Khan Academy-You Khan Do It!
2 min read
Sal Khan
If you are a parent with a child in school, are in school yourself, or just want to learn for fun, you must check out Khan Academy. I am currently in a Biology class, and without Khan Academy my chances of passing increased from despairingly low to passing with a B. Not only did I pass, but I now have an understanding of the material. Sciences and maths are certainly not my best subjects, and without an excellent teacher, I am hopeless.
One of my assignments was to watch a video on the Khan Academy website. All I can say is that Sal is my savior. This genius, with his three degrees from MIT and his MBA from Harvard, makes learning easy and fun. After watching his videos, biology started to make sense, again. ( I took Biology in 2002, as a high-school student.)
Algebra, Biology, Calculus, Chemistry, Economics, Finance, Geometry, History, etc. I could go all day long because the list of courses never ends. There are over 3400 videos available and they are continually adding more.
So what’s the catch?
None. It is absolutely free. Khan Academy is a non-profit company that they have a “goal of changing education for the better by providing a free world-class education for anyone anywhere.”
So how did it get started?
In 2004, Sal put videos on Youtube.com to help tutor his cousin. From here he added math and science classes until 2008 when he started his own non-profit company. In 2009, he quit his job as a hedge fund manager to focus all of his energy on Khan Academy. In 2010, Khan Academy received donations from Bill Gates ($1.5 million) and Google ($2.0 million) to further the growth of this educational organization. As of the publishing of this article, 197,744,879 lessons have been watched. The reason that I believe that his videos are successful:
I teach the way that I wish I was taught. The lectures are coming from me, an actual human being who is fascinated by the world around him. —Sal
Below are two pictures, one is a picture of the blackboard computer style that he uses while he lectures and the second is a list of the history lessons offered on his site. So if you want to learn something, anything…check out Khan Academy!
