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Aug 28, 2010, 10:33:24 AM8/28/10
to Homeschool Educators of Nashville
Bill Gates' favorite teacher
Khan turns out thousands of videos from a converted walk-in closet in
his Silicon Valley home.
By David A. Kaplan, contributorAugust 24, 2010: 5:53 AM ET
FORTUNE -- Sal Khan, you can count Bill Gates as your newest fan.
Gates is a voracious consumer of online education. This past spring a
colleague at his small think tank, bgC3, e-mailed him about the
nonprofit khanacademy.org, a vast digital trove of free mini-lectures
all narrated by Khan, an ebullient, articulate Harvard MBA and former
hedge fund manager. Gates replied within minutes. "This guy is
amazing," he wrote. "It is awesome how much he has done with very
little in the way of resources." Gates and his 11-year-old son, Rory,
began soaking up videos, from algebra to biology. Then, several weeks
ago, at the Aspen Ideas Festival in front of 2,000 people, Gates gave
the 33-year-old Khan a shout-out that any entrepreneur would kill for.
Ruminating on what he called the "mind-blowing misallocation" of
resources away from education, Gates touted the "unbelievable" 10- to
15-minute Khan Academy tutorials "I've been using with my kids." With
admiration and surprise, the world's second-richest person noted that
Khan "was a hedge fund guy making lots of money." Now, Gates said,
"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." Khan wasn't even there -- he
learned of Gates' praise through a YouTube video. "It was really
cool," Khan says.
In an undistinguished ranch house off the main freeway of Silicon
Valley, in a converted walk-in closet filled with a few hundred
dollars' worth of video equipment and bookshelves and his toddler's
red Elmo underfoot, is the epicenter of the educational earthquake
that has captivated Gates and others. It is here that Salman Khan
produces online lessons on math, science, and a range of other
subjects that have made him a web sensation.
Khan Academy, with Khan as the only teacher, appears on YouTube and
elsewhere and is by any measure the most popular educational site on
the web. Khan's playlist of 1,630 tutorials (at last count) are now
seen an average of 70,000 times a day -- nearly double the student
body at Harvard and Stanford combined. Since he began his tutorials in
late 2006, Khan Academy has received 18 million page views worldwide,
including from the Gates progeny. Most page views come from the U.S.,
followed by Canada, England, Australia, and India. In any given month,
Khan says, he's reached about 200,000 students. "There's no reason it
shouldn't be 20 million."
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 -- are more than merely another example of
viral media distributed at negligible cost to the universe. Khan
Academy holds the promise of a virtual school: an educational
transformation that de-emphasizes classrooms, campus and
administrative infrastructure, and even brand-name instructors.
Quick, free, and easy to understand
Distance learning and correspondence courses have been around since
the invention of mail. And private, for-profit schools flourish; the
University of Phoenix has half a million students enrolled, most of
them online. Other private operations, like the Teaching Co.,
specialize in amalgamating "great courses" from nationally known
teachers: the 12-hour Game Theory in Life, Business, and Beyond, from
one academic star, costs $254.95 on DVD.
What's remarkable about Khan Academy, aside from its nonpareil word of
mouth and burgeoning growth, is that it's free and prizes brevity.
Remember your mumbling macroeconomics teacher whose 50-minute
monologue in a large auditorium could bore the dead? That isn't Khan.
He rarely cracks wise -- if you want shtick, check out Darth Vader
trying to teach Euclidean geometry on YouTube ("The Pythagorean
theorem is your destiny!") -- but in less than 15 minutes Khan gets to
the essence of the topics he's carved out.
0:00 /4:35Mickelson tees off better teaching
Online critics question whether he amounts to a dilettante who's
turning learning into pedagogical McNuggets. But while you obviously
don't learn calculus in one session -- the subject is divided into 191
parts, which doesn't include 32 more in precalc -- Khan's components
seem to hit the sweet spot of length and substance. And he covers an
astonishing array. There are the core subjects in math -- arithmetic,
geometry, algebra, trigonometry, calculus, and statistics -- and the
de rigueur science offerings, like biology, chemistry, and physics.
But Khan also gives lessons in Economics of a Cupcake Factory, the
Napoleonic Wars, and the Alien Abduction Brain Teaser.
