Offline learning is the latest tool for the unorthodox education organization. Here's how that and other new features will power Khan Academy's new app.
Khan Academy, the wildly popular YouTube lecture series, has launched its free, new iPad app in Apple's store. The enhanced version of Khan Academy includes time-syncing between devices--no Internet connection required--an interactive transcript of the lectures for easy searching, and a handy scrubber for moving between parts of the lectures. Perhaps more importantly, now that more schools have begun adopting Khan's lectures for their own classrooms, the iPad app could possibly replace or supplement textbooks, saving cash-strapped schools and students a lot of money.
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The major benefit of the app is offline learning. Khan Academy Lead Designer Jason Rosoff says.
"If you're going on a road trip or if you're taking mass transit and you don't have cell service, or whatever, you can get the content."
The iPad frees Khan Academy from the constraints of a laptop and Internet connection. Rosoff says the app will remember where users left off viewing and sync progress between devices (though, for the initial version, both devices will need to connect to the Internet before going offline to sync).
Second, with inspiration from TED, Khan lectures will now have an interactive time-stamped transcript, which is a convenient search function, considering some of the lectures can be quite long.
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Last, just like a textbook, users flip back and forth between different parts of the content. Rosoff says.
"People scrub a lot in our videos."
The app will have an enhanced version video scrubber (the scroll bar at the bottom of a video) that makes repeating areas less painful.
For the growing number of schools that are adopting iPads, the most impactful potential for the app is for Khan Academy's "flipped classroom," in which lectures are watched at home by students, and then assignments are completed collaboratively in class, where a teacher is present. Shantanu Sinha, President and COO of Khan Academy says.
"The teacher is free to do a lot more of the human interaction."
Intrigued by the idea of the flipped classroom, a pilot program in the Los Altos school district in California has started using Khan's online lectures for a substantial portion of the learning. Teachers use visualization software that could track student progress in the lectures, and they've discovered that some students were often mislabeled as "at-risk."
Sinha says.
"Very often, students who thought they were horrible in math, who were labeled bad in math by schools ... in many cases, they were just struggling with a very specific topic. Without the ability to explore lectures at home, struggling students were left behind as teachers progressed through the lesson plan. But, when students could focus on problem areas at their own pace, they could overcome weaknesses and catch back up with the class."
The initial version of the iPad app doesn't include the visualization tools and exercises necessary for a Khan Academy classroom, Rosoff says, but once the tools are part of the app, schools may adopt the Khan lecture series as a electronic textbook replacement. That'll also give Khan more time to address early feedback about the tools in later app updates.
Find the new Khan Academy iPad app here.
COMMENTARY: In a blog post dated August 24, 2010, I first profiled Khan Academy's Sal Khan. He gave up a successful career as a hedge fund analyst to teach children using his self-taught YouTube teaching videos. Bill Gates caught his eye, and the rest his history.
The fact that Bill Gates has applauded his work and also invested $1.5 million into Khan Academy is a testament to Mr. Khan's importance to teaching. If Bill Gates gives you his seal of approval, then that is a huge plus.
This past Sunday, March 18, 2012, Khan Academy founder Salman Khan was interviewed by Sanjay Gupta for CBS' "60 Minutes" television program. It was an incredible interview showing Khan at work putting together his famous teaching videos.
The new Khan Academy iPhone app will allow students to work on Khan Academy teaching lectures the ideal teaching platform.
Khan Academy Highlights:
- 2,600+ learning videos in its library.
- At the end of December 2011, Khan Academy saw 4 million unique users. That’s up from 1 million in the same period in 2010, and up from 3.5 million in October.
- The Khan Academy team is currently made up of 22 people, and they’re hiring ~1 more per month.
- “I’d say that 90% [of the videos are shot] in 1 take. 99% are 2 takes.”
- “I will definitely do much more advanced mathematics in the next year than what we have now.” (This resulted in Michael Nielson, leading quantum computing expert and author of the standard text on the subject, to offer his assistance right in the thread)
- Foundation grants received todate:
- Bill and Mellinda Gates Foundation in July 2011 - $1.5 million
- Google in July 2011 - $2 million
- The O'Sullivan Foundation in November 2011 - $5 million
In March 2011, Salman Khan spoke at TED 2011. Here's the video.
Courtesy of an article dated March 19, 2012 appearing in Fast Company Design , an article dated November 4, 2011 appearing in TechCrunch
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