Khan Academy just might be the future of education not only for America but as well as to the world.
In a CBS News special titled 'Teacher of the World,' which was aired March 11, 2012, and rebroadcasted on Sunday, Sept. 1, 2013, with Sanjay Gupta as correspondent, the humble beginnings of Khan Academy was revisited to share once more, the beauty of this educational platform that is now foreseen as the future of education.
Khan Academy creator Salman Amin "Sal" Khan, the 36-year-old three-degree holder from MIT with an MBA from Harvard, records 10-minute lessons and uploads them to his website, which contains over 3,000 lessons not only for basic math subjects but also for biology, medicine, history, astronomy, physics, and calculus as of late.
His recordings feature all educational topics ranging from simple to the most complicated ones that are strategically presented through colorful sketches and his voice
Sal's Khan Academy takes pride on its mission of "a free world-class education for anyone anywhere."
In an interview for Forbes magazine in November 2012, he shared why he opted to come up with a non-profit educational platform.
"I could have started a for-profit, venture-backed business that has a good spirit, and I think there are many of them-Google for instance," khan said. "Maybe I could reach a billion people. That is high impact, but what happens in 50 years?"
In the CBS News special, he was asked why he never puts his face on his instructional material, Khan quirkily answered, "if there's a human face there, especially a funny looking human face, than it's actually hard to focus on the math."
"I don't have to shave. I don't have to comb my hair. I just press record, make a video. There might be spinach in my teeth, who cares," Khan added.
Khan explained in the interview that his Khan Academy was merely a project she made for his cousin Nadia, a 7th grader in New Orleans, who asked him for assistance since she was struggling with algebra that time. At first, he said that he tutored her remotely by posting lessons on YouTube, but when strangers started to give him positive feedback, it motivated him to do more.
"I started getting feedback like, 'You know, my child has dyslexia, and this is the only thing that's getting into him.' I got letters from people saying, 'You know, we're praying for you and your family.' That's pretty heady stuff. People don't say that type of stuff to a hedge fund analyst normally," Khan said.
Khan then decided to quit his job in 2009 and dedicated his time to work on his dreamed platform, Khan Academy, not knowing the impact he has brought to many people until he found out that Bill Gates was using his free instructional materials to teach his own kids.
Three years later, Sal's Khan Academy received more than $30 million funding, and some of which is said to have come from the Gates Foundation and Google.
Sal was then able to hire talented engineers and designers for the Khan Academy, which now has its own office in Silicon Valley. Khan shared that they are working to create and improve the software that will help develop a new educational approach for all American classrooms.
Russian Physicist and Venture Capitalist in Facebook, Twitter, and Groupon said, "Sal is the world's first superstar teacher."
Meanwhile, Khan said, "We have a $7 million operating budget, and we are reaching, over the course of a year, about 10 million students in a meaningful way. If you put any reasonable value on it, say $10 a year-and keep in mind we serve most students better than tutoring-and you are looking at, what, a 1,000% return?"
Despite the promising profit behind Khan Academy, Sal maintains that it will always be free to all who crave for learning and knowledge, In a New York Times report, Sal said. "The core of our mission is to give material to people who need it... You could ask, 'Why should it be free?' But why shouldn't it be free?"
To date, Khan Academy has been receiving a lot of mostly positive feedback from various people. High School Physics Teacher in Cross River, N.Y. Franck Noschese said, "Instead of showing our students a better lecture, let's get them doing something better than lecture."
Although the National Education Association is giving full support to the nonprofit technology, Sal shared that there have been a subset of teacher who were very skeptical about his work.
"I've seen some subset of teachers who say, 'Oh, well, what is this video thing? You know, live human interaction is important.' And the reason why that bothers me a little bit is that I know that's exactly what we're saying. In fact, we exactly agree with you. That what we're trying to do is take the passivity out of the classroom. So that you, as a teacher, will have more flexibility," Khan said
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