In light of my prior blog post (about the history of Ed-Tech, where I referenced how potential gains in the field weren’t always fully recognized and why that might be), I chose to showcase here an example of Ed-Tech done right; Salman (Sal) Khan, creator of the Khan Academy. The Khan Academy is an immensely popular organization which emerged from humble beginnings and is most famed for their growing collection of free, instructional YouTube videos on a numerous array of multidisciplinary topics.
Sal Khan is an American financial analyst, turned educator, who due to the impact that his organization had on education, has been named by Time as one of the World’s most influential people. While the use of instructional videos is far from a new concept, Khan’s YouTube videos are modular in approach. That is, they tackle one specific concept or problem at a time. Weller cited how this is a “development of the Learning Object idea”, where a single object is created, and then any teacher in any program can access and embed that object easily into their course design (2018). In this TED Talk, Khan elaborates on the potential implications of this idea; that teachers could rely on videos to deliver instruction, and be freed to spend their class time on expanding upon that instruction, or on more experiential learning activities. Thus, Khan has been credited with popularizing, and enabling the Flipped Classroom idea (Thompson, 2011), (Sparks, 2011).
It’s important to note that all of the instructional videos available on the Khan Academy YouTube Channel and all of the learning resources available on the Khan Academy Website are open and accessible to anyone, which renders the opportunity to learn as open and accessible to anyone. As such, Khan has also been credited as being influential, and inspirational to early MOOC developers (Ng & Widom, n.d.).
Realizing the potential of instructional videos, and enabling their potential benefits to be available globally in a Web 2.0 enabled context, are what makes Salman Khan a note-worthy contributor to the field of Educational Technology.
References
Ng, A. & Widom, J. (n.d.). Origins of the Modern MOOC (xMOOC). Retreived from https://www.andrewng.org/portfolio/origins-of-the-modern-mooc-xmooc/
Sparks, S. (2011). Lectures Are Homework in Schools Following Khan Academy Lead. Education Week. Retrieved from https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/09/28/05khan_ep.h31.html
Thompson, C. (2011). How Khan Academy is Changing the Rules of Education, Wired. Retrieved from https://www.wired.com/2011/07/ff_khan/
Weller, M. (2018). Twenty years of ed tech. Educause Review Online, 53(4), pp. 34-48. Retrieved from https://er.educause.edu/articles/2018/7/twenty-years-of-edtech
September 15, 2019 at 12:03 pm
Some of my students at the Native Education College in East Van where I taught Math would use Khan Academy at night when they needed some extra help with their studies. They found some of the videos helpful – I found they provided an alternative voice to explaining some of the Match concepts; I used it to supplement my instruction, as a learning object.
September 15, 2019 at 3:13 pm
Thanks for sharing! I’ve heard a lot about Khan Academy from the news and from educators who rave about the his free instructional videos. It’s great that he was able to leverage his expertise and share it so openly with everyone. I know that it’s been a great resources for teachers, parents and even students themselves looking to bridge the gap. Not everyone can afford an tutors to supplement their learning, so it’s great to see that this resource is out there. Whenever I hear the word math, it brings up horrible childhood memories for me. I hope to one day use Khan Academy and brush up on my math skills!