Khan Academy’s AI Pilot Program.

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Learn About the Launch of Khan Academy’s AI Pilot Program on Bloomberg Radio.

Sal Khan, Founder and CEO of Khan Academy, talks about Khan Academy’s AI pilot program Khanmigo

Hosts: Carol Massar and Madison Mills. Producer: Paul Brennan

Khan Academy

Khan Academy on WikiPedia (in case you don’t know them, they are the best).

Khan Academy is an American non-profit[2] educational organization created in 2006 by Sal Khan.[3] Its goal is creating a set of online tools that help educate students.[4] The organization produces short lessons in the form of videos.[5] Its website also includes supplementary practice exercises and materials for educators. It has produced over 8,000 video lessons teaching a wide spectrum of academic subjects, originally focusing on mathematics and sciences. All resources are available for free to users of the website and application.

As of 2018, over 70 million people use Khan Academy, out of which 2.3 million students use it to prepare for the SAT.[6] As of February 2023, the Khan Academy channel on YouTube has 7.74 million subscribers and Khan Academy videos have been viewed over 2 billion times.[7]

History

Sal Khan presenting during TED 2011

Starting in 2004,[8] Salman “Sal” Khan began tutoring one of his cousins in mathematics on the Internet using a service called Yahoo! Doodle Images.[9] After a while, Khan’s other cousins began to use his tutoring service. Due to the demand, Khan decided to make his videos watchable on the Internet, so he published his content on YouTube.[10] Later, he used a drawing application called SmoothDraw, and now uses a Wacom tablet to draw using ArtRage. The video tutorials were recorded on his computer.[11]

Positive responses prompted Khan to incorporate Khan Academy in 2008 and quit his job the same year to focus full-time on creating educational tutorials (then released under the name Khan Academy) while reading Gannett newspaper USA Today.[12] Khan Lab School, a school founded by Sal Khan and associated with Khan Academy, opened on September 15, 2014, in Mountain View, California.[13] In June 2017, Khan Academy officially launched the Financial Literacy Video Series for college graduates, jobseekers and young professionals.

Funding

Khan Academy is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, mostly funded by donations coming from philanthropic organizations.[14] On its IRS form 990, the organization reported $31 million in revenues in 2018 and $28 million in 2019, including $839,000 in 2019 compensation for Khan as CEO.[15]

In 2010, Google donated $2 million for creating new courses and translating content into other languages, as part of their Project 10100 program.[16] In 2013, Carlos Slim from the Luis Alcazar Foundation in Mexico, made a donation for creating Spanish versions of videos.[17] In 2015, AT&T contributed $2.25 million to Khan Academy for mobile versions of the content accessible through apps.[18] The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has donated $1.5 million to Khan Academy.[19] On January 11, 2021, Elon Musk donated $5 million through his Musk foundation.[20]

Content

Khan Academy’s website aims to provide a free personalized learning experience, that are built on the videos, hosted on YouTube. The website is meant to be used as a supplement to its videos, because it includes other features such as progress tracking, practice exercises,[21] and teaching tools.[22] The material can also be accessed through mobile applications.[23] The videos enable students to acquire knowledge at their own learning speed according to the concept of mastery learning. They are therefore used by teachers to teach according to the principle of Flipped Classroom.[24]

The videos display a recording of drawings on an electronic blackboard, which are similar to the style of a teacher giving a lecture. The narrator describes each drawing and how they relate to the material being taught.[25][26] Furthermore, throughout the lessons, users can earn badges and energy points, which can be displayed on their profiles. Non-profit groups have distributed offline versions of the videos to rural areas in Asia, Latin America, and Africa.[27][28][29] Videos range from all subjects covered in school and for all grades from kindergarten up through high school. The Khan Academy website also hosts content from educational YouTube channels and organizations such as Crash Course and the Museum of Modern Art.[30] It also provides online courses for preparing for standardized tests, including the SAT, AP Chemistry, Praxis Core and MCAT[31] and released LSAT preparation lessons in 2018.[32] They also have a collaboration with independent chemists, which are mentioned in their, “Meet the chemistry professional”. Khan Academy has also supported Code.org’s Hour of Code, providing coding lessons on its website.[33]

In July 2017, Khan Academy became the official practice partner for the College Board’s Advanced Placement.[34]

Language availability

Khan Academy videos have been translated into several languages, with close to 20,000 subtitle translations available. These translations are mainly volunteer-driven with help from international partnerships.[35][36] The Khan Academy platform is fully available in English (en), Bangla (bn), Bulgarian (bg), Chinese (zh), French (fr), German (de), Georgian (ka), Norwegian (nb), Polish (pl) Portuguese (pt), Spanish (es), Serbian (sr), Turkish (tr) and Uzbek (uz), and partially[37] available in 28 other languages.[38]

Official SAT preparation

Since 2015, Khan Academy has been the official SAT preparation website. According to reports, studying for the SAT for 20 hours at Khan Academy is associated with a 115-point average score increase.[39] Many book exercises select questions from the Khan Academy site to be published.[citation needed]

Pixar in a Box

In 2015, Khan Academy teamed up with Pixar to create a new course named Pixar in a Box, which teaches how skills learned in school help the creators at Pixar.[40]

Official Test Preparation

Khan Academy also provides free test preps for SAT, LSAT, and MCAT.

