KHAN ACADEMY

KHAN ACADEMY

Khan academy ,a non profit educational organization ,is founded by Salman Khan. He was a student of Harward and MIT passed out , Indian origin, popularly known as Sal Khan .His mission is to make the academy world's first virtual class  available to anyone and anywhere in the world.  

He has revolutionised online video teachings. His teaching are simple to understand. He uploads videos complete with sketches and  background voice that enables a student to learn at his own speed.The website supplies a free online collection of more than 3,200 micro lectures through video tutorials made available on YouTube teaching mathematics, history, healthcare and medicine, finance,physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy, economics, cosmology, organic chemistry, American civics, art history, macro economics and microeconomics, and computer science.

The idea struck him while teaching his cousin online who was more comfortable with his youtube videos rather than Salman in person.This encouraged him to take this social cause forward.

 The project is funded by donations. Khan Academy is a  not-for-profit organization, now with significant backing from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Google. Several people have made contributions.

 As he told in the TED that he believed even if someone scored 95%, he has missed learning 5%. Also every student is unique and learns at his own pace. The video can be paused, revised and revisited again and again without the fear of being reprimanded for slow learning. To achieve 100% he has made exercise such that it doesn't allow to progress to next level without correctly answering 10 questions in a row.  Sometime a student has even answered more than 200 question before achieving this feat. The flowchart of course is designed in manner that next course can be attempted only if a certain level has been achieved.

He also implemented this in few schools in United States.. Good student were found to be practising advance course.But what was more significant that otherwise perceived slow student caught up with course and showed remarkable improvement. Also despite use of technology , student teacher interaction increased. This happened because generally lecture is listened attentively only by fraction of class. Good student get bored by pace and lose interest while slow student lag behind and lose interest. This leaves the class only with students having near average skills. But Khan academy gave every student its own comfortable pace. Thus improving performance significantly.

Khan Academy also provides a web-based exercise system that generates problems for students based on skill level and performance. This software is available as open source under the MIT license. Khan believes his academy points an opportunity to overhaul the traditional classroom by using software to create tests, grade assignments, highlight the challenges of certain students, and encourage those doing well to help struggling classmates. The tutorials are created in such away that students can pause them whenever needed and continue later on.

Giving motivation and advice to the graduating class, Sal Khan said MIT has played “a        much deeper role than many on you might appreciate” and said the just when everyone was thinking of making profit from online education MIT stepped in and launched MIT OpenCourseWare for free to all.  This action inspired Sal Khan’s Khan academy in a big way.

The success of his low-tech, conversational tutorials—Khan's face never appears, and viewers see only his unadorned step-by-step doodles and diagrams on an electronic blackboard—suggests an educational transformation that de-emphasizes classrooms, campus and administrative infrastructure, and even brand-name instructors.