Khan Academy
Encyclopedia
The Khan Academy is a not-for-profit educational organization, created in 2006 by Bangladeshi American
educator Salman Khan
, a graduate of MIT. With the stated mission
of "providing a high quality education to anyone, anywhere", the website supplies a free online collection of more than 2,700 micro lectures via video tutorials stored on YouTube
teaching Mathematics
, History
, Healthcare & Medicine
, Finance
, Physics
, Chemistry
, Biology
, Astronomy
, Economics
, Cosmology
and Computer Science
.
, was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. After earning three degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(a BS in mathematics, a BS in electrical engineering and computer science, and an MS in electrical engineering and computer science) he pursued an MBA from Harvard Business School
. In late 2004, Khan began tutoring his cousin Nadia in mathematics using Yahoo!
's Doodle notepad. When other relatives and friends sought similar help, he decided it would be more practical to distribute the tutorials on YouTube
. Their popularity there and the testimonials of appreciative students prompted Khan to quit his job in finance as a hedge fund analyst at Wohl Capital Management in 2009 and focus on the tutorials (then released under the moniker "Khan Academy") full-time. Bill Gates
once said that "I'd say we've moved about 160 IQ points from the hedge fund category to the teaching-many-people-in-a-leveraged-way category. It was a good day his wife let him quit his job."
The project relies on donations for funding. Khan Academy is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization, now with significant backing from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
and Google
. Several people have made $10,000 contributions; Ann and John Doerr
gave $100,000; total revenue is about $150,000 in donations. Additionally, it also earned $2,000 a month from ads on the Web site in 2010, until Khan Academy ceased to accept advertising . As of September 2010, Google
announced they would be providing the Khan Academy with $2 million to support the creation of more courses and to enable the Khan Academy to translate their core library into the world’s most widely spoken languages, as part of their Project 10100.
graphic Interactive Pen Display tablet hardware and a software category called image editing and natural painting software, specifically freeware SmoothDraw 3, a free software download, which are then simultaneously recorded and produced now using $299 PC screen capture/video recording & editing software from Camtasia Studio
and a quality high-speed USB microphone, then uploaded to YouTube, where Khan Academy now has its own YouTube Channel, as well as its own progress tracking website, complete with practice exercise problems, coaches, tools for leveraging & empowering classroom teachers, "Map of Knowledge", classroom data, class profiles, individual stats and & tracking built-in, earned "Badges Worth Bragging About", and Pilot School demonstration project applications for schools and school districts. Logging into the site requires either a Google
or a Facebook
account.
Khan eschewed a format that would involve a person standing by a whiteboard, desiring instead to present the learning concepts as if "popping out of a darkened universe and into one's mind with a voice out of nowhere" and in a way akin to sitting next to someone and working out a problem on a sheet of paper: "If you're watching a guy do a problem [while] thinking out loud, I think people find that more valuable and not as daunting." Offline versions of the videos have been distributed by not-for-profit groups to rural areas in Asia, Latin America, and Africa. While the Khan Academy's current content is mainly concerned with pre-college mathematics and physics, Khan states that his long-term goal is to provide "tens of thousands of videos in pretty much every subject" and to create "the world's first free, world-class virtual school where anyone can learn anything."
The Khan Academy also provides a web-based exercise system that generates problems for students based on skill level and performance. Khan believes his academy points an opportunity to overhaul the traditional classroom by using software to create tests, grade assignments, highlight the challenges of certain students, and encourage those doing well to help struggling classmates. The tutorials are touted as helpful because, among other factors, they can be paused by students, while a classroom lecture cannot be.
The success of his low-tech, conversational tutorials—Khan's face never appears, and viewers see only his unadorned step-by-step doodles and diagrams on an electronic blackboard—suggests an educational transformation that de-emphasizes classrooms, campus and administrative infrastructure, and even brand-name instructors.
Not-for-profit partner organizations are making the content available outside of YouTube. The Lewis Center for Educational Research
, which is affiliated with NASA
, is bringing the content into community college
s and charter school
s around the United States. World Possible is creating offline snapshots of the content to distribute in rural, developing regions with limited or no access to the Internet.
Khan has stated a vision of turning the academy into a charter school:
Bangladeshi American
Bangladeshi Americans are Americans of Bangladeshi descent. The overwhelming majority of Bangladeshi Americans are Bengalis. Most of them have immigrated from Sylhet region with a long trading history. Bangladeshi immigrants arrived in the United States especially since the early 1990s to become...
educator Salman Khan
Salman Khan (educator)
Salman Amin 'Sal' Khan is an American educator and the founder of the Khan Academy, a free online education platform and nonprofit organization....
, a graduate of MIT. With the stated mission
Mission statement
A mission statement is a statement of the purpose of a company or organization. The mission statement should guide the actions of the organization, spell out its overall goal, provide a path, and guide decision-making...
of "providing a high quality education to anyone, anywhere", the website supplies a free online collection of more than 2,700 micro lectures via video tutorials stored on YouTube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
teaching Mathematics
Mathematics
Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...