Khan Academy Kids

In 2018, Khan Academy created an application called Khan Academy Kids. It is used by two to six-year-old children to learn basic skills (primarily mathematics and language arts) before progressing to grade school.

Teachers

Teachers can set up a classroom within Khan Academy. This classroom allows teachers to assign courses within Khan Academy’s database to their students.[41] Teachers can also track their student’s progress as they work through the assigned tutorials.

Criticism

Khan Academy has been criticized because its creator, Sal Khan, lacks a formal background or qualifications in pedagogy.[42][43] Statements made in certain mathematics and physics videos have been questioned for their technical accuracy.[44] In response to these criticisms, the organization has corrected errors in its videos, expanded its faculty, and formed a network of over 200 content experts.[44]

In an interview from January 2016, Khan defended the value of Khan Academy online lectures while acknowledging their limitations: “I think they’re valuable, but I’d never say they somehow constitute a complete education.”[13] Khan Academy positions itself as a supplement to in-class learning, with the ability to improve the effectiveness of teachers by freeing them from traditional lectures and giving them more time to tend to individual students’ needs.[45][19]

Recognition

Khan Academy has gained recognition both in the US and internationally:

  • In April 2012, Khan was listed among TIME‘s 100 Most Influential People for 2012.[46]
  • In 2012, Khan Academy won a Webby Award in the category Websites and Mobile Sites, Education.[47]
  • Khan was one of five winners of the 2013 Heinz Award. His award was in the area of “Human Condition.”[48]
  • In 2016, Khan Academy won a Shorty Award for Best in Education.[49]
  • In 2016, Khan received the fourth-highest civilian award of the Republic of India, the Padma Shri, from the President of India

