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  • Jeff: I want to start by introducing Sal.

  • He really needs no introduction,

  • particularly for a group that's this passionate

  • about education, but as you all know,

  • In day is about transformation

  • and we love to be able to welcome folks

  • who I think are illustrative of true transformation

  • and Sal is absolutely an example of that

  • within the realm of education,

  • which is something all of us here are so passionate about.

  • So, for those that don't know,

  • I've been interested in education reform

  • and I may have to amend that.

  • I love the title of your TED talk, which is Reinvention,

  • Reinventing education because I think at this point we need reinvention.

  • I don't think reform is going to get it done.

  • I may have borrowed that line from Sal,

  • but I've been interested in education reform and reinvention

  • really since back graduating high school and at the time

  • was thinking about the best way to make a difference

  • and thought about going into teaching,

  • thought about administration,

  • thought about getting involved in public education

  • in some regard and the other alternative was going into business.

  • And people oftentimes say,

  • "Well, how can you go into business

  • and make a difference in terms of education?"

  • And the belief, the thesis was, amass enough influence and resource

  • where I'd ultimately have the chance to do that.

  • And long story short, being in business

  • led to meeting and extraordinary guy named Charles Best,

  • who's the founder and CEO of donorschoose.org,

  • which is a philanthropic marketplace for teachers

  • very close to my heart and being in business

  • brought me to TED this year and I had

  • the extraordinary privilege to see Sal Khan,

  • the founder of The Khan Academy, give a TED Talk

  • that literally brought the house down.

  • So, for all the talks that I was in attendance for

  • and there was some wonderful talks,

  • this talk that Sal gave literally lit the place up.

  • People were vibrating with energy on what was possible

  • because I think there was a lot of people

  • in the audience that day who know how challenging

  • it's going to be to make a difference

  • in terms of education.

  • For those of you in the audience who have

  • committed some of your time and energy,

  • you know that's the case and the reason

  • I wanted Sal to be here today was because,

  • to a large extent, and this may be a big statement,

  • I think he may have cracked the code.

  • I think he may have secretly cracked the code

  • on how we can improve education.

  • So, long story short, I think you all know by now,

  • but Sal was in the hedge fund business

  • and was asked to help out, it was your cousins?

  • Sal: Cousins.

  • Jeff: Your cousins with some math questions

  • they had, so did a YouTube video

  • and they raved about it and he'll tell you

  • a little bit more about the feedback he got

  • that was the impetus to do more and, of course,

  • fast forward today, he's got over 2,200 12 minute videos

  • from everything, algebra to American history

  • and it's helping people learn in ways

  • that were really unimaginable before the web came along.

  • And it's gone way beyond that, so there's a back-end system

  • that he and his team have put together

  • that, for lack of a better term, I'd say

  • has created a true adaptive learning platform

  • that's going to scale and we're going to talk

  • a little bit about that and if he doesn't mention it

  • one of my favorite Q and A parts of the entire TED conference

  • was an exchange between Bill Gates and Sal.

  • So, with that, how about a huge round of applause for Sal Khan.

  • (applause)

  • Welcoming him to LinkedIn and Sal,

  • I'm going to ask him a few questions to get started

  • and he'll talk a little bit, but we'd really love

  • for this to be a brainstorming session.

  • I think we've got a lot of incredible talent in the audience

  • We're going to be recording this so potentially

  • we can inspire some folks who are going

  • to see this remotely at some point

  • and maybe they can get involved too.

  • So, let's start with the beginning.

  • I know most people here saw the video,

  • but just talk a little bit about Khan Academy came to be.

  • Sal: Yeah, it was literally, as you mentioned

  • and I'm sure some of you all know,

  • I was an analyst at a hedge fund in Boston in 2000-

  • this is 2004, fall 2004 and my cousin and her family,

  • her two younger brothers, my aunt and uncle came

  • and visited me in Boston right after our wedding.

  • Our wedding was in New Jersey and they came up

  • to just kind of tour the sights and actually,

  • while we were touring Boston, it was the fourth of July weekend

  • and I remember while we were waiting for the fireworks

  • to start over the Charles, I would kind of give them my battery

  • of brain teasers that I use just as a time killer.

  • I'm sure you probably all use them as interview questions and what not.

  • (laughter)

  • They're very good, interview-

  • And I remember, Nadia, who was 12 at the time was super engaged.

  • Most people when you give them brain teasers like this,

  • my aunt and uncle, everyone else were like,

  • "What's the answer?"

  • But Nadia was like, "No, don't tell me the answer!"

  • And she would like walk out and these were hard,

  • CSE logic problems, 100 people who can't see -

  • There's all sorts of crazy things and I was really impressed.

  • The next day we were touring MIT and in front of the whole family,

  • I said, "Nadia, you should think about MIT.

  • "I saw you've got some skills," and she didn't pay -

  • My aunt, her mother, gave my uncle this weird look when I said that.

  • I didn't make much of it and then the next morning

  • (unintelligible) who is Nadia's mom told me,

  • "That's really nice what you said about Nadia yesterday,

  • "but she's actually being tracked into a slower,

  • "not even the regular algebra track."

  • I was like, "That's impossible."

  • One, I saw what she did two nights ago

  • and we share a certain amount of DNA. (laughter)

  • When Nadia woke up, I said,

  • "Hey, Nadia, I don't believe this placement exam.

  • "What was the problem?"

  • She said it was units.

  • I was like, "Two nights ago you were tackling stuff

  • "that's a million times harder than units.

  • "What do you say when you go back to New Orleans

  • "we get on Yahoo Doodle and speaker phone

  • "and if you're willing to do a little bit of extra work,

  • "I'm willing to spend half an hour an evening with you,"

  • and she was up for it, so that was the genesis.

  • Jeff: You referred during your TED talk to what made it so effective.

  • Half-jokingly that they liked you better in video

  • than they did in real life.

  • Sal: Non-jokingly, actually.

  • Jeff: In all seriousness.

  • Talk a little bit about the magic of what you did

  • and the efficacy and how you built on it from there.

  • Sal: It all started where I left off.

  • I started tutoring Nadia kind of live, but remotely.

  • Then I started tutoring her brothers and the whole time

  • I just had a doodle note board and speaker phone.

  • She only heard me, she didn't see me,

  • and we just saw the same thing that each of us were writing.

  • Fast forward about two years, so now we're going

  • into November of 2006, I was having trouble scaling.

  • The first time you give a lecture on the greatest common divisor

  • it's kind of fun, the 20th time it kind of sucks.

  • How do I do this?

  • It was actually a buddy that recommended

  • that I put it up on YouTube, which I was very dismissive of at first.

  • That's for dogs on skateboards, that's not for serious mathematics.

  • When I got over the idea that it wasn't my idea,

  • I decided to give it a shot and it was interesting,

  • because I was like, "Okay, how do I do this?"

  • "I don't have a video camera, should I go get one?"

  • I was like, "No, because that would cost money."

  • With Nadia, we just had this screen going,

  • so there must be some type of software that captures a screen.

  • I didn't even know there were screen capture software existed.

  • I did a web search, I found some freeware that did it,

  • and I needed an art program.

  • I only used Microsoft Paint for the first 500 videos

  • and just started doing it and when I put those first videos up,

  • the first collection of videos, 20 or 30 videos,

  • my cousins literally did tell me that they preferred me

  • on YouTube than in person.

  • I think there's a lot of things.

  • Since then, I've heard a lot of feedback.

  • One is just the form factor.

  • This is true of any on-demand video.

  • You can pause, you can repeat, you can review stuff

  • that you should've learned last week or last year

  • or a couple of years ago, you don't have to feel embarrassed.