, History
History
History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...
, Healthcare & Medicine
Medicine
Medicine is the science and art of healing. It encompasses a variety of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness....
, Finance
Finance
"Finance" is often defined simply as the management of money or “funds” management Modern finance, however, is a family of business activity that includes the origination, marketing, and management of cash and money surrogates through a variety of capital accounts, instruments, and markets created...
, Physics
Physics
Physics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...
, Chemistry
Chemistry
Chemistry is the science of matter, especially its chemical reactions, but also its composition, structure and properties. Chemistry is concerned with atoms and their interactions with other atoms, and particularly with the properties of chemical bonds....
, Biology
Biology
Biology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. Biology is a vast subject containing many subdivisions, topics, and disciplines...
, Astronomy
Astronomy
Astronomy is a natural science that deals with the study of celestial objects and phenomena that originate outside the atmosphere of Earth...
, Economics
Economics
Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...
, Cosmology
Cosmology
Cosmology is the discipline that deals with the nature of the Universe as a whole. Cosmologists seek to understand the origin, evolution, structure, and ultimate fate of the Universe at large, as well as the natural laws that keep it in order...
and Computer Science
Computer science
Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...
.
History
The founder of the organization, Salman KhanSalman Khan (educator)
Salman Amin 'Sal' Khan is an American educator and the founder of the Khan Academy, a free online education platform and nonprofit organization....
, was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. After earning three degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
(a BS in mathematics, a BS in electrical engineering and computer science, and an MS in electrical engineering and computer science) he pursued an MBA from Harvard Business School
Harvard Business School
Harvard Business School is the graduate business school of Harvard University in Boston, Massachusetts, United States and is widely recognized as one of the top business schools in the world. The school offers the world's largest full-time MBA program, doctoral programs, and many executive...
. In late 2004, Khan began tutoring his cousin Nadia in mathematics using Yahoo!
Yahoo!
Yahoo! Inc. is an American multinational internet corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, United States. The company is perhaps best known for its web portal, search engine , Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Answers, advertising, online mapping ,...
's Doodle notepad. When other relatives and friends sought similar help, he decided it would be more practical to distribute the tutorials on YouTube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
. Their popularity there and the testimonials of appreciative students prompted Khan to quit his job in finance as a hedge fund analyst at Wohl Capital Management in 2009 and focus on the tutorials (then released under the moniker "Khan Academy") full-time. Bill Gates
Bill Gates
William Henry "Bill" Gates III is an American business magnate, investor, philanthropist, and author. Gates is the former CEO and current chairman of Microsoft, the software company he founded with Paul Allen...
once said that "I'd say we've moved about 160 IQ points from the hedge fund category to the teaching-many-people-in-a-leveraged-way category. It was a good day his wife let him quit his job."
The project relies on donations for funding. Khan Academy is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization, now with significant backing from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is the largest transparently operated private foundation in the world, founded by Bill and Melinda Gates. It is "driven by the interests and passions of the Gates family"...
and Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
. Several people have made $10,000 contributions; Ann and John Doerr
John Doerr
L. John Doerr is an American venture capitalist at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers in Menlo Park, California, in Silicon Valley. In February 2009, Doerr was appointed as a member of the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board to provide the president and his administration with advice and...
gave $100,000; total revenue is about $150,000 in donations. Additionally, it also earned $2,000 a month from ads on the Web site in 2010, until Khan Academy ceased to accept advertising . As of September 2010, Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
announced they would be providing the Khan Academy with $2 million to support the creation of more courses and to enable the Khan Academy to translate their core library into the world’s most widely spoken languages, as part of their Project 10100.
Technicalities
The Khan Academy started out with Khan remotely tutoring one of his cousins interactively using Yahoo Doodle Images. Based upon feedback from his cousin, additional cousins began to take advantage of the interactive, remote tutoring. In order to make better use of his and their time, Khan transitioned to making YouTube video tutorials. Each video runs for approximately ten minutes. Drawings are now made with a WacomWacom
in Krefeld, Germany. Wacom is a Japanese portmanteau: Wa for "harmony" or "circle", and Komu for "computer". Wacom tablets are notable for their use of a patented cordless, battery-free, and pressure-sensitive stylus or digital pen...
graphic Interactive Pen Display tablet hardware and a software category called image editing and natural painting software, specifically freeware SmoothDraw 3, a free software download, which are then simultaneously recorded and produced now using $299 PC screen capture/video recording & editing software from Camtasia Studio
Camtasia Studio
Camtasia Studio and Camtasia for Mac are screen video capture software, published by TechSmith. The user defines the area of the screen or the window that is to be captured or the whole screen can be recorded instead. This is set before the recording begins...
and a quality high-speed USB microphone, then uploaded to YouTube, where Khan Academy now has its own YouTube Channel, as well as its own progress tracking website, complete with practice exercise problems, coaches, tools for leveraging & empowering classroom teachers, "Map of Knowledge", classroom data, class profiles, individual stats and & tracking built-in, earned "Badges Worth Bragging About", and Pilot School demonstration project applications for schools and school districts. Logging into the site requires either a Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
or a Facebook
Facebook
Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...
account.