The seeds of education
Like so many entrepreneurial epiphanies, Khan's came by accident. Born
and raised in New Orleans -- the son of immigrants from India and
what's now Bangladesh -- Khan was long an academic star. With his MBA
from Harvard, he has three degrees from MIT: a BS in math and a BS and
a master's in electrical engineering and computer science. He also was
the president of his MIT class and did volunteer teaching in nearby
Brookline for talented children, as well as developed software to
teach children with ADHD. What he doesn't know he picks up from
endless reading and cogitation: His gift, like that of many teachers,
is being able to reduce the complex. "Part of the beauty of what he
does is his consistency," says Gates. Of Khan's capacity to teach,
Gates, who says he spends considerable time trying to help his three
kids learn the basics of math and science, tells Fortune, "I kind of
envy him."
In the summer of 2004, while still living in Boston, Khan learned that
his seventh-grader cousin, Nadia, in New Orleans was having trouble in
math class converting kilograms. He agreed to remotely tutor her.
Using Yahoo Doodle software as a shared notepad, as well as a
telephone, Nadia thrived -- so much so that Khan started working with
her brothers, Ali and Arman. Word spread to other relatives and
friends. Khan wrote JavaScript problem generators to keep up a supply
of practice exercises. But between their soccer practices, his job,
and multiple time zones, scheduling became impossible. "I started to
record videos on YouTube for them to watch at their own pace," Khan
recalls. Other users tuned in, and the blueprint for Khan Academy was
created.
Khan continued to work for the small hedge fund he had joined after
Harvard, Wohl Capital Management. He said he took away "under $1
million" before the Silicon Valley-based hedge fund wound down, and
briefly started his own fund in mid-2008, which didn't really get off
the ground because of the financial crisis. ("I called it Khan
Capital," he says, "but it never got much beyond 'Khan's Capital.'")
He used his nest egg to buy a house with his wife, Umamia, a
rheumatology fellow at Stanford Medical School, and as a reserve when
he gave up his investment career. On a typical day he tapes a few
tutorials, answers posts from students, calls experts when he's stuck
on how best to explicate a concept, and fields queries from curious
potential backers.
He maintains he has no interest in monetizing the operation by
charging subscriptions or selling ads. "I already have a beautiful
wife, a hilarious son, two Hondas, and a decent house," he declares on
his website. But that hasn't stopped the inquiries, the most notable
from John Doerr, the Silicon Valley venture capitalist, and his wife,
Ann. Not long ago a PayPal donation on Khan's site came in for $10,000
(a typical gift is $100). Khan e-mailed the donor. Her name was Ann
Doerr. He knew of a John Doerr but just assumed the name was more
popular than he realized. He e-mailed her to say thanks. She suggested
lunch.
When they met, Ann Doerr told him she couldn't believe hers was the
largest donation. "This is, like, criminal," she said. "I love what
you're doing." When he got home, he found a message from her: "There's
$100,000 in the mail."
Khan is using that money to pay himself a salary. Later, he met John
Doerr and has since relied on both Doerrs for entrée to others in the
philanthropic establishment. After Gates mentioned Khan in Aspen, John
tweeted it to his Silicon Valley legions. In July the academy received
another $100,000 -- from John McCall MacBain, a Canadian entrepreneur
who made a fortune in publishing. "If I had a million dollars," Khan
says, he'd fund software development of more automated problem sets
and extensive translations of his videos. Gates, whose foundation
spends $700 million a year on U.S. education, plans to talk to Khan
soon as well.
An academy or a library?
Khan has his skeptics in the education business. They don't doubt he
means well and is helping students, but they question the broad impact
of any tutorial that doesn't test performance or allow student-teacher
discussion. "It's a solid supplemental resource, particularly for
motivated students," says Jeffrey Leeds, president of Leeds Equity
Partners, the largest U.S. private equity firm specializing in for-
profit education. "But it's not an academy -- it's more of a
library."
But Khan intends nothing less than "tens of thousands" of tutorials
offering the "first free, world-class virtual school where anyone can
learn anything." The advances envisioned by Leeds and others wouldn't
hurt either. The education industry can use all the innovation it can
find.
http://money.cnn.com/2010/08/23/technology/sal_khan_academy.fortune/index.htm?source=cnn_bin&hpt=Sbin
Khan turns out thousands of videos from a converted walk-in closet in
his Silicon Valley home.
