Inside LiNC'15 - Sharing the One World School House with Salman Khan, Khan Academy

[KatyK]

At the end of day one of LiNC, we heard from one of our most inspirational speakers. Sal Khan, founder and visionary behind the Khan Academy, came on stage to tell his story about how he paved the way to make a very unique mission come true: to provide a free, world-class education to anyone, anywhere.

 Khan, who started his career as an analyst at a hedge fund, spent his off-hours tutoring his cousin, Nadia, in math, helping her keep up and eventually get ahead in her studies. He soon realized that he couldn’t spend every waking minute on the phone or in-person with her or his other family members, so, to make up for that, he began creating educational videos – of course, all posted to YouTube – to teach various mathematics lessons. Over time, one video turned into many. And before Khan knew it, his unique mastery-based teaching methods became noticed world-wide.

One such admirer was Bill Gates. Khan jokingly admitted, after Gates initially reached out to show his support and interest in helping his brand of education grow, “These videos were for Nadia, not for Bill Gates.” Truth be told, his videos were made for everyone.

Khan believes that education is a “fundamental human right” and is convinced that the Khan Academy – now serving 190+ countries, 40+ languages, 15+ million students, and approximately 1 million educators, all across dozens of subjects (not just math) – has a realistic “shot at reaching a significant portion of the population.” What’s unique about his method, however, is that it’s a massive departure from traditional knowledge-delivery practices taught in most schools around the world. The Khan Academy, staying true to its #YouCanLearnAnything belief, focuses on what Khan refers to as a “growth mindset.” As Khan put it, what we teach is a “mindset change to mastery-based learning vs. simple knowledge delivery.”

It’s clearly working. What began as a hobby for Khan has transformed into a team of developers, teachers, designers, strategists, scientists, and content specialists who passionately believe in inspiring the world to learn – all for free. “You have to start with delusional optimism,” summarized Khan – a sentiment that seemed to resonate with all LiNC attendees.

For more information on the Khan Academy, feel free to visit www.khanacademy.org.

If you are a customer, partner or attended the event, you can view a video of the keynote here.