Reading through this article in the USA today about the Khan Academy and getting excited about online progression in education and how it supports classroom teaching, inquiry learning and how the model can be transferred to higher level education.

Khan Academy is an online education non profit, no stock options or financial incentives they don’t even have advertising on their website, they seem completely focused on their mission statement “providing a high quality education to anyone, anywhere”.

It all started when Salman Khan started tutoring his cousin online, another cousin wanted the same support so Sal put it onto a youtube video for easy access and voila, it took off, now there are over 3000 online videos for anyone to access – including students, teachers, tutors etc.

Is this changing education? Is this doing away with the textbook?  Does it change the role of the teacher?

I think the Khan academy is a wonderful resource and model of a resource we should all take advantage of it. Online resources are easier to access and unlike text books can be updated  with relevant information.  After teaching in English speaking schools in South East Asia I learnt that many textbooks, although full of great information, can be irrelevant to surrounding circumstances and views, also difficult to find and expensive to import.  We would always be looking for other resources and Khan academy is definitely one of these.

Khan Academy is a great resource for facilitated inquiry learning.  Current teachers should now be looking towards guiding rather than instructing, supporting adventures and inquiries into ideas rather than following a strict outline.  Salman Khan is giving everyone a fantastic resource to be able to facilitate learning and I think this is an inevitable progression that should be extended to adult institutional learning.

Click here to read the article

Click here for Khan Academy’s website

Related articles

• Salman Khan: From closet to classroom (news.bbc.co.uk)
• Khan Academy founder talks online education success (cbsnews.com)