  • You can do it when you're ready for it,

  • you can go ahead, it's not a one-size fits all,

  • but that's true of all on-demand video.

  • Khan Academy is not the first on-demand video.

  • MIT open courseware started doing this in 2001.

  • I'm sure there's people who did it before that.

  • I think the feedback I get over and over again from people

  • is that they appreciate how conversational it is.

  • To some degree, that wasn't by design.

  • It was literally like I didn't care, because it was for my cousins.

  • They're not paying me, so I said,

  • "Let me just make some videos for them."

  • There's literally an early video where I answered

  • a telemarketer call during the video and I don't edit it out.

  • It's just there, I'm like, "I'm not interested in Dish Network.

  • "Please stop bothering me," and I (laughter).

  • (unintelligible) Exactly, how to say no to obnoxious telemarketers.

  • People enjoy the conversational nature.

  • Early on, because these are for my cousins,

  • I didn't have a script, I didn't have a lesson plan even.

  • Some of those early videos, actually, I kind of cringe at them now,

  • because I'm like, "Hmm, what should I talk about now?"

  • and I just do, "Let's talk about this."

  • People really like the idea that I'm expressing exactly

  • what's going on in my brain right now.

  • It's not some thing that's made by some bureaucracy

  • to meet some state standard and one group of people write a script

  • with some computer graphics and then another group of people

  • just read the script while the computer graphics happen.

  • They like the organic nature.

  • A lot of people, once again, the form factor

  • that's kind of our brand now, I did it because I didn't want

  • to have a video camera, but people say it actually feels intimate,

  • it actually feels like you and I are sitting next to each other

  • and looking through the concept together.

  • This is kind of crazy.

  • I've gotten letters from people who've said,

  • "Not only does it feel like I'm next to you,

  • "it feels like you're in my brain."

  • When they go normally, on an everyday basis,

  • when they go and think they think in their own voice,

  • but as soon as they get to a math test, all of sudden they say,

  • "Well, let's see what the next -" and they hear me. (laughter)

  • The other thing is, it had to be limited to ten minutes.

  • I guess that was another Khan Academy innovation,

  • but once again, YouTube limited to ten minutes,

  • so I had to do it and that was really good discipline

  • and now I've gotten tons of feedback

  • and I've actually dug up research

  • that shows people actually can't pay attention

  • in any reasonable way for more than 10 to 18 minutes.

  • After they do, they zone our for five minutes.

  • After zoning out for five minutes, they realize they were zoning out.

  • They say, "Oh my God, let me pay attention,"

  • and then they can only zone in for nine minutes

  • and then they zone out for nine minutes.

  • The zoning out gets worse and the zoning in gets worse

  • as you go through a lecture.

  • The only reason why we have 60 minute lectures

  • is because of logistics.

  • All of these things have been an organic process

  • and I think our trick is to not lose any

  • of that very grounded approach that we started off with.

  • Jeff: One of the most revelatory things you mentioned in the TED talk,

  • I think, is directly akin to this notion of interactivity,

  • but you put some real data behind it, some anecdotes behind it.

  • That is kids who would otherwise be left behind in school

  • because they're not keeping pace with the class,

  • in terms of the fundamental building blocks.

  • When allowed to learn on their own through your tools,

  • once they got through that fundamental building block,

  • they then got ahead in the next block.

  • Sal: Yeah.

  • Jeff: So could you talk a little bit about that,

  • because that's a big deal.

  • Sal: There's a couple of trains of thought there.

  • We first saw it in a summer camp that we tried out

  • the primitive version of Khan Academy with

  • and literally, six weeks into the camp,

  • I was just curious, I literally just did a database query,

  • like who was more than one standard deviation behind

  • four days into the camp, and now is more

  • than one standard deviation above the class average

  • at the end of the camp and there was this one girl.

  • I won't mention the name for privacy,

  • but I talked to her later and literally, she just had to get

  • positive and negative numbers, adding and subtracting them

  • out of the way and after she did that, she just raced ahead

  • and we started looking for it more and more.

  • There's other things we found.

  • Not only that, which is a big deal, the kid that otherwise,

  • would have been tracked as a slow students is now showing

  • that if they just had the chance to really digest

  • the information properly, if you think about it,

  • that's actually a property of someone who is probably innately gifted,

  • is someone who really wants to digest something properly,

  • not just understand the mechanics and probably

  • some of those people are being left behind right now.

  • It allows them to race ahead, but the other interesting thing,

  • we've seen this in Los Altos, is there are some classically rock star students,

  • the ones that are always straight A, they're really competitive,

  • when you force them to start at the beginning,

  • from the most basic concepts, even some of them

  • start to stumble at things that they really should have learned

  • in third or fourth grade and what they've probably done since then

  • is just they've been very good at pretending around their deficiencies

  • or getting around them and so almost everyone has these gaps.

  • That same summer program where that first student was at,

  • one thing we saw over and over again,

  • there was actually two groups.

  • This was seventh graders.

  • In one group, the teacher said, "Oh no, this would be silly

  • "to make my seventh graders start at 1+1=2,"

  • so we started all of them at sixth grade math.

  • The other group, we're like, "Yeah, let's just start them off

  • "at 1+1=2," and we saw the group that didn't have the chance

  • to remediate, they just hit a wall at some point.

  • They just couldn't progress, or some subset of them

  • couldn't progress at some point, while the group that started

  • at 1+1=2, one, it was surprising how many really basic weaknesses

  • some of these seventh graders had.

  • Literally, adding two-digit numbers, knowing how to regroup

  • or carry or things like this, but once they got through that,

  • just as a group, they way outperformed the other group.

  • Even their worst performers were better

  • than the best performers in the other group,

  • which is a narrative that I think we've been observing.

  • No matter what you do, you get the best algebra teacher in the room,

  • you have an innately gifted kid, no matter how hard the kid works,

  • if that kid has trouble with third grade math,

  • there's really no way that you can do it in a standard education model.

  • Jeff: Speaking of standard education models,

  • talk a little bit about the software platform

  • you guys have been developing, the success you've had,

  • in terms of working with Los Altos as a school district,

  • and the impact that the videos plus the software

  • in the classroom is having on classroom dynamics.

  • Sal: Yeah, the software, I've hinted at it.

  • If you saw the TED talk you kind of know what it is,

  • but it's actually stuff that I started working on before the first video.

  • A few months into working with Nadia and her brothers,

  • I would point them to random websites.

  • I was like, "Hey, there's a site that has a couple of cool problems.

  • "Why don't you work on those," or, "Here's another site,"

  • and the next morning I'd have no information

  • of what they did, I didn't believe them that they said

  • they did the problem or how many they got right or wrong.

  • I started writing this little javascript problem generator

  • and I was really just trying to make sure that they had

  • the core skill down, that they really just understood the core skill

  • and I put a little database behind it so I could see

  • when did they do the problem, did they use the hints,

  • and whatever else.

  • Then over time I had a bunch of these modules

  • and I got tired of assigning, "Oh now you're ready for this module,"

  • So I said, "Hey, if you get ten in a row on this module

  • "it'll automatically assign you to the next,"

  • and that's where the whole knowledge tree,

  • if you saw the TED talk, came about.

  • It was originally something for me.

  • It was a tool for myself to understand all the modules I'd built

  • and the dependencies and then I said,

  • "Well, it'd be cool for a student to see it,"

  • and once I did my cousins loved that.

  • It was like Legend of Zelda all of a sudden.

  • They could see, "Hey, I could get over there," and all the rest.

  • Fast forward, the summer camp started using it.

