Khan Academy.org - Making Studying Change

Khan Academy - A Revolution in Making - Redesigning Learning

Khan academy is a name now synonymous with the generation-i, who are glued to social networking sites like Youtube for most of their time through their computers and mobiles. It has become a viral way of studying at your own pace and at your time.

Khan Academy - Profile

TOGETHER WE KHAN



The Khan Academy is a non-profit educational organization, created in 2006 by Bangladeshi American educator Salman Khan, a graduate of MIT and Harvard Business School. With the stated mission of "providing a high quality education to anyone, anywhere", the website supplies a free online collection of more than 3,200 micro lectures via video tutorials stored on YouTube teaching mathematics, history, healthcare and medicine, finance,physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy, economics, cosmology, organic chemistry, American civics, art history, macroeconomics and microeconomics, and computer science.

About Salman "Sal" Khan 

Salman Khan 

Khan was born in Louisana, USA, an MBA from HBS, technical BS from MIT, a former hedge funds analyst, who left his job to pursue a dream of free for all education system and went on to get funding from Bill and Melinda gates foundation for "Khan Academy".

Principles of Organisational Management - Its all there in Khan Academy

It all started with a small idea or out of a sheer need of Salman to teach her niece Nadia mathematics lecture using yahoo doodle. It went on to gain popularity as many people got hooked on to the videos that were posted on the youtube. It immediately caught hold of Bill gates who had a belief that this academy has the mettle to improve the education scenario.

with what vision does salman start this? It was initially a private endeavor but the paradigm of implication of such a tool hit him instantly. He started with a vision of "  We're a not-for-profit with the goal of changing education for the better by providing a free world-class education to anyone anywhere "

the keywords in this were the changing education goal and the result was the ever sought after "a free world class education", the target audience and beneficiary being any one anywhere in the world. in this world where still many of the children are feared loathed and pushed to one corner in building run schools, where they are not free to ask question due to sheer fact that they can be ridiculed of their stupidity, khan academy provided them with an interactive video based tutorial where they can pose any question of what so level it may be.

He used the technical skills of a manager in making this website and the concept while managing to touch upon the human relations. It was a highly conceptual idea and was fructified into a full grown website.

The Pedagogy - How Students benefit- The Model

Students can make use of its extensive video library, practice exercises, and assessments from any computer with access to the web.

Complete custom self-paced learning tool

A dynamic system for getting help

A custom profile, points, and badges to measure progress

Coaches, parents, and teachers

Coaches, parents, and teachers have unprecedented visibility into what their students are learning and doing on the Khan Academy.

Ability to see any student in detail

A real-time class report for all students

Better intelligence for doing targeted interventions

Its library of videos covers K-12 math, science topics such as biology, chemistry, and physics, and even reaches into the humanities with playlists on finance and history. Each video is a digestible chunk, approximately 10 minutes long, and especially purposed for viewing on the computer.

What's Unique in Khan Academy

the need for tutoring arrived to Salman Khan as an opportunity when he was making his niece study through web. It was a good example of creative problem solving where in a need was made viral through the use of web based services. 

The videos are of 10 mins length and not more than that using the scientific principles of retention such that the effectiveness of study is maintained. It has over 3200 video hours of lecture and more watched than MIT Sloan Open Course Ware(OCW).

Its interactive unlike the chalk and teacher videos and children can ask their question to the software, form the youtube videos it has now turned into an interactive software, this is an example of progressive evolution of an organisation. 

The Entrepreneurial Drive

being just a start up , he started getting funding from various beneficial of the videos which prompted him to quit his job and start this enterprise. he has received praise and funding from bill gates too.

Now he employees many developers for the site development and maintenance.

Its a uniquely global model, where in the physical boundaries of nation doesn't matter.

All in All, Khanacademy.org is a great initiative for spreading knowledge.