By David A. Kaplan, contributorAugust 24, 2010: 5:53 AM ET
FORTUNE -- Sal Khan, you can count Bill Gates as your newest fan.
Gates is a voracious consumer of online education. This past spring a
colleague at his small think tank, bgC3, e-mailed him about the
nonprofit khanacademy.org, a vast digital trove of free mini-lectures
all narrated by Khan, an ebullient, articulate Harvard MBA and former
hedge fund manager. Gates replied within minutes. "This guy is
amazing," he wrote. "It is awesome how much he has done with very
little in the way of resources." Gates and his 11-year-old son, Rory,
began soaking up videos, from algebra to biology. Then, several weeks
ago, at the Aspen Ideas Festival in front of 2,000 people, Gates gave
the 33-year-old Khan a shout-out that any entrepreneur would kill for.
Ruminating on what he called the "mind-blowing misallocation" of
resources away from education, Gates touted the "unbelievable" 10- to
15-minute Khan Academy tutorials "I've been using with my kids." With
admiration and surprise, the world's second-richest person noted that
Khan "was a hedge fund guy making lots of money." Now, Gates said,
"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." Khan wasn't even there -- he
learned of Gates' praise through a YouTube video. "It was really
cool," Khan says.
In an undistinguished ranch house off the main freeway of Silicon
Valley, in a converted walk-in closet filled with a few hundred
dollars' worth of video equipment and bookshelves and his toddler's
red Elmo underfoot, is the epicenter of the educational earthquake
that has captivated Gates and others. It is here that Salman Khan
produces online lessons on math, science, and a range of other
subjects that have made him a web sensation.
Khan Academy, with Khan as the only teacher, appears on YouTube and
elsewhere and is by any measure the most popular educational site on
the web. Khan's playlist of 1,630 tutorials (at last count) are now
seen an average of 70,000 times a day -- nearly double the student
body at Harvard and Stanford combined. Since he began his tutorials in
late 2006, Khan Academy has received 18 million page views worldwide,
including from the Gates progeny. Most page views come from the U.S.,
followed by Canada, England, Australia, and India. In any given month,
Khan says, he's reached about 200,000 students. "There's no reason it
shouldn't be 20 million."
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 -- are more than merely another example of
viral media distributed at negligible cost to the universe. Khan
Academy holds the promise of a virtual school: an educational
transformation that de-emphasizes classrooms, campus and
administrative infrastructure, and even brand-name instructors.
Quick, free, and easy to understand
Distance learning and correspondence courses have been around since
the invention of mail. And private, for-profit schools flourish; the
University of Phoenix has half a million students enrolled, most of
them online. Other private operations, like the Teaching Co.,
specialize in amalgamating "great courses" from nationally known
teachers: the 12-hour Game Theory in Life, Business, and Beyond, from
one academic star, costs $254.95 on DVD.
What's remarkable about Khan Academy, aside from its nonpareil word of
mouth and burgeoning growth, is that it's free and prizes brevity.
Remember your mumbling macroeconomics teacher whose 50-minute
monologue in a large auditorium could bore the dead? That isn't Khan.
He rarely cracks wise -- if you want shtick, check out Darth Vader
trying to teach Euclidean geometry on YouTube ("The Pythagorean
theorem is your destiny!") -- but in less than 15 minutes Khan gets to
the essence of the topics he's carved out.
0:00 /4:35Mickelson tees off better teaching
Online critics question whether he amounts to a dilettante who's
turning learning into pedagogical McNuggets. But while you obviously
don't learn calculus in one session -- the subject is divided into 191
parts, which doesn't include 32 more in precalc -- Khan's components
seem to hit the sweet spot of length and substance. And he covers an
astonishing array. There are the core subjects in math -- arithmetic,
geometry, algebra, trigonometry, calculus, and statistics -- and the
de rigueur science offerings, like biology, chemistry, and physics.
But Khan also gives lessons in Economics of a Cupcake Factory, the
Napoleonic Wars, and the Alien Abduction Brain Teaser.
