Lets use video to reinvent education Salman Khan

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[Applause]

Khan Academy is most known for its its

collection of videos so before I go any

farther let me show you a little bit of

a montage so the hypotenuse is now going

to be 5 this animals fossils are only

found in this area of South America nice

clean band here and this part of Africa

we could integrate over the surface and

the notation usually is a capital Sigma

National Assembly they create the

Committee of Public Safety which sounds

like a very nice committee notice this

is an aldehyde and it’s an alcohol start

differentiating into effector and memory

cells a galaxy hey there’s another

galaxy oh look there’s another galaxy

and $4 is there 30 million plus the 20

million dollars from the American

manufacturer if this does not blow your

mind then you have no emotion

we now have on the order of 2,200 videos

covering everything from basic

arithmetic all the way to vector

calculus and some of the stuff that you

saw up there we have a million students

a month using the site watching on the

order of a hundred to two hundred

thousand of videos a day

but we’re gonna talk about and this is

how we’re going to the next level

but before I do that I want to talk a

little bit about really just how I got

started and some of y’all might know

about five years ago I was an analyst at

a hedge fund and I was in Boston and I

was tutoring my cousin’s in New Orleans

remotely and I started putting the first

YouTube videos up really just as kind of

a nice to have just kind of a supplement

for my cousin something that might you

know give give him a refresher or

something and as soon as I put those

first YouTube videos up something

interesting happened actually a bunch of

interesting things happen the first was

the feedback from my cousin’s they told

me that they preferred me on youtube

than in person and and what’s once you

get over the backhanded nature of that

there was actually something very

profound there they were saying that

they preferred the automated version of

their cousin to their cousin at first

it’s very unintuitive but when you

actually think about from their point of

view it makes a ton of sense you have

this situation where now they can pause

and repeat their cousin now they can

without feeling like they’re wasting my

time they could if they have to review

something that they should have learned

a couple of weeks ago or maybe a couple

of years ago they don’t have to be

embarrassed and ask their cousin they

can just watch those videos if they’re

bored they can go ahead they can watch

it at their own time at their own pace

and probably the the least appreciated

I guess aspect of this is the notion

that the very first time the very first

time that you’re trying to get your

brain around a new concept the very last

thing you need is another human being

saying do you understand this and that’s

what was happening with the interaction

with my cousin’s before and now they

could just do it kind of in in kind of

the intimacy of their of their of their

own room the other thing that happened

is you know I put them on YouTube just

just you know for the you guys I saw no

reason to make it private so I I let

other people watch it and then people

started stumbling on it and and I

started getting some comments and some

letters and and all sorts of kind of

feedback from from random people around

the world and you know these are just a

few this is actually from one of the

original calculus videos and someone

wrote just on YouTube who was a youtube

comment first time I smiled doing a

derivative let’s pause here this person

did a derivative and then they smiled

and then in response to that same

comment this is on the thread you could

go on YouTube and look at these comments

someone else wrote same thing here I

actually got a natural high and a good

mood for the entire day since I remember

seeing all of this matrix text in class

and here I’m all like I know kung fu and

we got a lot of feedback all along those

lines you know it’s clearly it was

helping people but then as the

viewership kept growing and kept growing

I started getting letters from from

people and it was starting to become

clear that it was actually more than

just a nice-to-have that this is just an

excerpt from one of one of those letters

Mike twelve-year-old son has autism and

has had a terrible time with math we

have tried everything

viewed everything bought everything we

stumbled on your video done decimals and

it got through then we went on to the

dreaded fractions again he got it we

could not believe it he is so excited

and so you can imagine you know here I

was a an analyst at a hedge fund

I it was very strange for me to do

something of social value

[Laughter]

