^ Education is one of the most powerful forces in the world. Short of inventing the next evaporation fridge or water purification straw for developing nations, this is going to be one of your better bets if you want to directly help people.

Love this comment. The Internet is probably the fastest way to scale education and ideas. Getting Internet access to those who don't have it is just as critical in my opinion. Internet literacy will be key to a good education in generations to come.

Sorry to hijack OP's post, but I'd like to take this opportunity to ask you a few things about Khan Academy. All I know about is based on a piece that appeared in Wired US august issue.

To me, your method relied on a)having kids learning a lesson at home b)drilling exercises.

On a), I must say that it surprised me much. It means that kids must all have computer available at home (which is clearly not the case, even in western countries) and it also means that their home is sufficiently stable so that they can listen to a lesson (which is probably not doable if mom & dad fight each other every night, whereas doing small exercises is doable in between fights?).

Then, there's this part about creating a school, costing upwards of 10k$ a year. Call me a socialist or whatever, but seriously, paying 10k$ a year to get primary education, wtf?? Shouldn't a not for profit org seek to open such a school for free?

Please do not see this msg as completely negative: you're doing stuff to find other/better ways to teach kids, which is definitely awesome.

@rubergly handled the drilling comment well, so I'll just quickly add:

1) We do want kids to learn lessons at home so that teachers are freed up to do more project-based learning and...well...teaching (instead of lecturing). This doesn't mean the world falls apart if kids aren't watching videos at home. As @rubergly says, computers in the classroom allow for individualized instruction and solid data, which humanizes the kids' experience by helping teachers address individual needs.

2) On the school front -- there are lots of ideas floating around when thinking about the future, but I can assure you that our primary focus is exactly what it says on the website: "providing a free world-class education to anyone anywhere."

Thanks for your answers

Indeed, I used the word drill in precisely that meaning.

I think I might have been biased by wired's piece. Maybe it's just me or maybe they failed to render correctly what your org really is.

The current model is that 20-30 kids who want to be moving around and interacting with each other are forced into seats and restricted from moving for hours while teachers talk at them until they get distracted and zone out the teacher to think about other things. And then they go home with an assignment to complete which they may or may not do depending on how motivated they are. When Khan Academy flips this, they make much better use of the situation. There's no reason for everyone to be lectured at together, but there's every reason to allow students to interact and work together while solving problems. There's very little motivation to go home and complete a rigorous assignment when you can be playing outside or watching TV, but watching a couple 10-20 minute videos is enjoyable and completely digestible.

Personally, I believe that the act of working through problems is often more important to learning and development than watching or listening to lectures explaining how to work through problems. If a student's conditions at home are so unstable that they cannot concentrate on watching a single video, then they are clearly never going to be able to put a reasonable amount of effort into homework assignments in the normal education system. I would rather they fail to watch Khan videos at home and interact and explore exercises in class than listen to lectures in class every day but never put those skills into practice because they fail to do homework at home. However, yes, availability of computers at home is an issue. It would be great if Khan Academy were the cure-all for education and would be perfect for everyone, but this is never what has been claimed; unfortunately, for the time being, Khan Academy is not a viable solution for those without computer access.

I'm not sure if the phrasing of drilling exercises was supposed to imply something negative, but the goal of KA's exercises is not to drill students on a question until they can answer it as quickly as possible (this is what I think of when I think of a drill). The goal is to allow students to explore and advance at their own pace, proving mastery of a concept covered in a video and then feeling confident to move onto a more advanced topic. We try to make the exercises as modular as possible (which may make them outwardly resemble drills), but we do this so a complex problem can be broken down into many smaller and easier problems. Instead of making a staircase with huge steps that would take a giant to leap, we're making a staircase with small steps; that way, everyone can advance at their own pace.

Working in Education doesn't always have the same instant gratification as other projects, but if you can help people learn then you're going to have a very strong and lasting impact over time. And imagine if you created a product like, Khan Academy, that would increase the knowledge of 1% of the population by 10%. I think that's a worthy goal.

Improving education doesn't have the same immediate benefits, but the way I see it insufficient education is at the root of most of the world's problems. With improving education, you make a ripple which turns into a huge wave.

Immediate and long term results are both worthy and needed. It's just a choice: do you want to work in the world's emergency room, or in patient education?