Khan Academy: Free Education for All

As teachers (or aspiring teachers), we all occasionally get asked to help tutor a younger sibling, cousin or friend. When we’re passionate about what we’re teaching, we often jump right to it.

But one man named Sal has taken the idea of free tutoring to an entirely new level: a worldwide level.

Sal is the Founder and Executive Director of the not-for-profit Khan Academy, whose mission is to provide a world-class education to anyone on the planet. For free. That’s right, $0 for a “diploma” from the world’s totally free virtual school.

The idea came from the fact that “too many people around the globe don’t have access to good education materials or they are forced to learn through a system that doesn’t properly cater to their individual needs.” It’s a belief that most teachers share, but feel powerless to do anything about. “With technology,” the team at the Khan Academy writes, “everything exists to fundamentally change this.”

So, who can learn through the Khan Academy? Anyone. According to the Khan Academy website, “It doesn’t matter if you are a student, teacher, home-schooler, principal, adult returning to the classroom after 20 years, or a friendly alien just trying to get a leg up in earthly biology. The Khan Academy’s materials and resources are available to you completely free of charge.”

Those resources include an extensive video library, practice exercises and tests for students, all ranging from math and science, to organic chemistry, calculus and core finance. To date, the Khan Academy has delivered over 43 million lessons. In addition to resources for students, however, there are also how-to videos, tracking software and assessment tools for teachers that allow educators to virtually “look over the shoulder” of every student in a classroom or brush up on a necessary skill.

The current 2,100 videos and 100 self-paced exercises available on the site are expanding at an exponential rate. Though already impressive, Sal’s vision is much greater than just providing an education to underserved populations. Ultimately, the Khan Academy hopes to change education to be more student-centered instead of teacher-centered, meaning that each individual student will work at his or her own pace. At the same time, the very idea of testing students would diminish.

According to Bill Gates, whose foundation supports the Khan Academy, Sal is a pioneer in terms of the future of education. “It’s the start of a revolution,” says Gates, excited at the prospect of individually-paced learning accessible to anyone with computer access, anywhere.

For more information on promoting the Khan Academy, or to inquire about a teaching or translating job with the Khan Academy, visit http://www.khanacademy.org/contribute.

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