Some years ago, while I was working for an educational software producer, a teacher/customer suggested a change that would improve the user interface and educational potential of our product. I agreed with the customer, and indicated that I had been advocating for that same change. A company Vice President who overheard the conversation later said, "Our product works well enough as is. It would cost too much to make that change and we don't have room in our product development cycle to do it." Another VP commented, "We're about profit, not altruism." This event was a sure indicator to me that I was in the wrong line of work: I was too much of a teacher not to be concerned about improving the educational value of our product. Within a year, I was back in the classroom.
However, occasionally, you will find something inspiring and truly altruistic. The Khan Academy (khanacademy.org) is a splendid example. Salman Khan has produced over 2,000 tutorials on topics such as math, science, economics and civics that he provides for free on his website. He started small by producing tutorials for some cousins who were struggling a bit in school. Eventually he began posting the tutorials to YouTube and was surprised by how popular they were.
A multi-degree holder from MIT and Harvard, Khan soon discovered that this type of teaching was his passion and formed his Khan Academy site. Interest in, and praise for his site has been remarkable. He quit his day job as an investment analyst and devoted himself full time to producing his tutorials. Many of these videos were produced in a small walk-in closet in his home—the only space he could find where he could work relatively uninterrupted.
Thanks to some big infusions of cash from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Google, Khan now has an office and employees. His software engineers are creating a management system to advance students appropriately though his instructional videos.
A recent article in Wired magazine describes Grade 5 students in California successfully using Khan Academy and their management interface to learn math—some of these students had progressed to doing university level math! Nothing really new about Khan's concept: its mastery-based drill and practice design has been around since the beginning of personal computing. However, Khan's material is very different from the typical over-produced, glitzy (and sometimes boring) educational products on the market. He adds a very human touch, sounding like an enthusiastic, but very patient teacher as he delivers his lessons using fairly low tech means. He's also very good at explaining complicated topics in a simple way.
Khan regulars say that they like that you can review the sections you don't understand over and over until you get it—an often stated virtue of technology based instruction. Interestingly, it was an improvement to this aspect of our products that my customer was requesting a decade before.
Khan Academy is already impacting classroom structure as more tweets and blogs focus on flipping the school day—having students learn at home and practice at school—but more on that topic in a future post.
Khan wants to start his own school. It will be interesting to track the success of this endeavor if it is realized. However, as with any instructional approach, I worry that too much learning with Khan's videos may become tiresome. I believe his products' strength may lie in a back up role supporting existing classroom instruction.
If you haven't already, I suggest you have a look at Khan Academy. More importantly, suggest it to your students, other educators, your own children and their friends. Based on their comments, Khan's users seem to adore him. His website's motto, "Learn almost anything for free," is about as altruistic as possible.