References

  1. ^ “What is the history of Khan Academy?”. Khan Academy Help Center. Retrieved 2021-08-24.
  2. ^ “Nonprofit Explorer – ProPublica”. ProPublica. 9 May 2013. Archived from the original on September 23, 2015. Retrieved November 7, 2015.
  3. ^ “What is the history of Khan Academy?”. Khan Academy Help Center. Retrieved 2021-08-24.
  4. ^ “One Man, One Computer, 10 Million Students: How Khan Academy Is Reinventing Education”. Forbes. Archived from the original on October 10, 2017. Retrieved November 7, 2015.
  5. ^ Sampson, Demetrios G.; Ifenthaler, Dirk; Spector, J. Michael; Isaias, Pedro (July 17, 2014). Digital Systems for Open Access to Formal and Informal Learning. Springer. ISBN 9783319022642. Archived from the original on August 4, 2020. Retrieved November 7, 2015.
  6. ^ “2018 in review: Annual Report | Khan Academy Blog”. blog.khanacademy.org. Retrieved 2022-02-23.
  7. ^ “Khan Academy – YouTube”. www.youtube.com. Retrieved 2023-02-20.
  8. ^ “What is the history of Khan Academy?”. khanacademy.org. Archived from the original on 2021-08-10. Retrieved 2021-08-10.
  9. ^ de Bertodano, Helena (September 28, 2012). “Khan Academy: The man who wants to teach the world”. The Telegraph. Archived from the original on March 21, 2021. Retrieved September 27, 2018.
  10. ^ Dreifus, Claudia (January 27, 2014). “Salman Khan Turned Family Tutoring Into Khan Academy”. The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on March 21, 2021. Retrieved November 7, 2015.
  11. ^ Khan Academy: The future of education?. 60 Minutes. CBS News. March 11, 2012. Archived from the original on 2012-03-12 – via YouTube.
  12. ^ Temple, James (December 14, 2009). “Salman Khan, math master of the Internet”. SFgate. Retrieved December 23, 2009.
  13. ^ Jump up to:a b Westervelt, Eric (January 5, 2016). “‘A Bit of a Montessori 2.0’: Khan Academy Opens A Lab School”. Here & Now. WBUR and NPR. Archived from the original on March 21, 2021. Retrieved January 6, 2016.
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  15. ^ “Khan Academy, Form 990” (PDF).
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  18. ^ “AT&T Awards $2.25 Million for Mobile Learning Platform”. Philanthropy News Digest (PND). Archived from the original on March 21, 2021. Retrieved November 7, 2015.
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  20. ^ “Elon Musk $5 million donation to Khan Academy thank you”. youtube.com. Archived from the original on 21 March 2021. Retrieved 28 February 2021.
  21. ^ “Khan Academy”. PCMAG. Archived from the original on March 21, 2021. Retrieved November 7, 2015.
  22. ^ “How Are Teachers and Students Using Khan Academy?”. MindShift. Archived from the original on March 21, 2021. Retrieved November 7, 2015.
  23. ^ “Khan Academy for ipad review”. theappzine. Archived from the original on March 4, 2016.
  24. ^ Future Talk #9, Redesigning Math Education, retrieved 2023-02-20
  25. ^ Kaplan, David A. (August 24, 2010). “Innovation in Education: Bill Gates’ favorite teacher”. CNN Money. Archived from the original on December 23, 2010. Retrieved January 5, 2011.
  26. ^ “Need a tutor? YouTube videos await”. USA Today. AP. December 12, 2008. Archived from the original on March 16, 2012. Retrieved January 5, 2011.
  27. ^ “A free world-class education for anyone anywhere”. About (FAQ). Khan academy. Archived from the original on 2015-09-05. Retrieved 2013-06-06.
  28. ^ “Laureate: Salman Khan”. Education Award. The Tech Awards. 2009. Archived from the original on July 3, 2014. Retrieved June 11, 2014.
  29. ^ “Salman Khan”. CNBC. 13 June 2012. Archived from the original on March 21, 2021. Retrieved November 7, 2015.
  30. ^ “Khan Academy – Partner Content”. Archived from the original on 2021-03-21. Retrieved 2018-06-05.
  31. ^ “Test prep | Khan Academy”. Khan Academy. Archived from the original on April 20, 2015. Retrieved July 25, 2017.
  32. ^ “Khan Academy launches free Official LSAT Prep”. June 1, 2018. Archived from the original on March 21, 2021. Retrieved August 29, 2018.
  33. ^ “Code.org | Computing | Khan Academy”. Archived from the original on 2021-03-21. Retrieved 2020-05-31.
  34. ^ “Khan Academy is the Official Practice Partner for AP”. July 27, 2017. Archived from the original on March 21, 2021. Retrieved January 2, 2018.
  35. ^ “Volunteers | Khan Academy”. Khan Academy. Archived from the original on March 21, 2021. Retrieved March 6, 2017.
  36. ^ “Supporters | Khan Academy”. Khan Academy. Archived from the original on March 21, 2021. Retrieved March 6, 2017.
  37. ^ “Is Khan Academy available in other languages?”. Khan Academy Help Center. Archived from the original on November 7, 2016. Retrieved March 17, 2018.
  38. ^ “Is Khan Academy available in other languages?”. Khan Academy Help Center. Archived from the original on November 7, 2016. Retrieved August 16, 2018.
  39. ^ “Studying for the SAT for 20 hours on Khan Academy associated with 115-point average score increase”. Khan Academy. Archived from the original on June 3, 2019. Retrieved September 8, 2018.
  40. ^ “Pixar in a Box | Partner content | Khan Academy”. Khan Academy. Archived from the original on May 30, 2018. Retrieved September 8, 2018.
  41. ^ “What can I do from the Classes page?”. Khan Academy Help Center. Archived from the original on 2021-03-21. Retrieved 2020-10-13.
  42. ^ Christopher Danielson; Michael Paul Goldenberg (July 27, 2012). “How well does Khan Academy teach?”. The Washington Post. Archived from the original on March 21, 2021. Retrieved November 15, 2014.
  43. ^ Strauss, Valerie (July 27, 2012). “Does the Khan Academy know how to teach?”. The Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Archived from the original on March 21, 2021. Retrieved November 7, 2015.
  44. ^ Jump up to:a b Strauss, Valerie (October 22, 2013). “Khan Academy using contractors to check Web site’s videos”. The Washington Post. Archived from the original on March 21, 2021. Retrieved November 15, 2014.
  45. ^ Khan, Sal (9 March 2011), Let’s use video to reinvent education, TED (conference), archived from the original on March 21, 2021, retrieved March 6, 2017
  46. ^ “Special”, Time, archived from the original on 2013-04-25, retrieved 2012-04-23.
  47. ^ “NEW Webby Gallery + Index”. NEW Webby Gallery + Index. Retrieved 2022-07-13.
  48. ^ “The Heinz Awards: Salman Khan”. The Heinz Awards. Archived from the original on 2017-11-19. Retrieved 2014-06-13.
  49. ^ Shorty Awards: The Complete Winners List, – The Hollywood Reporter, 11 April 2016, archived from the original on 2021-03-21, retrieved 2019-05-24

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