  • Even there, we said, "Hey, every kid can now work at their own pace.

  • "The tools, the videos are there and now the teacher can just intervene

  • "when someone's stuck," and then you fast forward

  • to November of 2010, Los Altos school board literally just met

  • with myself and Shantanu, who's our president,

  • and said, "We've heard great things about what you're doing.

  • "We want to learn more about it and what would you do

  • "if you had just whatever you wanted to do with the math classroom?"

  • and we said we'd have every student work at their own pace,

  • the role of the teacher, they won't have to lecture,

  • they won't have to grade papers.

  • I don't want to say just, but they will walk into a room

  • and they'll get a dashboard and the dashboard will tell them

  • where every student is working, who's stuck on what.

  • If they want to dive deeper they can press a couple of clicks

  • and they can see exactly what a student's been working on

  • and really diagnose what's probably wrong with the student

  • and then use that information to either do

  • a very focused intervention themselves

  • or get some of the student's peers to do an intervention.

  • What it does is it does a couple things.

  • One, now everyone can work at their own pace,

  • the teacher's time is fully leveraged and it's focused,

  • and really just narrowing in on exactly what the weak points

  • for the students are, and the third thing is probably not obvious

  • from the TED talk and if we've had critics that's in this third area,

  • it's that, "Okay, yeah Khan Academy, the videos,

  • "that's probably really good for basic skills,

  • "and even the videos it's good for conceptual development,

  • "but what about project-based learning?"

  • There's this whole school of thought of constructivist learning

  • and it's always these math wars.

  • There's always been this argument

  • between the tiger mom school of learning

  • and the constructivist Seymour Papert play with Legos enough

  • and eventually you'll know calculus. (laughter)

  • It's been like a war, right?

  • People, the first time they see Khan Academy,

  • they think we are the tiger mom version,

  • because it's like core skills, it's lecture.

  • The other thing I think really differentiates our lectures over others

  • and this was actually a surprise for me,

  • is I made my lectures geared towards someone like myself

  • when I was 12 years old or 13.

  • I wanted the rationale, I wanted the conceptual development.

  • I wanted my cousins to have that.

  • I wanted them to really innately understand math.

  • I didn't think early on that that would be popular.

  • I thought that most students would want the formulas.

  • Most students wouldn't want to think about the intuition.

  • The surprising thing is over and over again we get feedback

  • from the students you wouldn't normally associate

  • with students liking math saying,

  • "I'm angry that my teacher did not introduce the intuition.

  • "Now it's easy."

  • Over and over again we get that, but what we're in this debate

  • between what's derisively called the drill and kill

  • and the constructivists, what we're saying is,

  • "No, it's not an either or proposition now."

  • What's happening in those Los Altos classrooms

  • are so much of the blocking and tackling is being taken off,

  • one, from the class time and from the teacher's shoulders,

  • that the teacher not only can dive in and do very focused

  • and meaningful interventions, but all of this class time

  • is freed up to do these investigations, to do these projects.

  • I'll challenge any classroom out there

  • to see if they can do more project-based learning and investigations

  • than these Los Altos classes are doing

  • and I would challenge any classroom out there

  • to see if they can do more core skills development

  • than these Los Altos classes are doing.

  • It's kind of the best of both worlds.

  • Jeff: One of my favorite parts of your talk that I alluded to earlier

  • was during Q and A with Bill Gates.

  • At one point, everything that Sal talks about sounds so extraordinary.

  • It sounds like vision.

  • How could it possibly be real, how could we get so much good

  • from one guy, a small team, a non-profit?

  • At one point, Bill said, "So, what would it take

  • "to scale this to every classroom in the country?

  • "How long would that take?"

  • Your response was -

  • Sal: Yeah, technically, I'm giving little asterisks now, by the way. (laughter)

  • It can be adopted tomorrow or now by every classroom.

  • It's self-service, the dashboard's everything, if a teacher goes.

  • The realistic answer is there has to be some type of deployment,

  • but there's no reason why it doesn't,

  • there's no fundamental barrier for it being used tomorrow

  • by every classroom in the world.

  • Jeff: I think that's a great jumping off point

  • to open it up to the group here.

  • We just want to do a little brainstorming today.

  • Sal's very interested in your thoughts and I'd love to know

  • how this group of people, how LinkedIn,

  • how some of the folks who, ultimately, may be viewing this

  • can get involved, what help do you need?

  • How can we start to dramatically increase the footprint?

  • Any questions or comments?

  • Yeah, please.

  • Audience Member: I didn't grow up here

  • and I just saw your TED talk a few days ago

  • and after that I also saw the TED talk that Ken Robinson gave

  • about schools killing creativity.

  • What are you thoughts about that

  • and how has it influenced what Khan Academy's doing

  • and what it's planning to do?

  • Sal: I think the Ken Robinson talk's awesome

  • and some people view our talks as very aligned

  • and some people have viewed it that somehow they're not aligned.

  • My point is going back to what's going on in Los Altos classrooms

  • is that right now, so much time is focused

  • on the mandated curriculum from the state

  • and so much time is focused on making sure

  • that the worst don't do bad.

  • There's no time for real creative work.

  • I'd say even 95% of people in classes right now

  • that claim to do project-based learning

  • or claim to do creative things in the classroom,

  • it's not creative, it's cookbook.

  • It looks good, "Oh, we're studying how we can send

  • "a satellite to the moon," or something, but they're not,

  • it's some type of cookbook thing with words in the right way.

  • What we think and what I hope Khan Academy enables

  • and we'd like to pilot this in more and more schools

  • and it can enable a whole set of really fundamentally creative things

  • and some of that will probably be on our platform.

  • Actually, Jonathan, who used to actually be a LinkedIn employee,

  • for two summers we did a summer camp.

  • We do this as R and D for what is the future of real learning.

  • You have this Khan Academy, the videos, you can get a lot there,

  • but if you really want people to learn stuff and we did stuff with kids

  • and this is stuff we might even internalize into the software.

  • It was pretty fun.

  • It was all the games I wanted to play with my friends

  • at my birthday party, but no one else wanted to.

  • We literally would have six kids playing Risk

  • and we would have the other 24 kids,

  • they would each get a colored piece of cardboard

  • that says, if you're holding red at three o'clock,

  • which is three hours from when we started,

  • that colored piece of cardboard would be worth

  • the number of armies that red army has at three o'clock

  • and the same thing for yellow and green and so on.

  • We gave them $500 in Monopoly money each.

  • They all started with one of these and then we started the Risk

  • and then we told the rest of the 24, "Trade the actual things."

  • It was fascinating.

  • We saw fifth graders start making models.

  • There was one fifth grader who started doing naked shorting

  • without knowing what naked short -

  • He would literally sell something to someone,

  • but say, "Wait, I'll give you the actual security later." (laughter)

  • Jeff: For those that don't know, the financial derivative world,

  • that had nothing to do with the clothing (crosstalk).

  • Sal: There was a little bit of that, too.

  • No, no. (laughter)

  • The summer camp would be shut down if that was happening.

  • It was fascinating.

  • One kid came up to me and he said how he figured out

  • that right after someone's turn in Risk,

  • their security went up, because we've all played Risk,

  • it looks like that person's about to take over the world,

  • but Risk has these huge swings, so he didn't even look at the board.

  • He just shorted whoever's turn it was

  • and he ended up winning the whole game, because he just -

  • Then we played another time where it was more of a determined,

  • where we played a variation called Paranoia Risk,

  • where there's only one winner.

  • Everyone's trying to eliminate one person from the board.