but uh I was excited so I kept going and

then a few things other things started

to dawn on me that not only would it

help my cousin’s right now or these

people who are sending letters but it

could may be that this content will

never go old that it could help their

kids or their grandkids if Isaac Newton

had done YouTube videos on calculus I

would not do Oh sue assuming he was good

we don’t know the other thing that

happened you know even at this point you

know I said okay maybe it’s a good

supplement it’s good for motivated

students it’s good for maybe home

schoolers but I didn’t think it would be

something that would somehow penetrate

the classroom but then I start getting

letters from teachers and the teachers

would write saying we’ve used your

videos to flip the classroom you’ve

given the lectures so now what we do and

this could actually happen in every

classroom in America tomorrow what I do

is I assign the lectures for homework

and what used to be homework I now have

the students doing in the classroom and

I want to I want to pause here for I

want to pause here for a second because

there’s a couple of interesting things

one when those when those teachers are

doing that there’s there’s the obvious

benefit there’s the benefit that now

they’re there students can enjoy the

videos in the way that my cousin’s did

they can pause repeat at their own pace

at their own time but the more

interesting thing this is the

unintuitive thing when you talk about

technology in the classroom by removing

the one size fits all lecture from the

classroom and letting and letting

students have a self-paced lecture at

home and then when you go to the

classroom letting them do work having

the student to teacher walk around

having the peers actually be able to

interact with each other these teachers

have used technology to humanize the

classroom they took a fundamentally

dehumanizing experience a bunch of

thirty kids with their fingers on their

lips not allowed to interact with each

other a teacher no matter how good has

to give this kind of one size fits all

lecture to thirty students you know

blank faces slightly antagonistic and

now it’s a human experience now they’re

actually interacting with each other

so once the Khan Academy kind of you

know I quit my job and we

into a real organization we’re

not-for-profit the question is how do we

take this to the next level how do we

take what those teachers were doing to

their natural conclusion and so what I’m

showing over here these are actual

exercises that I started writing for my

cousin’s the ones I started were much

more primitive this is a kind of a more

competent version of it but the paradigm

here is well we’ll generate as many

questions as you need until you get that

concept until you get ten in a row and

the the Khan Academy videos are there

you get hints the actual steps for that

problem if you don’t know how to do it

but the parrot I mean it seems like a

very simple thing ten in a row you move

on but it’s fundamentally different than

what’s happening in classrooms right

right now and in a traditional classroom

you have a couple of a homework homework

lecture homework lecture and you have a

snapshot exam and that exam whether you

get a 70% at 80% of 90 percent or 95

percent the class moves on to the next

topic and even that 95 percent student

what was the 5% they didn’t know maybe

they didn’t know what what happens when

you raise something to the to the zeroth

power and then you go build on that in

the next concept that’s analogous to

imagine learning to ride a bicycle and I

give you a bicycle maybe I’ll give you a

lecture ahead of time and and I give you

that that bicycle for two weeks and then

I come back after two weeks and I say

well let’s see you’re having trouble

taking left turns you can’t quite stop

your your an 80% bicyclist so I put a

big C stamp on your forehead and then I

say here’s a unicycle but as ridiculous

as that sounds that’s exactly what’s

happening in our classrooms right now

and and and the idea is you know you

fast forward and students start good

students start failing algebra all of a

sudden and start failing calculus all of

a sudden despite it being smart despite

having good teachers and it’s usually

because they had these Swiss cheese gaps

that kept building throughout their

foundation so our model is learn math

the way you would learn anything like

the way you would learn a bicycle stay

on that bicycle fall off that bicycle do

it as long as necessary until you have

mastery the traditional model it

penalizes you for experimentation and

failure but it does not expect mastery

we encourage you to experiment we

encourage you to failure but we do

expect mastery

this is just one another one of the

modules this is trigonometry this is

shifting and reflecting functions and

and they all fit together we have we

have about 90 of these right now and you

could go to the site right now it’s all

free and I’m not trying to sell anything

but the general idea is that they’re all

fit into this knowledge map that top

node right there that’s literally

single-digit addition it’s like one plus

one is equal to two and the paradigm is

once you get ten in a row on that and it

keeps forward you to more and more

advanced modules so if you keep so it

