Khan Academy

The Khan Academy is a non-commercial website with teaching materials. It contains over 4,000 educational films from the fields of mathematics, science, history and economics and has an extensive channel on Youtube. The website was founded by Salman Khan, a U.S. citizen whose parents are from India and Bangladesh. The videos are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial -ShareAlike 3.0. Numerous media in the United States have reported on the Khan Academy. Bill Gates also spoke positively about the Khan Academy. The Khan Academy received the award of " 10100 Project" by Google, which is worth two million U.S. dollars.

History

Salman Khan, founder of the organization, was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. He has three degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ( a bachelor 's degree in mathematics and a bachelor's and a master's degree in electrical engineering and computer science ) and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

End of 2004, Khan, his cousin Nadia began to give private tuition in mathematics using the Doodle Notepads Yahoo!. When other relatives and friends asked him for a similar tuition, he decided to set the tutorials on YouTube. Due to the popularity of his videos and testimonials from students who learned with his videos, he announced in 2009 his job as a hedge fund analyst at Connective Capital Management and focused fully on the tutorials that since then under the name " Khan Academy " be published.

The project is funded by donations. The Khan Academy is a 501 ( c ) organization / non-profit organization, which is strongly supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Google. Several people have donated U.S. $ 10,000; Ann and John Doerr have $ 100,000 donated; the total turnover of donations is approximately U.S. $ 150,000. In 2010 Google announced that to support Khan Academy two million dollars as part of their project 10100. This money will be used for the creation of other courses and the translation of the core tutorials in the world's most widely spoken languages.

Engineering format

Even for his first video tutorials on YouTube Khan took a Wacom tablet in conjunction with the free drawing program SmoothDraw 3 to create drawings. The picture is taken with the screen capture software, Camtasia Studio.

All the videos that Khan Academy 's YouTube channel are at disposal are also to be found on its website the Khan Academy. This website provides a variety of tools for public school teachers willing to check practical exercises as well as the opportunity to progress. In order to save your own progress in learning a user account to be created or alternatively be connected to a Google or a Facebook account.

Khan avoided a format in which a person stands on a board. "I think it's encouraging and purposeful when you watch someone solve a problem, while he's thinking aloud ". Offline versions of his videos have been distributed by non-profit organizations in rural areas of Asia, Latin America and Africa.

The Khan Academy website also offers an exercise system that generates for students depending on the state of knowledge and the previous performance tasks. Khan believes his academy is the opportunity to replace the traditional classroom. His tutorials are considered on the basis of various factors to be helpful. One advantage is, for example, that pupils the video, but not able to stop a classroom. Part of its success is that Khan's face never appears, and viewers see only as step -by-step makes with his unadorned pencil drawings on an electronic tablet.

Service and Vision

The main components of the Khan Academy are:

• A collection of videos on various topics ( Currently there are more than 3,300 videos)
• Software with matching to the video exercises. The tasks are generated automatically. Answer a pupil successively 10 tasks correctly, he gets to the next level. When editing the exercises data are collected, which is eg allow a teacher to see which types of tasks which students have problems. ( Currently, there are 314 exercises)
• A " peer -to-peer tutoring " called care process, receive individual support for the weaker students.

Not-for -profit organizations, the partners of the Khan Academy are making the contents known outside of YouTube. World Possible created, for example, Snapshots of the content, to distribute these in rural, developing regions with limited or no Internet access.

In March 2012, the Khan Academy published an iPad app, can be used with the aid of which more than 2,700 free instructional videos.

Criticism

Some critics complain, the position of the teacher might be affected if the learners relate their knowledge by learning video and the teacher will work alongside only. Moreover, the system of learning videos verleite the students to a passive attitude. Another point of criticism is the fact that the spread of the Khan Academy content of sole control of Salman Khan's subject, which is problematic in less mathematical or scientific topics, but all the more for example in potentially controversial interpretations of history.

Another criticism refers to findings after scientifically correct instructional videos existing misperceptions often even solidify yet, as they are often perceived by the students with less attention than those which provide conflicting or confusing information and the viewer thereby a critical examination of the Presented and stimulate their own misperceptions.