Khan Academy Website Seeks To Transform Education.

CBS 60 Minutes (3/11, 7:24 p.m. ET, Gupta) aired a report on the website Khan Academy, through which Sal Khan is "is determined to transform how we learn at every level. One of his most famous pupils, Bill Gates, says Khan, this teacher to the world, is giving us all a glimpse of the future of education." The report featured a segment from a class in The Los Altos School District outside San Francisco, where the new Khan Academy software is being piloted. In the class, "there are no textbooks and no teacher lecturing at the blackboard. Instead, students watch Khan videos at home the night before to learn a concept. Then, they come to class the next day and do problem sets called modules to make sure they understand. If they get stuck, they can get one-on-one help from the teacher – less lecturing, more interaction." Towards the end of the report, CBS featured Google's Eric Schmidt, who was shown saying, "innovation never comes from the established institutions. It's always a graduate student or a crazy person or somebody with a great vision. Sal is that person in education, in my view."

 

**Note: I've used this in my classroom the past few years and really think it's a great tool. I'd love to experiment with having the students watch the video(s) before class.