  • As soon as one person is eliminated from the board,

  • the person who was trying to eliminate them, wins.

  • Now, we said, "If you're holding the color of the winner,

  • "that's worth 100 and everyone else is worth 0."

  • Now it's pure probability.

  • That security should trade, if it's trading at $65,

  • you're saying there's a 65% chance -

  • I didn't tell them this ahead of time.

  • It was amazing how many times

  • the security started selling for like $150 or $200.

  • There was serious bubble mentality going on.

  • Anyway, I'm going on.

  • I could talk for hours about this, and we played Settlers of Catan,

  • one time with separate board games.

  • Then the second time around we let them trade across countries

  • and say, "Hey, how come we -

  • We actually had a pariah state that couldn't trade

  • and we compared the development to the ones that trade.

  • Anyway, you get the general idea.

  • There's a lot of stuff that can be done, if class time is freed up,

  • that's really deep, that gives people understanding.

  • In one round of the Risk, I was the market maker

  • and these students try to find out (unintelligible)

  • what a market maker is, what is a secondary market versus a primary.

  • All of this stuff.

  • It might be relevant to you guys very soon, I don't know. (laughter)

  • My vision, to answer your question, my vision is more of that

  • without giving up the stuff that kids need

  • to really prove to the world on the SATs, the AP tests

  • that they know those core skills, as well.

  • Jeff: Sometimes people ask the question,

  • What happens if some of our best and brightest,

  • rather than go into the financial world and hedge fund trading,

  • they were to go into areas like education?

  • That's part of what happens.

  • You get this brilliance supplied in the right ways.

  • Sal: There could be a good sequel to that,

  • where there's a guy who's -

  • I won't name any names, but he's a quant

  • at a very prominent hedge fund and he went -

  • Pretty much, he left that fund and I think he's being paid

  • not to work in the industry now, because he knows too much,

  • so he might be your analytics guy if things work out. (laughing)

  • Christina: One of my all time favorite books

  • is Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age

  • and in it he's got the Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

  • and this rich guy builds this book so his granddaughter

  • can have this tremendous education and one of the aspects of it

  • is that all the content and the learning materials are in there,

  • but there are these ractors who are people who are tracking

  • and watching as they move through the book,

  • they actually have a dashboard with metrics in the book.

  • I'm thinking about our social network and your materials,

  • whether it's e-books or videos,

  • and wondering if we could create Khan ractors,

  • who would be indexed, either the videos or materials,

  • and they would be people who were certified and volunteered

  • so that the kid at any point where they're stumbling

  • could maybe hit a button, get an IM, start to engage

  • with that community to get that kind of personalized stuff worldwide.

  • Sal: Yeah, that's exactly -

  • We have to figure out the details of how we implement that,

  • but that's our next level, because the first level is videos,

  • the second level are these exercises and dashboard,

  • the next level's the community.

  • We're pushing two million unique users a month

  • and that's enough, that's critical mass, that's growing.

  • There's a couple things.

  • One is just the model of volunteerism, peer-to-peer,

  • "Hey, I'm at my desk, I have an hour free, I would like to tutor someone."

  • We could facilitate that and you'll have the same data as a teacher

  • and we could pair up people appropriately,

  • based on what they know and what they don't know.

  • And get the kids tutoring.

  • It's either that model or we're thinking of having

  • some kind of a perpetual office hours.

  • Volunteers could say, "Hey, I'll be free at this time.

  • "I'm in Malaysia and I'll be free from 2:00 to 3:00 PM

  • "and I know these set of topics."

  • If we get a critical mass, and you actually don't need

  • that many people, but if you get enough people,

  • you could have exactly what you said as soon as you're stuck.

  • It's not even something that has to be scheduled.

  • As soon as you're stuck, you say, "I need help,"

  • and it immediately points you.

  • I'm actually on page 85 of Diamond Age right now,

  • so I haven't gotten to the ractor part.

  • (unintelligible) Oh, is it?

  • Yeah, but we're clearly reading the same books,

  • but yes, that's where -

  • It's funny, each layer, we actually think that's going to be the big play,

  • not what we've already done.

  • Jeff: Would love to throw it out there as a Hackday challenge

  • for those of you in the room or watching.

  • It'd be pretty cool to do something very similar

  • and I had a similar idea based on originally hearing you speak.

  • With 100 million members, professionals

  • with the right kind of skills and backgrounds,

  • one of the things that was most exciting to me

  • was that anyone can come online to lend a hand

  • and help mentor and answer questions.

  • I think it would be a very cool hack to figure out a way

  • to do exactly what Christina was just suggesting.

  • Click a button and we could pair up the right kids

  • with the right mentors from among our professional membership.

  • The other idea that's probably a little more in depth

  • than a hack is to start to leverage everything you've done

  • for the kids for vocational training

  • because one of the things we all hear increasingly

  • is that it's not that there's not jobs available at times

  • or in certain geographies.

  • There are jobs available, it's just that people don't have

  • the skills to take advantage of them.

  • If we could somehow re-skin some of the backend

  • and add vocational training modules

  • and then again, partner up the people that need to learn

  • with the professional membership, we could really do some good.

  • Sal: Yeah, absolutely.

  • Especially with the ...

  • Yeah, that's a way to donate your time.

  • There could even be some badging that transcends

  • what you all are doing and what we're doing.

  • It becomes part of, "Hey, I'm a proud volunteer,"

  • or even your badges -

  • It's funny, because we thought about doing Facebook integration.

  • It's on our pipeline and before we've done it,

  • we have students who are copying and pasting

  • their badges they get on Khan Academy

  • and bootstrapping the iteration forth, they're so proud of it.

  • Something like that and the volunteer badge

  • could be a pretty powerful mark of whatever.

  • Jeff: Yeah, so call to action, for anyone interested

  • in the next -

  • Sal: And also developing modules.

  • Developing modules is actually a very easy thing to contribute,

  • if anyone's interested, like, "Hey, I have an expertise in probability

  • "and it doesn't look like there's a module

  • "that teaches and quizzes that aspect."

  • We actually do that as part of our interview process for our developers.

  • If it takes them more than a day, we're like, "Well, we're not hiring." (laughs)

  • Jeff: What's the best way for folks watching

  • who would like to contribute a module?

  • What's the best way for them to do that?

  • Sal: Right now, you can actually go, on our page is says "contribute".

  • There's a way you can go to our software wiki

  • and how do you check out the code, how do you see where all the ...

  • There's even specs out there for unbuilt modules

  • if you don't have an idea of what to build.

  • They're all in javascript.

  • They're pretty straightforward.

  • Thinking about the learning is probably harder than the programming.

  • Jeff: Okay, Nick.

  • Nick: Thanks for being here, first of all.

  • My question is I've got two kids and what I've learned

  • in my experience with them is they have

  • completely different ways of learning.

  • Specifically, my son has dyslexia, so for him,

  • he's had to put a lot of energy into doing well in school and so on.

  • I wonder how the program accommodates kids

  • who have learning challenges, disabilities, and so on.

  • Sal: This is, again, another surprising thing that wasn't by design.

  • When I started, I viewed it as for my cousins,

  • maybe catered to someone like myself,

  • or probably a lot of you all, when you all were 12 or 13 years old.

  • Some of the biggest feedback we get are from parents

  • and students with learning disabilities.

  • Dyslexia, ADHD, actually some parents

  • of autistic students have loved it and what it is,

  • dyslexia, probably the main -

  • One is the videos are very, it's not just -

  • I've been told this by dyslexics, that just the fact

  • that I'm writing it out, it's not just printed text that just pops up,

  • is a big deal, the fact that I'm talking while I'm doing it,

  • it helps integrate everything and that's the same thing

  • for people with ADHD.