Khan eschewed a format that would involve a person standing by a whiteboard, desiring instead to present the learning concepts as if "popping out of a darkened universe and into one's mind with a voice out of nowhere" and in a way akin to sitting next to someone and working out a problem on a sheet of paper: "If you're watching a guy do a problem [while] thinking out loud, I think people find that more valuable and not as daunting." Offline versions of the videos have been distributed by not-for-profit groups to rural areas in Asia, Latin America, and Africa. While the Khan Academy's current content is mainly concerned with pre-college mathematics and physics, Khan states that his long-term goal is to provide "tens of thousands of videos in pretty much every subject" and to create "the world's first free, world-class virtual school where anyone can learn anything."
The Khan Academy also provides a web-based exercise system that generates problems for students based on skill level and performance. Khan believes his academy points an opportunity to overhaul the traditional classroom by using software to create tests, grade assignments, highlight the challenges of certain students, and encourage those doing well to help struggling classmates. The tutorials are touted as helpful because, among other factors, they can be paused by students, while a classroom lecture cannot be.
The success of his low-tech, conversational tutorials—Khan's face never appears, and viewers see only his unadorned step-by-step doodles and diagrams on an electronic blackboard—suggests an educational transformation that de-emphasizes classrooms, campus and administrative infrastructure, and even brand-name instructors.
Services and vision
The major components of Khan Academy include:- a video library with over 2,800 videos in various topic areas and over 86 million lessons delivered. These videos are licensed under a Creative CommonsCreative CommonsCreative Commons is a non-profit organization headquartered in Mountain View, California, United States devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has released several copyright-licenses known as Creative Commons...
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License. - automated exercises with continuous assessment; there are more than 200 exercises, mainly in math, including four challenges and 184 individual modules.
- peer-to-peer tutoring based on objective data collected by the system, a process that will be projected in the future.
Not-for-profit partner organizations are making the content available outside of YouTube. The Lewis Center for Educational Research
Lewis Center for Educational Research
The Lewis Center for Educational Research also known as The Academy for Academic Excellence is an educational organization located in Apple Valley, California, U.S.A.It is the only research charter school in the state of California. This institution is known for its relationship with NASA and...
, which is affiliated with NASA
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...
, is bringing the content into community college
Community college
A community college is a type of educational institution. The term can have different meanings in different countries.-Australia:Community colleges carry on the tradition of adult education, which was established in Australia around mid 19th century when evening classes were held to help adults...
s and charter school
Charter school
Charter schools are primary or secondary schools that receive public money but are not subject to some of the rules, regulations, and statutes that apply to other public schools in exchange for some type of accountability for producing certain results, which are set forth in each school's charter...
s around the United States. World Possible is creating offline snapshots of the content to distribute in rural, developing regions with limited or no access to the Internet.
Khan has stated a vision of turning the academy into a charter school:
This could be the DNA for a physical school where students spend 20 percent of their day watching videos and doing self-paced exercises and the rest of the day building robots or painting pictures or composing music or whatever.
Recognition
- Salman Khan has been featured in the San Francisco ChronicleSan Francisco Chroniclethumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...
, on the Public Broadcasting ServicePublic Broadcasting ServiceThe Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....
(PBS), National Public Radio, CNNCNNCable News Network is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States...
, and CNN Money. - In 2009, the Khan Academy received the MicrosoftMicrosoftMicrosoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
Tech Award for education. - In 2010 at the Aspen Ideas Festival, Bill GatesBill GatesWilliam Henry "Bill" Gates III is an American business magnate, investor, philanthropist, and author. Gates is the former CEO and current chairman of Microsoft, the software company he founded with Paul Allen...
endorsed the learning resource, calling it "unbelievable" and saying "I've been using [Khan Academy] with my kids." - In 2010, GoogleGoogleGoogle Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
's Project 10100 provided $2 million to support the creation of more courses, to allow for translation of the Khan Academy's content, and to allow for the hiring of additional staff. - In 2011, Salman Khan delivered a TEDTED (conference)TED is a global set of conferences owned by the private non-profit Sapling Foundation, formed to disseminate "ideas worth spreading"....
talk. - On May 4, 2011, Salman Khan appeared on Charlie RoseCharlie Rose (talk show)Charlie Rose is an American television interview show, with Charlie Rose as executive producer, executive editor, and host. The show is syndicated...
. - Salman Khan appeared on The Colbert Report on June 2, 2011.
- An article featuring Khan Academy and Salman Khan appeared in the August 2011 issue of Wired Magazine.
- Salman Khan was featured as a "Big Thinker" on EdutopiaEdutopiaEdutopia is a Web site published by The George Lucas Educational Foundation . Founded in 1991 by filmmaker George Lucas and venture capitalist Steve Arnold, the Foundation celebrates and encourages innovation in K-12 schools ....
.