most important pieces of technology I've seen. I think maybe one day on par, in terms of impact, with the web itself. Great news.
mayukh 15y ago
This is perfect. The alignment of terrifically smart, talented and passionate people to come together for a worthy cause. Congrats and wish you the best. With the recent startup boom, its sad to see some great talent spend time building little features or apps; just wish they could use their amazing talents to solve some really large problems..
chime 15y ago
> I should note that I’ve made a personal decision to scale back some other aspects of my professional life. I’m no longer accepting any new speaking engagements... It is very hard to leave/scale-back unfinished business or commitments but it is a very important step before starting something new and big. I know many creative people who have tons of projects and commitments that they can't bring themselves to leave and as a result, they never have enough time to concentrate fully on their next big things. I highly commend John for making the tough decision of leaving Mozilla and lots of personal projects so that he could do something big.
- quizbiz 15y ago
  I wish I could up-vote you to the top. Just feel like without this comment, your comment might not stand out to many.
StavrosK 15y ago
I spoke to John Resig the other day after he fixed /r/f7u12's stylesheet (he really earned his mod place!), and now I hate him with all my heart for being more successful and more of a nice guy than I am. I bet he's also more handsome. EDIT: And he's a year younger! Damn you, jeresig!
- citricsquid 15y ago
  (completely unrelated buy why is historio.us down, did you shut it down? I don't see any mention of outages on Twitter)
  - StavrosK 15y ago
    Oops, sorry, apparently the maintenance I'm doing killed some component due to low memory. I'll reboot as soon as I'm done and it'll all be back to normal!
Shakakai 15y ago
Makes me wonder what this says about Mozilla. Perhaps not the exciting place it used to be 5+ years ago?
- Symmetry 15y ago
  Given how exciting Khan Academy is, Mozilla could still be pretty darn awesome and not stack up.
  - spudlyo 15y ago
    Agreed. Mozilla may have helped change the browser landscape, but the Khan Academy could change the face of education in this country. Both worthy places to pour one's energy but I'd give the edge in excitement to KA.
    - Mafana0 15y ago
      >but the Khan Academy could change the face of education in this country. It's not just one country. I sincerely can't express my gratitude enough for Khan Academy guys, their very rich educational materials have and are helping me tremendously in my education and my career. I'm from a developing country.
    - sid0 15y ago
      Not just in the US, but in the whole world. Particularly in maths and science.
- edanm 15y ago
  In the post, he talks, quite a lot, about how awesome Mozilla is, and how it's the best place he's ever worked. And he links to the Mozilla job's page saying that he seriously recommends it.
nir 15y ago
Awesome to see someone this talented put his skills into a real, valuable product.
kodisha 15y ago
voted without reading - and i'm even not jQ or John Resig fan.
Smrchy 15y ago
I wish the Khan Academy and everybody who is working for this awesome idea and good cause all the best. It is these people that make me feel so proud of mankind. Getting the chance to work on such a project makes money and career fade far into the background. All the Good this project is doing for the world makes it worth it. And all without the need to charge for the service or display ads. Congrats John on this excellent choice for a chance to make a change.
rudasn 15y ago
If I'm not mistaken Khan Academy is still hiring: http://www.khanacademy.org/jobs/dev http://www.khanacademy.org/jobs/dev and http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2412000 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2412000 I'm sure there are many great minds in here who would love to join John and the rest of the KA team
- kamens 15y ago
  You're definitely not mistaken. Use either link -- applications welcome.
zackattack 15y ago
When are we gonna see more advanced math covered on KA? It would be great to see Fourier transform or even music theory!
- rayvega 15y ago
  Discrete mathematics is definitely what I've been waiting for.
nhebb 15y ago
I'm happy for John, and this is great news for the Khan Academy. But I have to admit my reaction was mixed about his initial plans to focus on the iPad. On one hand, this is tantamount to saying you want to ensure that rich kids have better access to educational materials. Relative to the rest of society, children of parents who can afford an iPad are probably the least needy re educational tools. On the other hand, they're probably the ones who will make the most use of the tools.
- ig1 15y ago
  You don't plan for today, you plan for five years down the line. Tablet computers are likely to become as ubiquitous as desktops or laptops, it's purely a matter of time. Tablets are a much more useable form factor in classrooms, etc.
  - sshconnection 15y ago
    I agree that tablets are going to be ubiquitous in the future, but it may not be iPads that get into the most hands. I'd like to see John put his incredible javascript knowledge to work on a great cross platform web application rather than a native iOS app.
    - jeresig 15y ago
      As I replied a few minutes ago - it absolutely will be a cross platform application using web technologies. It remains to be seen how it'll be bundled (likely using PhoneGap, I suspect) so at that point most of the major platforms are feasible.
  - nhebb 15y ago
    That line of reasoning makes sense. He specifically mentioned iPad - not tablets in general. When I think of the educational needs of tomorrow, I think of school districts like Los Angeles, where the drop out rate is ~33%. It's really hard for me to imagine a scenario where tablets are wide spread among students in the lower income areas of that district. Hopefully the iPad is just a kickoff point. One of my philosophies is that at least some part of your job should give you joy, and out of that great things can happen. Maybe iPad development is just something he wants to do for the joy of it. NB: I know that John's not a one man army, and I'm not trying to lay this all on his shoulders. I'm just thinking out loud on HN.
clu3 15y ago
I discovered Khan Academy about 1 year ago and since then the website has not changed that much, except for some polishing on the site. Here is a snapshot of the site in June 2010 http://replay.web.archive.org/20100601053141/http://www.khanacademy.org/ http://replay.web.archive.org/20100601053141/http://www.khan... The site is currently quite hard to navigate around or search. Now that even talents like John have started to join the academy, I'm pretty sure, the site will definitely provide a better experience. Good for Khan, the academy and the education system
- jacoblyles 15y ago
  Just hope they don't "pull a Craigslist" and keep a crappy UI for the sake of nostalgia, then call it "minimalism".
hendrik-xdest 15y ago
It's a bad day for Mozilla. Resig and Dion Almaer announce their leave for KA on the same day.

