There are 1440 minutes in a day. That’s 120 opportunities, in one day, to consume a video from Salman Khan. He’s a game changer for education. He started The Khan Academy , a video tutorial service using only Youtube and his knowledge base. There are 1600+ videos and each one usually runs a little more than 11 minutes.
I often rebuke the notion we are failing at math and science. We can improve, that is for sure, but testing memorization isn’t really learning. Videos like Khan’s help students get their feet on the ground. They can rewatch it, ask questions of their teachers, and cross reference it with Google, Wikipedia, and other traditional resources.
Bill Gates has taken notice as well. The reason is because the teaching methods are simplistic. And because of that, the distribution can go wide. The relative cost and investment is so low that it creates a novel not-for-profit business.
I’m curious about the net positive effect of this type of education. The aggregate benefit of short videos for tutorials, video games for problem solving, music for creativity, and blogs and twitter for cleverness is immense. The structure of learning is not only a class room.
Working Thoughts 