Would Salman Khan’s revolutionary approach to learning work in Australian schools?
In this TED talk from back in March, the former hedge fund analyst explains how his Khan Academy turns education inside out.
At its heart, it bring the lectures home and moves the homework to the classroom. Khan brings his engaging personality (and copious intelligence; he has three degrees from MIT) to more than 2,000 videos, on everything from basic addition to chemistry, to about one million students per month.
The videos and accompanying web interfaces allow the student to pause, go back, re-watch… whatever they need to do to get it. In the classroom, the children learn at their own pace. The academy gathers extensive analytics (developed with lots of feedback from instructors) to help teachers understand who needs help, mentoring, etc.
The Khan Academy is a non-profit; its founder’s goal is modest — he wants to teach the world. And he’s getting a big boost in that direction in the form of Bill Gates, who has endorsed the academy and supplied funds through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (the Man of Microsoft takes the stage for the last few minutes of the video and asks Khan a handful of questions).
Schools usually claim to be open to innovation. This, however, would be a prodigious leap. Do you think it would work in your child’s school? And even it didn’t get that far, could you use something like this for your child at home?