  • The fact that I'm using these different colors

  • for the different concepts.

  • I think the biggest thing, and once again,

  • this goes to the form factor, is that it's self-paced.

  • I think a lot of a dyslexic student, they're stressed,

  • and as soon as you're stressed, you can't learn.

  • That's the thing that most -

  • There's stress if it's taking you half a second longer

  • to process something, but you have this assembly line,

  • move along at the same pace, that's going to leave

  • your son behind and now there's none of that stress.

  • He can take as much time as he needs to digest the concept.

  • Yeah, it's weird.

  • I don't want it to seem like this is a cure all for everyone,

  • but we didn't design it, but the gifted students love it,

  • the students who are falling behind love it,

  • the adult learners, so it is one of those things.

  • If you just give people a chance to learn,

  • you don't talk down to them, you respect their intelligence,

  • you don't just teach them formulas,

  • and you give them instant feedback, it's amazing,

  • it kind of works for everybody.

  • Nick: Thank you.

  • Jeff: Sal, at root in all of this, is a product that has proven

  • to be incredibly effective and you mentioned earlier,

  • YouTube originally had limitations on the duration of the video

  • and that certainly contributed to the form factor,

  • but I'm assuming over time there's been a lot of iteration.

  • From a product development perspective,

  • could you shed a little light on the approach that you've taken,

  • because you're doing something very right, obviously and -

  • Sal: Yeah, I've learned now that there are words

  • to describe our process, lean and agile and all of this kind of stuff.

  • It is literally just put stuff out there and see what happens.

  • There's that, that's kind of the process, and I think,

  • in terms of the actual thing that goes out there,

  • it's amazing how much money and resources have been wasted

  • on trying to make educational materials that look polished,

  • that look like this, and as soon as you watch them you're disengaged.

  • I think it's this focus on the end user and nothing else

  • and not trying to pretend when I started and now as an organization,

  • we never want to fake that we're good quality.

  • A lot of these attempts to really polish up things

  • are to fake that it's good quality,

  • because to maybe the buyer who's not the user,

  • the buyer might superficially look at something and say,

  • "Oh, there's computer graphics, that must be good quality,"

  • but I think the big takeaway from the Khan Academy

  • if something is really going to take on, it just has

  • to purely cater to the user.

  • Even if it is scrappy and not the most professional thing, it'll still resonate.

  • In terms of the process, I'm now getting approached

  • by a lot of - I want other people other than myself to teach

  • and I've been approached by some medical schools

  • and others, "We want to do something like this in our program."

  • I've sat through some of those meetings and they go on.

  • We have to talk to this department.

  • So now my policy is when anyone wants to say,

  • "We think we have some people who might be able

  • "to make videos and we want to use them,"

  • I say, "No preliminary meetings, just come to my office,

  • "I'll go take a walk, and make the videos.

  • "I'll show you how to do it," and I just want them to start making videos.

  • They're like, "Wait, we haven't planned."

  • I was like, "No, they teach these classes.

  • "Just tell them to come make a 10 minute video

  • "and then we'll talk about how we can improve them."

  • It kind of scares these people,

  • the fact that they might actually produce something. (laughter)

  • I think that's the take.

  • Even in our organization, since we're such a small organization,

  • we're like six people, going on eight or seven people now.

  • We're very bandwidth constrained, so we're starting to -

  • I tell Shantanu, who's our president, if me and him

  • are in the same meeting at the same time,

  • there's something wrong with our process.

  • We force people to go on walks for meetings, so it's a fixed -

  • I don't want to -

  • Jeff: By all means (crosstalk)

  • Sal: Okay, yeah, we do that.

  • A lot of the (crosstalk)

  • It's funny, if it's an important meeting,

  • I say I'm going to go to El Camino and back.

  • If it's a shady meeting I'm going to the train stop and back.

  • (crosstalk) (laughter)

  • You kind of know where you fit in the hierarchy

  • (laughter) how long of a walk.

  • The other thing is we actually want to eat our own dog food,

  • which is the reason why we're able to scale,

  • why such a small organization is able to, on some level,

  • educate two million kids and maybe 200 million kids eventually,

  • or whatever, is that we're using these technologies.

  • Even our board meetings, right now our board meetings,

  • we spend three hours just giving an update.

  • I'm like, "This is silly, I'm just going to make YouTube videos,

  • "explaining what we've been up to the last week."

  • I have the screen - Huh?

  • (unintelligible) It's a roadshow and our board can pause

  • and repeat it and now (laughter) we're thinking

  • of making this a practice across the organization,

  • where we're going to get everyone Camtasia,

  • and everyone at the end of the week,

  • instead of writing me an email, like,

  • "Hey, this is what I've been up to."

  • They'll have their computer right there,

  • "This is what I'm working on," and just archive it.

  • That way when we go into meetings, we're all on the same page,

  • we know what everyone's been up to.

  • If someone says something that's unfamiliar,

  • I don't have to pause the meeting, I can go back

  • and see what they're up to and actually get a much better -

  • Actually, I've told a bunch of people this.

  • I have a buddy who's working at another startup

  • and I told him this idea and he bought into it

  • and he told their CEO, because she wanted him to write a white paper

  • about what he's up to and he's like,

  • "Well how about I do a screencast,

  • "because now you can pause, repeat.

  • "It'll be me explaining it as a human being and I can show -"

  • It was funny, they had a lot of,

  • "No, that's silly, it needs to be a white paper,"

  • but no it doesn't, it should really just be -

  • It takes 10 minutes to make a 10 minute video,

  • especially if it's just for internal consumption,

  • as opposed to a day to write a white paper that no one's going to read.

  • Yeah, that's what we're up to.

  • Jeff: I was just reminded of effectiveness of the RSA animations,

  • which is very similar, in terms of mapping out and (crosstalk)

  • You hear folks, a lot of people in the audience today, I'm sure,

  • they'll rave about them.

  • They'll say, "Have you seen this on motivation?" (unintelligible)

  • Audience Member: Hey Sal, thanks for being here.

  • A few weeks ago, we watched Waiting for Superman

  • here at LinkedIn and it was incredibly moving.

  • Sal: Depressing. (laughs)

  • Audience Member: Yeah, very depressing.

  • I learned about the Khan Academy

  • after watching that movie here at LinkedIn.

  • After spending time on your site, it was pretty obvious to me

  • that what you have developed can be the super hero solution

  • for schools that don't have resources,

  • for kids that don't have resources, to help them learn.

  • I'm just wondering if part of the Khan Academy's charter

  • is to get those kinds of resources into the hands of kids

  • where they don't have computers at home

  • or the school systems don't have computers.

  • Is that part of the conversation?

  • Sal: Yeah, absolutely.

  • There's a couple of things here.

  • One of the things, this is something

  • that we're very protective of as an organization,

  • is the reason why I think we're resonating

  • where a lot of other attempts, governmental attempts,

  • NGO attempts, for profit attempts have all failed,

  • is that everyone else is trying to reform the beast.

  • They're trying to go in there and chisel at it

  • and lobby this or that and all the rest.

  • The reason why I think we've worked is we've ignored the beast.

  • We've just done our own thing and go straight to the student.

  • At the same time, this Los Altos thing,

  • which kind of fell in our lap, proves that no,

  • this can help the beast.

  • I shouldn't call it the beast anymore. (laughter)

  • What we're doing is, and this wasn't our plan even a month ago,

  • but especially the TED talk took this to the next level,

  • we are building a rollout SWAT team,

  • and what we're going to do over the next six months -

  • The other thing we want to be careful of

  • is not rolling out too fast and ruining.