585 points by jasonrr 15y ago

Bill Gates calls this the future of education. I think he is correct. I am doing a project involving corporate training and this method has vast implications for my work. I also have three school age children, and they will be "attending" Khan tonight. This is the very first post I've read on HN and I'm overwhelmed by its significance. Thanks!

aik 15y ago
That's great. When you say "this method", could you explain what you mean? How does it have vast implications for your work? In addition, I agree that it will make a great impact in the future. However isn't labeling it as "THE future" is going a little too far for now anyway? I would like to see a study on the type of person this type of study works for. If I'm not mistaken, it's not everyone?
- evilduck 15y ago
  I think "this method" is letting people absorb the main lecture/explanation at their own pace, freeing up teachers to focus on one on one assistance, identifying people who are struggling, focusing classes on mastery instead of minimum level competence (C students pass, but obviously have knowledge gaps), etc.
  - aik 15y ago
    Cool. I'm curious how you'll implement it? Recently I took an Agile course at work where they had a similar method -- there was a 3 hour video that everyone was supposed to watch before the course. I'd say about 10% of people watched it.
    - evilduck 15y ago
      It's not my method and I don't have any plans to implement it, I'm just parroting stuff I've heard about Khan Academy in use. I think in your case the problem was multifaceted. First, it was a 3 hour video on Agile. Excessively long, probably boring, probably unnecessary (in my own experience, the agile methods are mostly to get managers to see the light, not the programmers). Second, there was probably little penalty for not watching it either. I've been through Scrum training, it was boring and "successful completion" mostly meant sitting in a room and not doing my actual job for a few days. Failing the course would have required more effort than completing it. For schools, obviously they'll still be grading your work and ensuring mastery of the subject where not watching the lectures would probably reflect on homework and test scores pretty quickly as you advanced, they're also much shorter than 3 hours, where your attention is less likely to wander.
      - aik 15y ago
        I definitely agree the problem was multifaceted. I also believe the problem runs very deep at the same time. Even if the courses were 10 minutes each like Khan, I doubt the view rate would be increased by much in this case. Also, it is true that there are no immediate and visible penalties for not watching it, though at the same time, being penalized through completely artificial means (chasing artificial targets, aka what happens in school) isn't healthy for anyone and I believe contributes to one of the major problems we're having. Thirdly, I never was ensured mastery (or even pushed towards it) in any class I ever took. I was ensured a good grade if I jumped through the right hoops just how the teacher wanted it.

palguay 15y ago

http://twitter.com/#!/jeresig/status/65450991423733760 http://twitter.com/#!/jeresig/status/65450991423733760 announcement on twitter

boazsender 15y ago

Congratulations to the Kahn Academy, and congratulations to John. I am really looking forward to you building software full time. It is going to be great for jQuery!

