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."
Hey I used him to learn partial derivatives (Score:5, Interesting)
Gee I wonder who could've posted this one (Score:3, Interesting)
Original article: 70k views per day
Original Slashdot submission: 70k views per day
Front page post after editing: Over 100k views per day
Stay classy, kdawson.
Re:Tip for kdawson (Score:5, Interesting)
Khan = Muslim
Or a genetically-engineered Indian [memory-alpha.org].
Or a Genghis.
Re:Tip for kdawson (Score:4, Interesting)
Kahn = Jewish
Khan = Muslim
Last I checked, "Muslim" was recognised as neither an ethnicity, nor a nationality. But don't get that in the way of trying to make life simple for yourself or others.
Salman Khan, IIRC, was born in New Awlins, and his parents are from some province in India. Someone else can add to that if they're so inclined.
Either way, he's an amazing guy. The word would be a better place if there more "Muslims" like him around. ;-)
Re:'Feynman' level? (Score:5, Interesting)
I have viewed some of the videos at Kahn Academy and it is nice to see worked out examples as this is the best way to teach. Simply stating the relationships doesn't ever seem to help me.
Like programming, I have to write something before I really understand what it means. if("Khan"=="Kahn"){P=NP;kdawson=editor}
Re:Gee I wonder who could've posted this one (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Tip for kdawson (Score:3, Interesting)
In his FAQ, Khan says about his religion, "If you believe in trying to make the best of the finite number of years we have on this planet (while not making it any worse for anyone else), think that pride and self-righteousness are the cause of most conflict and negativity, and are humbled by the vastness and mystery of the Universe, then I'm the same religion as you."
In other words, he's an atheist. ;)
Re:Everything Old is New again (Score:2, Interesting)
If I recall correctly, Socrates taught by answering questions and encouraging new ones, ...
By modern standards he would most likely have been labeled a troll. After all, aren't trolls using a form of Socratic irony to spur debate?
PoV of Maths Faculty (Score:3, Interesting)
I work at a University, teaching Maths across many levels.
Khan's screencasts are nice - patient demos of how to do standard calculations. They are fairly traditional in some ways - 21st century chalk+talk.
They are mostly useful for the "what to do" as even these contain enough of the "why" to put it in context.
They complement what we do in formal classes, so we are happy to informally refer students on to them.
Re:Everything Old is New again -- But why? (Score:3, Interesting)
When I read stories like this though, I'm forced to ask the question: Why lectures?
For me, studying from hypertext is infinitely more effective. I can pause whenever I like, check additional sources, cross-reference, backtrack, etc.
Personally, I think the hypertext is the greatest educational medium ever created. Universities clearly prefer lectures for a variety of (I would say) self-interested reasons. But unless you simply learn 'better' from spoken dialogue -- which is fine -- I think lectures are a very dated medium which are difficult to edit, expand upon and randomly access.
Access to lectures is great. I'm glad Kahn is doing this. But IMHO the true educational power of the web exists in the web's original, native medium: Hypertext.
Re: Lectures + Web (Score:3, Interesting)
It's a question in educational design.
Lectures are just "Auditory Articles". The start of any educational module is a "TFA". Let's just presume the minimum = 1 sentence. If it's really hard (like an equation) the instructor should stop and either explain, or "wait for next week after it gels". (In really scary cases it "never gels" and then you just say "I'm not good at that". In "rolling thunder" topics like History, no one sentence is earth shattering, but reading something like Thorstein Veblen in the original might get you 3/4 of the way through until you say "Wait, What?"
In a really good .edu , the lectures would be recorded and posted so you don't have to scribble furiously. Then you just go investigating your own personal hyperlinks, and either ask them in lecture if they're right "centrally on topic" or office hours if they're baroque. The Prof knows he can't just stand there in silence for 45 minutes. It's like radio dead air. The savviest prof I had "repeated the book" - but she picked the parts she *knew* were "loaded bear traps" and then hyperkinetically amped up the mood until people stopped protecting their egos and really dug into it.
I agree the modern web is just a powerhouse - I daresay the 5 years I've spent on Slashdot is damn near equivalent to a course's worth of CS for NonMajors 101.
Re:Everything Old is New again (Score:5, Interesting)
I tried to do what Socrates would do as a teaching fellow. A student complained in the course evaluation that I should not ask questions before they learn about the subject. I also took a top-down approach, reviewing course material in a way hoping that if a student is interested or needed to know more, he would ask questions to clarify. Several students commented that I glossed over detail and that I was too vague. A number of students thought I was boring. I tried to explore related knowledge that they wouldn't find on textbook, and a few students said that I digressed, and I went off tangent.
On the positive side, one student did comment that he found my method of teaching intellectually challenging, and that he learned a lot, which he described as a strength.
Socrates would not have wanted to teach students who only want to be spoon fed, who do not want to learn, who only want to get good grades, and eventually their diploma, so they could work for an industry that they're just in it for the money. Students nowadays feel entitled. Entitled to be knowledgeable without making the effort to learn. Entitled to get good grades without learning anything. Entitled to get diploma without passing courses. Entitled to get a job. Entitled to get high salary. Entitled to get their material satisfaction. And finally, entitled to blame everyone else including their college professor if they don't get what they want.
This should be the way of the future... (Score:2, Interesting)
Teaching in the future, will be more tailored to the individual, learning what he needs to forgetting about what he does not....
What I also see happening in the near future with this sort of teaching is that you will end up with many people overlapping knowledge..and collaborating more, if I know about general physics but buddy beside me knows more, for my present day problem I will consult with him, and he will have his use, where as the rest will be what I learned from this style course, unless I want to specialize, then I become like buddy for THAT specialization, not forgetting what I already know in many other fields...
Sort of like star trek, where self worth and social stature, is based more on what you know, so if you study to know more, you will be used more hence become more important within the community... I consider this to be the wave of the future....no more books, no more
schools per se...more just learning off the web, then applying your craft, and knowledge to the problem at hand...
Need to do taxes, read up all about it, then if you are still uncertain about a point, that point will be smaller and quicker to review with a specialist, then going to see an accountant for ALL your taxes...
Re:Tip for kdawson (Score:3, Interesting)
The funny thing is 'kan' can mean in Japanese a can or tin as well, if it's written using the kanji U+7F36 [wiktionary.org]. Oddly enough it's not one of the many wasei-eigo [wikipedia.org] terms Japanese imported from English, as it's really one of the on-yomi (Chinese) readings of that kanji. The technical term for such a thing is a false cognate [wikipedia.org]. It's written '', just in case Slashdot ever stops being one of the last few sites to survive to the 21st century while remaining stubbornly ignorant of Unicode.
Online / TV Lectures (Score:2, Interesting)
I stumbled across the Khan lectures a couple of months ago and I think they're great. Many thanks to Salman Khan.
Another series of lectures that appeared on television about 30 years ago is a show called The Mechanical Universe. They're not as deep as some of the Khan lectures but a bit more polished (not that it matters a lot). The Mechanical Universe lectures are available online at:
http://www.learner.org/resources/series42.html [learner.org]
Too bad there isn't more of this kind of material on television. Maybe one of the cable companies could buy the Khan lectures and make them available as an on-demand feature.