Khan Academy Delivers 100,000 Lectures Daily

eldavojohn writes "Working from the comfort of his home, Salman Khan has made available more than 1,500 mini-lectures to educate the world. Subjects range from math and physics to finance, biology, and current economics. Kahn Academy amounts to little more than a YouTube channel and one very devoted man. He is trying to provide education in the way he wished he had been taught. With more than 100,000 video views a day, the man is making a difference for many students. In his FAQ he explains how he knows he is being effective. What will probably ensure his popularity (and provide a legacy surpassing that of most highly paid educators) is that everything is licensed under Creative Commons 3.0. He only needs his time, a $200 Camtasia Recorder, an $80 Wacom Bamboo Tablet, and a free copy of SmoothDraw3. While the lecturing may not be quite up to the Feynman level, it's a great augmenter for advanced learners, and a lifeline for those without much access to learning resources."

Comments

I wish...

[spiffydudex]

I had knowledge of this site sooner. My Linear Algebra professor was horrible at giving lectures.(I wasn't the only one who thought so) After reviewing some of the linear material, Khans videos are helpful even after several weeks of summer. In fact the videos on the Gram-Schmidt helped explain what I completely missed the first time.

I congratulate you Khan for your hard work to help educate the people of the world. I know it will serve me well in the upcoming year.

Spell it correctly. Its Khan.

[MasterOfUniverse]

not kahn.

Web programmers, You can help!

[KPexEA]

http://code.google.com/p/khanacademy/

Instructional Design

[BlueBoxSW.com]

In addition to the things listed above, he obviously has a pretty good grasp of instructional design principles.

I watched a couple videos, and has either studied it or learned from trial and error somewhere along the line.

Let us not forget this important glue that holds together solid instruction of any kind.

Re:Instructional Design

[RichMan]

> and has either studied it or learned from trial and error somewhere along the line.

It is explained in the FAQ which is linked from the slashdot summary that he uses the youtube time profile of the videos to refine the process.

Also doing an Masters in EE/CS will usually get you a fair amount of time in front of a class doing the problem solving sessions if not actually lecturing for the undergrads. That is a lot of practical trial and error in the teaching process.

Thank you!

[Some1too]

I can't say that enough! As an older person who was returning to university your mathematics and physics exercises and videos were a life saver! I truly appreciate all the hard work and effort you've put into your educational materials (website, videos, lessons etc). They helped me immensely and I don't doubt for a second they will continue to do so when I finally begin my full time studies in September. It's people such as yourself that really help make a positive difference in our world. You're inspirational, thank you and keep up the excellent work. One last time: Thank you, thank you, thank you. Some1too.

FAQ - How can you help?

[asadsalm]

From the site:

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How can I/you help?

The biggest thing is getting the word out. The students who use the site seem to really get excited by how quickly and deeply they can learn from it. Right now (5/2010), there are about 200,000 students using the site per month; no reason why it shouldn't be 20 million!

If you like to code or work on user interface design, you might be able to help on the Khan Academy applications which we are doing as an open source project