  • We're the Trader Joe's model.

  • We want a community to really want us and we're like,

  • "Okay, you've got to give us the right space,"

  • We want the SWAT team over the next 6 to 18 months,

  • we're reached out now by about 10 school districts a day

  • who want to do this and so we want to pick

  • the 10 or 15 that are the most likely to be a success.

  • Hopefully they won't mainly be affluent school districts like Los Altos.

  • We're looking for underserved communities,

  • some charter schools, some independent schools,

  • some regular middle class private schools, all of the above.

  • Some fancy private schools, and we're actually going district wide

  • in fourth, fifth, and sixth grade in Los Altos, as well.

  • So if you have a fourth or fifth or sixth grader in Los Altos,

  • you'll start hearing me in your house whether you like it or not.

  • We want to do that and once we have that

  • and we learn more, we can productize it.

  • Then, we're going to explore how it can become a more massive role.

  • The narrative throughout this is we're also going

  • to make it more and more self-service.

  • Like the first question you had asked,

  • it can be used in any school district tomorrow.

  • To some degree, that's another volunteer opportunity.

  • If your school district isn't doing it and you think they should,

  • you guys can become the ambassadors for it.

  • You guys all have the same -

  • If you guys go to our website, it'll be pretty obvious

  • how you could implement this in a classroom.

  • You could be that person that goes to the school district

  • and say, "Look, we can do this."

  • The Los Altos people are awesome about other people coming in

  • and observing the classrooms.

  • If it's local, you say, "Hey, why don't we go meet

  • "with those Los Altos people, observe their classroom,

  • "and then we'll implement it here,"

  • and you guys can shepherd it,

  • make sure their firewall is set up, whatever, so it happens.

  • I think that, by itself, could be a pretty, actually,

  • that might be the most powerful way to volunteer.

  • Jeff: Sal, how do teachers respond to it?

  • Do they feel like it's an incredible tool

  • that helps take their classrooms to the next level?

  • At times, do they feel threatened by it?

  • What kind of response do you get?

  • Sal: We get a positive selection bias.

  • The ones that reach out to us are the ones

  • that are probably using us on some level

  • and those teachers are excited, more excited

  • than I even thought, originally.

  • I think the really skilled teachers, the reason

  • why they went into teaching is they wanted

  • to form bonds with students, they wanted to be creative themselves

  • and test the children's creativity, but when they go into a classroom,

  • there's 30 kids, all different levels, they have to do

  • all of this classroom management, "Be quiet,"

  • and actually, that's almost more of the -

  • If I had to become a teacher tomorrow in a real classroom,

  • that's the stuff I would have to learn.

  • I actually did volunteer once in college

  • and literally within ten minutes, all of the kids

  • were standing on top of the table and I had no idea what I did wrong.

  • It was like this ...

  • The teachers want to be this liberated person

  • who can form bonds, who can dig in, who have the data,

  • so the teachers who've seen that, they love it.

  • These Los Altos teachers love it.

  • I spoke to all of the Los Altos elementary school teachers

  • and they're pretty much, as far as I can tell,

  • it seems like they're on board.

  • I think the resistance comes from people

  • who aren't familiar with what we're trying to do

  • and they just see the headline, they just get a glimpse

  • of kind of what it's about, so unfortunately

  • there have been headlines like,

  • "Is This the Solution to Our Education Problem?"

  • We think it is on some level, but people have a knee jerk reaction

  • to this kind of panacea type thing.

  • They're like, "Oh no, this isn't it and this is going to be

  • "just drill and kill learning."

  • They'll say all of that type of thing.

  • There's obviously a lot of people on -

  • We try to stay out of political debates, but there's a lot of people

  • who view Khan Academy as an empowering tool

  • against things like teachers' unions or against things like -

  • When someone in a teachers' union sees someone else say,

  • "Oh, now that Khan Academy's here, this is going to get you guys,"

  • they immediately react against it.

  • We try not to enter those debates, but what I will say is

  • no, we're empowering the teachers.

  • It's going to free up their time.

  • Right now, this is why teachers are, I think, so frustrated

  • is every time there's a new study that comes out

  • that shows that schools are falling behind

  • and we're falling behind Senegal or whatever, some other country,

  • the reaction of policymakers is we have to micromanage more.

  • The belief is that the micromanagement is all around the focus

  • of de-risking the worst teachers,

  • de-risking the worst students, on some level.

  • What it does is it completely straps everyone else.

  • What we're doing now is we're liberating everyone.

  • You can cater to everyone and to some degree,

  • you are de-risking the teacher who might not have,

  • and I'm not saying this is most teachers,

  • but in any industry there is a bell curve

  • and there is the bottom 5% of teachers and 5% of kids

  • are in front of the bottom 5% of teachers

  • and you can de-risk them because now they have an alternative

  • and now the top 95%, or the top 50%, or the top 5% of teachers

  • are liberated to fully express their abilities, their creativity.

  • They could think of stuff like my trading game or even better stuff.

  • I would say on the whole, the ones that have watched the TED talks,

  • the ones that have understood what we're trying to do are pretty excited.

  • The one other dimension is, and this is happening

  • in Los Altos classroom, there's fifth graders doing

  • the chain rule in a Los Altos classroom.

  • As a teacher, that can be a little daunting.

  • You're a fifth grade teacher, you signed up

  • to be a fifth grade teacher, and there's a kid

  • doing calculus in the room.

  • What we saw from the one teacher when we observed it,

  • she literally, and he was marked by the dashboard as red,

  • he wasn't understanding the chain rule,

  • so she's like, "I'd better intervene," but what was really powerful

  • was that she went and she said, "You know what?

  • "I haven't seen this since college and I forgot how to do this

  • "or what this was all about.

  • "Why don't we learn it together?"

  • I was there observe -

  • It immediately clicked with the kid.

  • It almost felt like he respected the teacher ten times more

  • because she was willing to let down her guard

  • as the source of all correct answers in the world.

  • A teacher has to feel comfortable.

  • Actually, on the same line, there was a reporter

  • who was doing a story on one of the fifth grade classrooms

  • and there was one girl in there who was doing trigonometry

  • and the reporter sits down next to her and says,

  • "Do you think this is fifth grade math?"

  • and the girl goes, "No, I think it's sixth grade." (laughter)

  • Jeff: Go ahead.

  • Ron: Thank you for being here.

  • I watched your TED talk twice.

  • Once I discovered it on LinkedIn today, by the way,

  • and it was like 11 PM, something like that.

  • I watched it, I was completely blown away,

  • I called my wife, "I need to show you something,"

  • so we watched it together the second time.

  • It made me deeply depressed (laughter)

  • and I love your system (crosstalk)

  • The problem here is that you have two aspects in this system.

  • One is you learn at your pace.

  • The second one, you exercise collaboratively,

  • in the room with other kids.

  • It needs to be implemented in the school system in some way.

  • You can't do that without implementing in the school system.

  • School systems are slow.

  • My kid is four and a half years old.

  • I want her to do that in two years.

  • I don't live in Los Altos. (laughter)

  • Sal: Neither do I.

  • I have another interesting story to tell you.

  • I don't live in Los Altos, either, but I'll say I have another interesting -

  • Ron: Actually, I was growing up in the third world

  • and I made it here to the Silicon Valley,

  • which I think is quite an achievement for myself

  • and now I feel as if I'm back to the third world,

  • because my kid will not be that genius.

  • It will create a few million genius kids and a couple of billions

  • who are as dumb as they are right now. (laughing)

  • Sorry. (crosstalk)

  • How can we scale it fast?