keep this is go further down the

knowledge map we’re getting into more

advanced arithmetic further down you

start getting into pre-algebra and early

algebra further down you start getting

into algebra 1 algebra 2 a little bit of

precalculus and the idea is from this we

can actually teach everything well

everything that can be taught in this

type of a framework so you can imagine

and this is what we are working on is

from this knowledge map you have logic

you have computer programming you have

grammar you have genetics all based off

of that core of ok if you know this and

that now you’re ready for this next

concept now that can work well for an

individual learner you know and then I

encourage one for you to do with your

kids but I also encourage everyone in

the audience to do it yourself it’ll

it’ll change what happens at the dinner

table but what we want to do is use the

natural conclusion of the flipping of

the classroom that those early teachers

had emailed me about and so what I’m

showing you here this is actually data

from a pilot in the Los Altos School

District where they took two fifth grade

classes and two seventh grade classes

and completely gutted their old math

curriculum these kids aren’t using

textbooks they’re not getting

one-size-fits-all lectures

they’re doing Khan Academy they’re doing

that software for roughly half of their

math class and I want to make it clear

we don’t view this as a complete math

education what it does is and this is

what’s happening in Los Altos it frees

up time this is the blocking and

tackling making sure you know how to do

the system of equation and it frees up

time for the simulations for the games

for the mechanics for the for the robot

building for the estimating how high

that hill is based on its on its shadow

and so the paradigm is the teacher walks

in every day

every kid works at their own pace and a

teacher get this is actually a live

dashboard from Los Altos School District

and they look at this dashboard every

row is a student every column is one of

those concepts Green

the students already proficient blue

means that they’re working on it no need

to ye red means their stock and what the

teacher does is literally just says let

me intervene on the red kids or even

better let me get one of the green kids

who are already proficient in that

concept to be the first line of attack

and actually tutor their act their peer

now

I kind of come from a very data-centric

reality so we don’t want that teacher to

even go and intervene and have to ask

the kid awkward questions Oh what do you

not understand or what do you do

understand in all of the rest

so our paradigm is to really arm the

teachers with as much data as possible

really data that in almost any other

field is expected if you’re in finance

or marketing or manufacturing and so the

teachers can actually diagnose what’s

wrong with the students so that they can

make their interaction as productive as

possible so now the teachers know

exactly what the students been up to how

long they’ve been spending every day

what videos have they been watching when

did they pause the videos what did they

stop watching what exercises are they

using what have they been focused on the

outer circle shows what the exercises

they’re focused on the inner circle

shows the videos they’re focused on and

the data gets pretty granular so you can

actually see the exact problems that the

student got right or wrong red is wrong

blue is right the leftmost question is

the first question that the student

attempted they watched the video right

over there and then you could see

eventually they were able to get ten in

a row it’s almost like you can almost

see them learning over those last ten

problems they also got faster the height

is how long it took them so you know

when you talk about self-paced learning

it makes sense for everyone you know an

education speak differentiated learning

but it’s kind of crazy what happens when

you actually see it in a classroom

because every every time we’ve done this

in every classroom we’ve done over and

over again if you go five days into it

there’s a group of kids who have raced

ahead and there’s a group of kids who

are a little bit slower and in a

traditional model if you did a snapshot

assessment you say oh these are the

gifted kids these are the slow kids

maybe they should be tracked differently

maybe we should put them in different

classes but when you let every student

work at their own pace we see it over

and over and over again you see students

who took a little bit extra time on one

concept or the other but once they get

through that concept they just race

ahead and so the same kids that you

thought were slow six weeks ago you now

would think are gifted and we’re seeing

it over and over and over again and

makes you really wonder kind of how much

all of the labels maybe a lot of us have

benefited from we’re really just do - a

coincidence of time now as valuable as

something like this is in a district

like Los Altos our goal is is to use

technology to humanize not just in Los

Altos but kind of on

global-scale well what’s happening in

education and actually that that kind of

brings an interesting point is it you

know a lot of the effort in humanizing

the classroom is focused on student to

teacher ratios in our mind the relevant