MatthewPhillips 15y ago
This is seriously the best thing that can happen for JQuery Mobile, assuming he does release some apps. If anyone can push the technology as far as it can go, it's John.

tworats 15y ago

It is awesome that Khan Academy has attracted so much top talent. Has the potential to make a real difference in world education and thus in human potential. Goes to show how much effect a relatively small investment can make when joined with amazing, driven, talented people.

te_platt 15y ago
I agree except for "Has the potential". It is making an improvement right now. It is hard to describe how it feels to watch my 9 year old pop off months worth of school tedium in one morning, moving up through long division into simple algebra equations. Or my 14 fill in gaps that had been confusing her for years. Comments like "oh, I get it now" or "that's not hard at all" are common.
- armandososa 15y ago
  It's also incredible that it made me understand trigonometry at 30, after mexican education failed to got me interested in math.
- niels_olson 15y ago
  how do you get them in front of it? I am reluctant to "make" my 9 yo or 6 yo do it, but it competes with flash games and whatever else they find online. In a related question, do you use OpenDNS or any other access controls?
  - zem 15y ago
    present it as an alternative to her textbooks, during designated study time.
  - te_platt 15y ago
    With my nine year old I said he needed to pass off one level before he could play his regular video games. He just took it from there. There is a concept of points for doing certain things. I didn't think much of it but he keeps track and somehow he cares (something like karma here I suppose). My 14 year old had a very different reaction. She just uses it to fill over gaps in what she is doing at school. I have a degree in math but no matter how gentle I try to be I think she feels embarrased to come to me for help. Maybe I get too excited and try to explain too much. Either way she is keeping up much better now. My six year old watches for a few minutes and then breaks into song and dance. I'll just let him be for a while.

gary4gar 15y ago

Noble Cause. But I am curious to know will Khan Academy give a basic salary or he working for free? in which case, I salute you Congrats!

abbasmehdi 15y ago
They get tons of grant money, use that for salaries.
- AdamTReineke 15y ago
  I couldn't find a number for how much he got from the Gates Foundation, but he got $2m from Google for their 10^100 contest.
  - abbasmehdi 15y ago
    He's indicated before somewhere that he is good with $1mm/year for operating costs (I think he said something along the lines of "If KA has $1mm/yr in revenue we’re good!", think it was in the Globe and Mail). His lectures are hosted on YouTube (free) and he could crowd-source dev, design and QA. Also I think he is always going to be the only teacher - he seems to believe (not passing judgment here, just making an observation from what I 'sensed') that he's got a captivating charisma that people respond to, hence he’s best suited for conducting the lectures. I have enjoyed every lecture of his and think he has a point; he really is a good teacher. Also, from his TED talk I got that his vision is a universal classroom - very noble. He might need translation, but again, that can be crowd-sourced too.
leftnode 15y ago
When Bill Gates uses your product to teach his kids, asking for some grant money probably isn't much of a problem.
- evilduck 15y ago
  I don't know their relationship, but in Salman Khan's TED Talk[1], Gates performs some closing remarks with him. In the talk, he mentions that they're doing a pilot program with the Los Altos school district[2] as well, which I'm sure wasn't for free since it involved custom development. [1] http://www.ted.com/talks/salman_khan_let_s_use_video_to_reinvent_education.html http://www.ted.com/talks/salman_khan_let_s_use_video_to_rein... [2] http://lasdandkhanacademy.edublogs.org/about/ http://lasdandkhanacademy.edublogs.org/about/

spottiness 15y ago

Wow! We're thrilled that this happened. Today is another great day for education. The greatest day was probably when Salman Khan quit his job and went home to upload his videos full time. We use Khan academy almost every day, for our children and ourselves.

kenjackson 15y ago

Congratulations John and Khan Academy! Khan Academy, as I've said before, I think is one of the most important pieces of technology I've seen. I think maybe one day on par, in terms of impact, with the web itself. Great news.

mayukh 15y ago

This is perfect. The alignment of terrifically smart, talented and passionate people to come together for a worthy cause. Congrats and wish you the best. With the recent startup boom, its sad to see some great talent spend time building little features or apps; just wish they could use their amazing talents to solve some really large problems..

chime 15y ago

> I should note that I’ve made a personal decision to scale back some other aspects of my professional life. I’m no longer accepting any new speaking engagements... It is very hard to leave/scale-back unfinished business or commitments but it is a very important step before starting something new and big. I know many creative people who have tons of projects and commitments that they can't bring themselves to leave and as a result, they never have enough time to concentrate fully on their next big things. I highly commend John for making the tough decision of leaving Mozilla and lots of personal projects so that he could do something big.

quizbiz 15y ago
I wish I could up-vote you to the top. Just feel like without this comment, your comment might not stand out to many.

StavrosK 15y ago

I spoke to John Resig the other day after he fixed /r/f7u12's stylesheet (he really earned his mod place!), and now I hate him with all my heart for being more successful and more of a nice guy than I am. I bet he's also more handsome. EDIT: And he's a year younger! Damn you, jeresig!

citricsquid 15y ago
(completely unrelated buy why is historio.us down, did you shut it down? I don't see any mention of outages on Twitter)
- StavrosK 15y ago
  Oops, sorry, apparently the maintenance I'm doing killed some component due to low memory. I'll reboot as soon as I'm done and it'll all be back to normal!

