Khan Academy Delivers 100,000 Lectures Daily 213
eldavojohn writes "Working from the comfort of his home, Salman Khan has made available more than 1,500 mini-lectures to educate the world. Subjects range from math and physics to finance, biology, and current economics. Kahn Academy amounts to little more than a YouTube channel and one very devoted man. He is trying to provide education in the way he wished he had been taught. With more than 100,000 video views a day, the man is making a difference for many students. In his FAQ he explains how he knows he is being effective. What will probably ensure his popularity (and provide a legacy surpassing that of most highly paid educators) is that everything is licensed under Creative Commons 3.0. He only needs his time, a $200 Camtasia Recorder, an $80 Wacom Bamboo Tablet, and a free copy of SmoothDraw3. While the lecturing may not be quite up to the Feynman level, it's a great augmenter for advanced learners, and a lifeline for those without much access to learning resources."
'Feynman' level? (Score:4, Insightful)
When people stumble out of his lectures looking like they've been hit by a bus, then he'll have reached the 'Feynman' level. Right now IMHO he's already doing a better job of addressing normal students.
Everything Old is New again (Score:5, Insightful)
I think this is a very interesting way of bringing and old, maybe ancient, method of teaching back to the fore again.
If I recall correctly, Socrates taught by answering questions and encouraging new ones, not just spouting knowledge according to a set curricula, like we do today.
If used well, this strikes me as having a real impact for learning, and teaching, in a more natural way. I for one would love to see more of this kind of thing going on and being acknowledged as a legitimate and effective way to teach and learn.
I wish him and the viewers all the best.
Re:'Feynman' level? (Score:4, Insightful)
A testimonial from the Khan academy home page. "My eldest kid is dancing around in my room here because she is so excited that she finally found someone that teaches like this."
I've listened to both Khan and Feynman and I found Khan way better.
It's kinda sad... (Score:5, Insightful)
That the first thing I thought when I read he licenses it all under Creative Commons was "Bet ASCAP would be pissed about that".
But this is a wonderful thing he's doing, kudos to him and I wish him luck. Will have to check out some of his lectures sometime.
Re:Youtube? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is it possible to ask that just a bit nicely???
Is there a place where I can get the videos without a flash wrapper? It would be really appreciated? If not, would someone be willing to set it up so that this Kahn guy doesn't have to spend his time doing it? If not, does someone have 20TB or so of space and a really big connection so I can set up torrents for this.
I mean the guy's obviously put quite a bit of effort into this.. the effort to write a bit more tha.... oh get off my lawn :-)
Re:Youtube? (Score:5, Insightful)
Torrents would be good if you were in a place where youtube was blocked ... like about 1/4 of the world's internet users.
Re:Tip for kdawson (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm a Baptist, and I share those beliefs. So do many atheists, Hindus, Muslims, and others.
Religion just isn't important when forming a viewpoint about someone, and only causes problems if one falls into the "pride and self-righteousness" category.
Re:Tip for kdawson (Score:2, Insightful)
what he said ^^
seriously people, most religious, god-believing individuals have these exact same notions and concepts like you atheists. please stop pretending to be enlightened elitist bastards.
Re:Tip for kdawson (Score:4, Insightful)
In other words, he's an atheist. ;)
I don't see where he stated anything of the sort. Quite the contrary, I see the thoughtful musings of an agnostic in his statements. It may also be that he is a most devout Pastafarian, but recognizes that an inflexible adherence to any dogma, including the one that insists that there is no deity, is quite literally a fool's errand.
I'm against it (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course I am also against state "license" of straight marriages as well. Unconstitutional crapola.
Why the two camps don't join together and demand the END of licenses to love and live with someone else is beyond me. They are both demanding to have LESS RIGHTS than what you are freely born with. Marriage is between you and partner(s) and your community and that should be it.
It's none of the government's business *at all* who you marry, and a violation of civil rights IMO-1st amendment, 5th, 6th, 8th, 9th- to require some permission/permit/license from big brother to get married. Violates all of them one way or the other.
Every single solitary law/regulation whatever that is on the books regarding some government "marriage license" should be stricken and be made null.
USA marriage licenses are an archaic holdover from extremely racist jim crow miscegenation "don't mix the races" so called "laws". The same with gun control laws, they all started out with trying to deny born - with second amendment rights to people of other than Caucasian extraction.
Any contractural living arrangements, child care provisions, insurance, economic issues, whatever, are just that..and can be handled with a normal contract. There is no reason whatsoever for any marriage "license" other than overreaching big brother action.
But you see, it is much preferable for big brother and the two corrupt criminal political party gangs, who make up big brother, to keep people divided and conquered, so that's why both political gangs insist and demand to have a "license" for a born-with right.
Re:Everything Old is New again (Score:1, Insightful)
Especially since you can actualy email them anything you dont' follow or have a question about and there is a possibility or receiving some feedback.
That was the greatest benefit school had for me. Not that the hoops they make you jump through are the right ones for your brain to grasp the material well, or that the pace is just right, but that when I did have a problem, I could pester the prof until it finally clicked.
I suppose it depends on the size and type of school. I went to a small liberal arts college and basically dropped out and then went back for CS and excelled. It wasn't MIT, but I had lots of one-on-one time with cs and math phds, partly because of the size of the school. They could just say "bug a TA" or "ask the mailing list."
I can lean more on any of these topics in 10 weeks of reading Slashdot than what I learned in class.
Ok, now you're trolling :)
But seriously, I think there is an unfortunate effect that these kinds of sites have where you only ever hear people argue about different approaches, and because you can follow the argument, you assume that you've picked up the details of those approaches by context. But most of the time these people are oversimplifying, or just plain wrong, and you have no criteria for figuring that out. Yesterday someone said that Objective-C runs in a virtual machine, "like Java," because it targets LLVM. If you didn't know better, you might say, "JVM, LLVM, hey why not!" But it was horribly, horribly wrong.
(In any case, Khan Academy looks to be pretty great and I will definitely be making use of this stuff, so I'm with you there. But note that he has an MBA, a MS in ECE, and a BS in both ECE and math, so, definitely more of a resource than your average Slashdotter :P)