metric is student to valuable human time

with the teacher ratio so in a

traditional model most of the teachers

time is spent doing lectures and grading

tests and whatnot maybe five percent of

their time is actually sitting next to

students and actually working with them

now hundred percent of their time base

so once again using technology not just

flipping the classroom you’re humanizing

the classroom I’d argue by it by a

factor of five or ten and as valuable as

it is in Los Altos imagine what that

does to the adult learner who’s

embarrassed to go back and learn stuff

that they should have known before

before going back to college imagine

imagine what it does to a kid a street

kid in Calcutta who has to help his

family during the day and that’s the

reason why he or she can’t go to school

now they can spend two hours a day and

remediate or get up to speed and not

feel embarrassed about what they do or

don’t know now imagine what happens

where you know we talked about the peers

teaching each other inside of a

classroom but this is all one system

there’s no reason why you can’t have

that that peer to peer tutoring beyond

that one classroom imagine what happens

if that student in Calcutta all of a

sudden can tutor your son or your son

can tutor that kid in Calcutta and I

think what you’ll see emerging is this

notion of a global one-world classroom

and that’s that’s essentially what we’re

what we’re trying to build thank you

okay

I’ve seen some things you’re doing in

the system that have to do with

motivation and feedback energy points

merit badges tell me what you’re

thinking there oh yeah no we have an

awesome team working on it it’s not and

I have to be clear it’s not just me

anymore I’m still doing all the videos

we have a kind of a rockstar team doing

the software

yeah we’ve put a bunch of game mechanics

in there you get these badges we’re

gonna start having leaderboards by areas

and you get points it’s actually been

pretty interesting just the wording of

the badging or how many points you get

for doing something we see on the

system-wide basis like tens of thousands

of like fifth graders or sixth graders

going one direction or another depending

on what you know bad you give them and

that collaboration you’re doing with Los

Altos how did that come about yeah I’ll

just been kind of it was kind of crazy

they once again I didn’t expect it to be

used in classrooms someone from from

their board came and said Oh what would

you do if you had carte blanche in a

classroom and I said well you know I

would just every student work at their

own pace on something like this we’d

give a dashboard it you know and they

said oh this is kind of radical we have

to think about it and I mean the rest of

the team like oh you know they’re never

gonna want to do this but literally the

next day they’re like can you can you

start in two weeks so the 5th 5th grade

math is where that’s going there’s two

fifth grade classes and two seventh

grade classes and I think they’re doing

at the district level I think what

they’re excited about is they can now

follow these kids it’s not an only

in-school thing I mean we’ve even you

know on Christmas we saw some of the

kids we’re doing and we can track

everything so they can actually track

them as they go through the entire

district through the summers as they go

from one teacher to an X you have this

continuity of data that that even at the

district level they can see so some of

those views we saw were for the teacher

to go in and track actually what’s going

on with those those kids so you’re

getting feedback on those teacher views

to see what they think they need oh yeah

actually most of those were were kind of

specs by the teachers we made some of

those for students so they could see

their data but you know we have a very

tight design loop with the teachers

themselves and their lures saying hey

you know this is nice but I like that

focus graph a lot of student says a lot

of the teacher said I have a feeling

that a lot of the kids are jumping

around and not focusing on one topic so

we made that focus a diagram form so

it’s all been teacher driven it’s it’s

been it’s been pretty

is this ready for primetime you think a

lot of class classes next school years

should try this thing out yeah it’s

ready it’s you know it’s we got a

million people on the side already so we

can handle a few more and it’s uh it’s

no no reason why why it really can’t

happen in every classroom in America

tomorrow and that the vision of the

tutoring thing the idea there is if I’m

confused about a topic somehow right and

user-interface I’d find people who are

volunteering maybe see their reputation

and I could schedule and connect up with

those people absolutely you know and

this is something I recommend everyone

this audience to do is you can that

those dashboards the teachers have you

can go log in right now and you could

get you can essentially become a coach

for your for your kids your nephews your

cousins or maybe some kids at the Boys

and Girls Club and yeah you can start

becoming a mentor tutor really

immediately but yeah it’s all there well

it’s amazing I I think you’ve just got a

glimpse of the future of Education thank

you thank you

you

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