  • I have two years. (laughter)

  • Sal: I'm actually very close to your -

  • I actually live about 100 feet from the Los Altos district border.

  • I live in Mountain View, near Cuesta Park

  • and the same house costs $300,000 more, literally 200 feet away,

  • because of this discrepancy in the school system.

  • One of these fifth graders actually goaded me on when I heard the story,

  • is that on that same news piece, these kids were doing,

  • they call it a rocket run, where the teacher sets up this thing,

  • where they measure how fast they can do something.

  • They usually do a very simple exercise.

  • They took all this footage when they went to the classroom

  • and some of these kids are doing trigonometry

  • and all sorts of crazy stuff, but the footage they showed

  • on NBC nightly news was these kids doing arithmetic.

  • When I talked to the teacher, they loved the news piece,

  • but they really didn't like the fact that the footage showed

  • them doing arithmetic, but in the news piece,

  • they mistakenly said this was a pilot in Mountain View,

  • so one of the kids said, "Well, at least they think we're in Mountain View,"

  • (laughter) which I had the same reaction.

  • I was like, "No, Mountain View must come back."

  • The simple answer is we're trying to go as fast -

  • It seems like this will work is if we can do

  • enough powerful use cases.

  • The bay area is going to be disproportionately

  • where most of these use cases are.

  • Already, I've been told by Los Altos people,

  • Palo Alto unified, none of these are cheap areas either,

  • but all of them have started to tour them and they seem interested.

  • If you can do these really powerful use cases.

  • Probably the scariest thing is when people all over the country,

  • like you, see that there are kids in these 10 or 15 schools,

  • of all different, not just affluent neighborhoods,

  • but across the board, they're learning at their own pace,

  • they're engaged in mathematics, the classroom is fun,

  • and they're doing trigonometry or whatever,

  • you're going to get scared and you're going

  • to really rock the boat in your local school district,

  • you and the other parents.

  • I think the PTA is probably the biggest, strongest influence.

  • Hopefully we can address your school district,

  • maybe it'll be one of the 15, but massive change,

  • that's what it's going to be.

  • It's going to be parents having that visceral reaction

  • that you just had, because that's the best way to disrupt.

  • I have a two year old, so I have about three years

  • to get Mountain View up to speed. (laughter)

  • Ron: Thank you very much.

  • Jeff: Sal, oftentimes when people think about hacking

  • and ways in which they can get involved,

  • I'm sure they're thinking about the code, the product.

  • You were talking about modules earlier,

  • but I think parent-led advocacy and demand driven approach

  • is going to be important to accelerate things.

  • One of the things we may want to start thinking about

  • is how we create a little bit of an, "I want my MTV" strategy or energy,

  • where we make it incredibly simple for parents to come together,

  • to start requesting it within their communities.

  • Sal: Yeah, that'd be awesome, actually.

  • That'd be super powerful.

  • Yeah, an online campaign.

  • Jeff: Maybe some folks can get together afterwards

  • and we can do some brainstorming on that.

  • Michael.

  • Michael: Hey Sal, thanks a lot for coming in.

  • In spirit of brainstorming, I just wanted to throw out

  • a possibility of LinkedIn Skills seems

  • like a really natural connection here with Khan Academy,

  • because we have people on our site who have skills

  • and they're highlighting the skills over time.

  • They may be available to help, you may be going

  • and looking at skills, wanting to learn them,

  • and that could be a good jumping off point to Khan Academy.

  • On the flipside, coming back from Khan Academy,

  • over to LinkedIn, so that just seemed like a really natural -

  • Sal: Yeah, I'll take another level to that,

  • because the one thing that we've been experimenting with

  • is how do we increase the teaching base beyond me.

  • It's not a rate limiting factor for us where we are right now,

  • but it would be huge if everyone taught everything they know.

  • If you had a skill, it's funny the first hedge fund I worked for,

  • the (unintelligible) retired, but then the second

  • hedge fund I worked for, they were so impressed

  • by my videos on finance that I almost didn't have to interview.

  • They were like, "Wow, this guy clearly knows his finance."

  • There could be something very interesting with LinkedIn.

  • We could work out the details where you teach what you know.

  • One, that obviously has social good to it,

  • but it's huge marketing for yourself,

  • just because other people will watch what you know,

  • and if any employer says, "Well, does he know it?"

  • Clearly, he's teaching the subject.

  • Michael: Your video count.

  • Sal: Your video account, especially.

  • Michael: 8,000 people have watched this.

  • Sal: Exactly, especially if other people endorse it

  • and there's some type of curation going on.

  • That would be powerful.

  • We've been thinking, there's TED and there TEDx.

  • I don't know if you all are familiar with the difference.

  • TEDx is kind of the franchise.

  • You could start a TEDx Shoreline and as long as it meets

  • their standards, you do a conference and then you record

  • all the videos and then TED will look at some of those videos

  • and the good ones they'll put on TED.com.

  • We've been thinking about doing something like that with Khan Academy.

  • We've jokingly called it xKhan. (laughter)

  • This could be an interesting -

  • I'm just brainstorming out loud.

  • Something like this, it gels with LinkedIn's showing what you know,

  • your network being able to appreciate that,

  • and at the same time, helping to potentially build

  • a very powerful library of really useful stuff.

  • A lot of it could just be very hands-on,

  • "Hey, I'm the office manager.

  • "This is how I think about ordering," very basic stuff

  • or it could be very sophisticated stuff.

  • Michael: Nobody knows anybody else's job very well.

  • Sal: Exactly, and actually, that's a huge corporate kind

  • of knowledge management difficulty.

  • This would be -

  • Yeah, right now in a lot of corporations,

  • the ability to rise up is based on how well

  • you can market yourself, but now all of a sudden,

  • if you're like, "Wow, now I understand what that person does

  • "and it's brilliant," there's all sorts of positive things

  • that could be from that.

  • Michael: Thanks.

  • Jeff: What if we just created a "tell us what you know"

  • piece of text on the Skills page, so it's not a status update,

  • 140 characters or less, it's 10, 12,

  • however long the duration would be in minutes

  • and we could give people a little space on their profile

  • to upload the video and use Skills as a jumping off point,

  • so it's essentially highly targeted marketing

  • for the right people, the right expertise.

  • We could also leverage Skills, the module in the middle of that page,

  • showing some of the most influential people within that skill community.

  • We may want to think about sending a mail to some of those folks

  • and it's all for good, so we could say,

  • "How would you like to get involved with being the first

  • "to tell us what you know and participate in some kind

  • "of collaboration between the Khan Academy and LinkedIn?"

  • Sal: Yeah, that's something that would be awesome.

  • Jeff: That's a great idea, Mike.

  • Okay.

  • Audience Member: Hi Sal, thanks for coming.

  • I know your focus is primary education,

  • but I wanted to ask you a little bit about our university system here.

  • There's been a lot of talk recently about a bubble in higher education.

  • Sal: Yeah, Peter Thiel.

  • Audience Member: Exactly.

  • College costs are ballooning.

  • As a society, we're placing more and more emphasis on credentials.

  • Ivy league is the big thing.

  • Everybody wants their kids to go to the ivy league.

  • Do you have any thoughts about reforming that kind of system?

  • Well, not reform, because I know -

  • Sal: Reinventing.

  • Audience Member: Reinventing that system specifically

  • and maybe if there's anything we need to change

  • our way of thinking, as a culture, so that we can get back on track.

  • Sal: Yeah, to give you all background, Peter Thiel,

  • one of the founders of PayPal, he runs Clarion Capital,

  • another hedge fund guy.