Shakakai 15y ago

Makes me wonder what this says about Mozilla. Perhaps not the exciting place it used to be 5+ years ago?

Symmetry 15y ago
Given how exciting Khan Academy is, Mozilla could still be pretty darn awesome and not stack up.
- spudlyo 15y ago
  Agreed. Mozilla may have helped change the browser landscape, but the Khan Academy could change the face of education in this country. Both worthy places to pour one's energy but I'd give the edge in excitement to KA.
  - Mafana0 15y ago
    >but the Khan Academy could change the face of education in this country. It's not just one country. I sincerely can't express my gratitude enough for Khan Academy guys, their very rich educational materials have and are helping me tremendously in my education and my career. I'm from a developing country.
  - sid0 15y ago
    Not just in the US, but in the whole world. Particularly in maths and science.
edanm 15y ago
In the post, he talks, quite a lot, about how awesome Mozilla is, and how it's the best place he's ever worked. And he links to the Mozilla job's page saying that he seriously recommends it.

nir 15y ago

Awesome to see someone this talented put his skills into a real, valuable product.

kodisha 15y ago

voted without reading - and i'm even not jQ or John Resig fan.

Smrchy 15y ago

I wish the Khan Academy and everybody who is working for this awesome idea and good cause all the best. It is these people that make me feel so proud of mankind. Getting the chance to work on such a project makes money and career fade far into the background. All the Good this project is doing for the world makes it worth it. And all without the need to charge for the service or display ads. Congrats John on this excellent choice for a chance to make a change.

rudasn 15y ago

If I'm not mistaken Khan Academy is still hiring: http://www.khanacademy.org/jobs/dev http://www.khanacademy.org/jobs/dev and http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2412000 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2412000 I'm sure there are many great minds in here who would love to join John and the rest of the KA team

kamens 15y ago
You're definitely not mistaken. Use either link -- applications welcome.

zackattack 15y ago

When are we gonna see more advanced math covered on KA? It would be great to see Fourier transform or even music theory!

rayvega 15y ago
Discrete mathematics is definitely what I've been waiting for.

nhebb 15y ago

I'm happy for John, and this is great news for the Khan Academy. But I have to admit my reaction was mixed about his initial plans to focus on the iPad. On one hand, this is tantamount to saying you want to ensure that rich kids have better access to educational materials. Relative to the rest of society, children of parents who can afford an iPad are probably the least needy re educational tools. On the other hand, they're probably the ones who will make the most use of the tools.

ig1 15y ago
You don't plan for today, you plan for five years down the line. Tablet computers are likely to become as ubiquitous as desktops or laptops, it's purely a matter of time. Tablets are a much more useable form factor in classrooms, etc.
- sshconnection 15y ago
  I agree that tablets are going to be ubiquitous in the future, but it may not be iPads that get into the most hands. I'd like to see John put his incredible javascript knowledge to work on a great cross platform web application rather than a native iOS app.
  - jeresig 15y ago
    As I replied a few minutes ago - it absolutely will be a cross platform application using web technologies. It remains to be seen how it'll be bundled (likely using PhoneGap, I suspect) so at that point most of the major platforms are feasible.
- nhebb 15y ago
  That line of reasoning makes sense. He specifically mentioned iPad - not tablets in general. When I think of the educational needs of tomorrow, I think of school districts like Los Angeles, where the drop out rate is ~33%. It's really hard for me to imagine a scenario where tablets are wide spread among students in the lower income areas of that district. Hopefully the iPad is just a kickoff point. One of my philosophies is that at least some part of your job should give you joy, and out of that great things can happen. Maybe iPad development is just something he wants to do for the joy of it. NB: I know that John's not a one man army, and I'm not trying to lay this all on his shoulders. I'm just thinking out loud on HN.

clu3 15y ago

I discovered Khan Academy about 1 year ago and since then the website has not changed that much, except for some polishing on the site. Here is a snapshot of the site in June 2010 http://replay.web.archive.org/20100601053141/http://www.khanacademy.org/ http://replay.web.archive.org/20100601053141/http://www.khan... The site is currently quite hard to navigate around or search. Now that even talents like John have started to join the academy, I'm pretty sure, the site will definitely provide a better experience. Good for Khan, the academy and the education system

jacoblyles 15y ago
Just hope they don't "pull a Craigslist" and keep a crappy UI for the sake of nostalgia, then call it "minimalism".

hendrik-xdest 15y ago

It's a bad day for Mozilla. Resig and Dion Almaer announce their leave for KA on the same day.