The seeds of education
Like so many entrepreneurial epiphanies, Khan's came by accident. Born
and raised in New Orleans -- the son of immigrants from India and
what's now Bangladesh -- Khan was long an academic star. With his MBA
from Harvard, he has three degrees from MIT: a BS in math and a BS and
a master's in electrical engineering and computer science. He also was
the president of his MIT class and did volunteer teaching in nearby
Brookline for talented children, as well as developed software to
teach children with ADHD. What he doesn't know he picks up from
endless reading and cogitation: His gift, like that of many teachers,
is being able to reduce the complex. "Part of the beauty of what he
does is his consistency," says Gates. Of Khan's capacity to teach,
Gates, who says he spends considerable time trying to help his three
kids learn the basics of math and science, tells Fortune, "I kind of
envy him."
In the summer of 2004, while still living in Boston, Khan learned that
his seventh-grader cousin, Nadia, in New Orleans was having trouble in
math class converting kilograms. He agreed to remotely tutor her.
Using Yahoo Doodle software as a shared notepad, as well as a
telephone, Nadia thrived -- so much so that Khan started working with
her brothers, Ali and Arman. Word spread to other relatives and
friends. Khan wrote JavaScript problem generators to keep up a supply
of practice exercises. But between their soccer practices, his job,
and multiple time zones, scheduling became impossible. "I started to
record videos on YouTube for them to watch at their own pace," Khan
recalls. Other users tuned in, and the blueprint for Khan Academy was
created.
Khan continued to work for the small hedge fund he had joined after
Harvard, Wohl Capital Management. He said he took away "under $1
million" before the Silicon Valley-based hedge fund wound down, and
briefly started his own fund in mid-2008, which didn't really get off
the ground because of the financial crisis. ("I called it Khan
Capital," he says, "but it never got much beyond 'Khan's Capital.'")
He used his nest egg to buy a house with his wife, Umamia, a
rheumatology fellow at Stanford Medical School, and as a reserve when
he gave up his investment career. On a typical day he tapes a few
tutorials, answers posts from students, calls experts when he's stuck
on how best to explicate a concept, and fields queries from curious
potential backers.
He maintains he has no interest in monetizing the operation by
charging subscriptions or selling ads. "I already have a beautiful
wife, a hilarious son, two Hondas, and a decent house," he declares on
his website. But that hasn't stopped the inquiries, the most notable
from John Doerr, the Silicon Valley venture capitalist, and his wife,
Ann. Not long ago a PayPal donation on Khan's site came in for $10,000
(a typical gift is $100). Khan e-mailed the donor. Her name was Ann
Doerr. He knew of a John Doerr but just assumed the name was more
popular than he realized. He e-mailed her to say thanks. She suggested
lunch.
When they met, Ann Doerr told him she couldn't believe hers was the
largest donation. "This is, like, criminal," she said. "I love what
you're doing." When he got home, he found a message from her: "There's
$100,000 in the mail."
Khan is using that money to pay himself a salary. Later, he met John
Doerr and has since relied on both Doerrs for entrée to others in the
philanthropic establishment. After Gates mentioned Khan in Aspen, John
tweeted it to his Silicon Valley legions. In July the academy received
another $100,000 -- from John McCall MacBain, a Canadian entrepreneur
who made a fortune in publishing. "If I had a million dollars," Khan
says, he'd fund software development of more automated problem sets
and extensive translations of his videos. Gates, whose foundation
spends $700 million a year on U.S. education, plans to talk to Khan
soon as well.
An academy or a library?
Khan has his skeptics in the education business. They don't doubt he
means well and is helping students, but they question the broad impact
of any tutorial that doesn't test performance or allow student-teacher
discussion. "It's a solid supplemental resource, particularly for
motivated students," says Jeffrey Leeds, president of Leeds Equity
Partners, the largest U.S. private equity firm specializing in for-
profit education. "But it's not an academy -- it's more of a
library."
But Khan intends nothing less than "tens of thousands" of tutorials
offering the "first free, world-class virtual school where anyone can
learn anything." The advances envisioned by Leeds and others wouldn't
hurt either. The education industry can use all the innovation it can
find.
http://money.cnn.com/2010/08/23/technology/sal_khan_academy.fortune/index.htm?source=cnn_bin&hpt=Sbin
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