Magic Fix #28: The Khan Effect

Check out my Pinterest board 'Word Power' for more fabulous quotes!

I have always loved sharing all the fabulous learning tools used by our children with my friends and family! Due to this reason many children that we know have begun to use a number of awesome apps on the iPad, Starfall and Starfall More, Mathletics & Spellerdrome in their daily lives and had some great results.

The new paradigme for learning is that every child is capable of grasping any mathematical concept given that they have the time to work at their own pace, is provided multiple learning tools and allowed plenty of opportunities for 'creative' problem solving. Until now, I have not come across a learning tool on the internet that allowed children to do all of this in one place. I am SO EXCITED to have come across the ultimate magic fix for  learning any mathematical concept: the KHAN ACADEMY or the Khan Effect as I like to call it.

Due to a serendipitous find on YOUTUBE (thank god for YOUTUBE btw) I came across Salman Khan.

Salman Khan or Sal (as he is better known) is the founder of the KHAN ACADEMY, a website that is totally free, it gives you access to 2000 or more video tutorials that deliver world class education to ANYONE, ANYWHERE. Any learner aged 5 to 500 years can learn basic addition to advanced calculus, physics, chemistry, biology, computer science, art history and much much more with the thousands of video tutorials personally made by Harvard educated and super brilliant Sal!

Prior to the Khan Academy, Sal was a senior analyst at a hedge fund and had also worked in technology and venture capital.  He holds an MBA from Harvard Business School, an M.Eng and B.S. in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT, and a B.S. in mathematics from MIT. You may want to learn more about how he got into the business of free distribution of 'excellent' education by watching his TEDtalk below (and yes, that is Bill Gates that you see on the left of the screen):

In further support, to my thoughts on our current education system in Australia and New Zealand, written in my previous post here, I love this excerpt from his talk:

"...and in the traditional model, if you did a snapshot assessment, you say, "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--and we see it over and over and over again--you see students who took a little bit (of) extra time on one concept or the other, but once they get through that concept, they 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 it makes you really wonder how much all of the labels maybe a lot of us benefited from were really due to coincidence of time." (and he finishes to thunderous applause)

I believe that Sal may have single handedly 're-invented' not just 'reformed' education for this and the coming generations.

Don't you love that! I am so excited by this and that is why I am sharing this with you today.

If you ever labelled yourself 'stupid' in maths in the past- DON'T! Just put yourself through the paces at  Khan Academy and even you'll smile while doing derivatives.

Here is the link to the Khan Academy, get all of your kids on it and hopefully you'll also think about making a donation to this worthy not for profit at some stage. Better still, you'll also think about sharing the site with everyone that YOU know!

Now, get your math pants on and get your brain muscles pumping! oh, sorry, that's the geek in me...x