An Unlikely Education Superstar
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- 8/31/2011 |
- 10:00 am
Salman Khan has always been good at math.
So when his niece needed tutoring, he was a likely candidate to lend a hand. In 2004 Khan began putting together short, simple videos to help illustrate his lessons and posting them to YouTube. There wasn't much flash to his presentation -- the videos consisted of little more than his voice imposed over a black backdrop with equations in his own handwriting. But out of that small kernel of an idea, the world of education has seen a major evolution take place in just a few short years.
Khan has been getting a ton of attention lately, and righfully so. His Khan Academy has received grant money from Google and Bill Gates, among others, and the program's effectiveness has been touted everywhere from The New York Times to Wired Magazine to Mashable.com. This morning, even the CBS Early Show got in on the act.
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Khan, a former hedge fund analyst with degrees from Harvard and MIT, would be the first to say that he's hardly a replaement for flesh-and-bone teachers. But the simplicity of his methods and the enthusiasm he engenders among his millions of pupils should be a lesson to us all: reforming education is not all about school boards and labor struggles. It's more about engaging and empowering students to value the learning process.
With more than 2,400 lessons now available, Khan Academy has even made its way into actual classrooms. If you hadn't heard of it yet, you're likely to be hearing a lot about it in the years ahead.
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