Speaker: Sal Khan
TED2011
Date: March 2011
Location: Long Beach, CA
Description from TED website:
Salman Khan talks about how and why he created the remarkable Khan Academy, a carefully structured series of educational videos offering complete curricula in math and, now, other subjects. He shows the power of interactive exercises, and calls for teachers to consider flipping the traditional classroom script — give students video lectures to watch at home, and do "homework" in the classroom with the teacher available to help.
My Review / Notes / Thoughts
I know this video is a few years old, but it’s still interesting to listen to. I would recommend educators listen to this video and try to glean from it ways to enhance their classrooms for student engagement. It might also be a good video to leverage in teacher education courses to get future educators to discuss ways to improve student engagement.
In this video, Sal talks about how he got started using YouTube to help teach his cousins, and then the comments he received from his cousins and others watching the videos. He realized that people learning from the videos benefited by being able to rewatch parts that they were struggling with … versus working with him live … where they might get embarrassed for asking him to ask him to go over a point again.
He also talked about how teachers contacted him and said how they were using his material to flip their classrooms … in other words, they were having the students watch the videos for their homework. Then, when the students came to school, the teachers became facilitators, working with the students as they worked on the problems.
Ultimately, he ended up founding Khan Academy which is still extremely active today. They’ve even been working with schools to help implement the “flipped” classroom model. His team has created tools to make it easy for teachers to track progress and see who needs help in what areas.
What do you think of Sal’s methods? What do you think of the potential that using Khan Academy could have in the classroom? Especially in this new system where so many have been having to attend school online?
If you are a teacher, how can you see utilizing Khan Academy in your classroom?
If you are a higher education teacher, how can you see using this video as a prompt for discussion among your students? Other than in teacher education, where else can you see this video being used as a prompt?
Until next time … live long life-learner!