Lets use video to reinvent education Salman Khan
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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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