  • He's been pretty vocal about this bubble in higher education.

  • He's been good at spotting the previous bubbles.

  • The housing bubble, the tech bubble, and all of that.

  • It's a bubble because people are willing to pay

  • ridiculous amounts of money in perception

  • that it's a good investment when it really isn't,

  • which is what a bubble is.

  • That's true with the housing bubble,

  • that's true of the tech bubble.

  • Beyond just talking about it, his attempt at disrupting it,

  • which I think is in the right direction,

  • but I don't think it goes quite enough, is he started this program,

  • where he's targeting the same kids who would otherwise go

  • to Stanford or MIT or Harvard or wherever and say,

  • "Look, I'll pay you 100 grand if you drop out of school

  • "and come start a business."

  • He's trying to make it so there's something very desirable,

  • like very prestigious to have, and probably will help your career,

  • that doesn't cost money, that you would give up that other thing,

  • you would give up the college degree

  • and this might become more desirable.

  • I think what would really work, to take his thing to the -

  • I've thrown it out as a crazy idea three or four weeks ago

  • and now it's getting a little less crazy

  • is I think it would be awesome to start a university,

  • for lack of a better word, in Mountain View.

  • This first university, I don't want to make it sound elitist,

  • but it would focus on the best and the brightest.

  • It would focus on the same kids that are applying

  • to Stanford and MIT and Harvard and all of this right now.

  • I'll take a tangent on why I say that,

  • because I think that's the only way you can disrupt.

  • The goal here, instead of these students paying $50,000 a year

  • and going into debt, they would be paid.

  • The reason why I say that is if you can make the best education

  • have negative tuition, then it's a geeky calculus analogy,

  • by the squeeze theorem, literally, how can anyone else

  • justify charging anything, if the best education is negative tuition?

  • You get people to come in and their curriculum

  • is literally six months at LinkedIn, six months at Google.

  • They work in software engineering, they work in product management,

  • they work in marketing, they work in PR, they work in accounting.

  • Six months at Apple, six months working for a VC firm,

  • six months developing iPad apps, or whatever and they are paid.

  • Some of the money goes to the students, maybe 30 grand a year

  • and some of it goes to the university

  • to set up the environment that you should have.

  • It's not this purely commercial thing.

  • You have all of the things that we all liked about college.

  • You have a campus, you have pretty trees to read books under,

  • (laughter) you have venues to meet your future husband or wife. (laughter)

  • And you have a scaffold of truly academic material

  • that you can do at your own pace, something like the Khan Academy.

  • The faculty and you have seminars.

  • "Hey, I'm working on a project at LinkedIn,

  • "but you know what, this is going to require some signal processing.

  • "I don't know signal processing."

  • I go back to the campus, there are either other students there,

  • there's Khan Academy resources, or there are mentors

  • in the valley who are willing to work with me on signal processing.

  • Then, I learn it.

  • You go through this, so what's going to happen

  • is these students are going to end up finishing not with debt.

  • They're going to have money saved,

  • they're going to be way more desirable

  • by this whole slew of companies,

  • and they have the downside protection,

  • because they still had a little bit of an academic scaffold.

  • They'll do well on the MCAT, the GRE, if they decide

  • they want to become a doctor or a lawyer, they can still do that.

  • I think if you do that, it'll be pretty hard for Stanford to justify charging ...

  • The other thing is, you could go right out of the gate,

  • because if you get the employers involved,

  • especially these marquee employers,

  • then maybe even the Khan Academy,

  • because we have a brand and it's in the right place,

  • you don't face that difficulty of starting a university

  • that no one's ever heard of.

  • People will hear of this university on day one.

  • I think something like that, if that's successful,

  • then all of a sudden the tuition inflation becomes very hard to justify.

  • Then you can start more and more of these around the country

  • at different levels, different specializations.

  • Audience Member: I know Olin University in Boston.

  • I don't know if you're familiar.

  • Sal: Yeah.

  • Audience Member: Tried to do something similar to that.

  • It was like free engineering college.

  • Most of their professors were from MIT

  • and they did the project exploration (crosstalk)

  • I know some people had good results going there.

  • I don't know if you've looked at that.

  • Sal: I think the problem there, and actually, I know Olin pretty well.

  • My adviser at MIT actually ended up becoming a professor at Olin.

  • I think the problem is ...

  • The reason why people are paying $200,000 right now

  • is to have a signal to send to the job market that I kick butt.

  • Even though Olin, I haven't gone to Olin,

  • but I can imagine it's probably a very good education,

  • that's not why people are spending $200,000.

  • They want that signal, I went to MIT, I went to Cal Tech.

  • It's the brand.

  • Olin has a problem of that and it also has the problem

  • with the connections, I don't know if Google,

  • maybe Google does, but I don't know if Goldman Sachs

  • recruits at Olin, though maybe they should,

  • because they don't know what Olin is.

  • I think the key thing would have to have some type of partnership

  • with very marquee recruits.

  • If you get an ecosystem of ten of the top tier,

  • the companies everyone wants to work for,

  • the other companies, the next tier of companies

  • are going to say, "Wait, if Google or LinkedIn's getting

  • "all of its talent there, we better get our talent there, too.

  • "We don't want to look like we're getting the scraps."

  • I think it's very important to build the whole ecosystem there.

  • Actually, the big difference would be

  • that the projects would be stuff that actually matters.

  • In the past, if I would have recommended this 50 years ago,

  • people would have said, "Oh my God,

  • "but you're making people do vocational things.

  • "That's horrible, it's commercial," but the reality is

  • the stuff that's going on at LinkedIn right now,

  • the analytics, the software engineering, the marketing,

  • the stuff that's going on at Google, it's more intellectual

  • than the software engineering projects that we worked on

  • when we were undergrads.

  • It's more intellectual than almost anything,

  • the made up projects that a university gives you right now.

  • I think if you build the whole eco -

  • I think Silicon Valley is the perfect place to do it.

  • The one thing that I've discovered through Khan Academy

  • is there's a lot of people who made it, who are super smart,

  • who are orbiting the valley just looking for someone to mentor,

  • looking to disrupt things a little bit.

  • You can imagine, instead of this school showing off

  • about how many Nobel Laureates they have on their faculty,

  • they say, "No, we have the CEOs of this company and this company.

  • "These entrepreneurs and these people

  • "who've done amazing things in the world, this is our faculty.

  • "These are the people you have access to as your mentors."

  • I think you do something like that,

  • I think it would be pretty hard to compete with.

  • Audience Member: Thanks so much.

  • Sal: Yeah, sure.

  • Jeff: Okay, these are going to be the last three questions.

  • Sal's already stayed a little bit extra,

  • but there have been some great questions.

  • Audience Member: Yeah, thank you very much for coming.

  • I have a question going back to scale.

  • Ron has given us a two year deadline to grow very quickly.

  • Sal: (laughing) Where do you live, by the way?

  • Ron: Palo Alto.

  • Sal: Oh, yeah (laughter) a very underserved community.

  • Yeah, I think we might be able to meet your goal.

  • Audience Member: My question is have you thought

  • about making the Khan Academy lectures more searchable,

  • basically being able to reach them more easily

  • from other sites or partnering with other sites

  • or even your students themselves?

  • Have you had any experiences with them really growing

  • your user base because they've shared

  • their experience with someone else?

  • Do you think that that's a viable way to grow more quickly

  • than actually getting an entire educational institution

  • to come on board and buy into this?

  • Sal: Oh yeah, just to be clear,

  • this is something we tell our team the whole time.

  • This roll out into schools fell into our lap

  • and we're like, "This is an opportunity

  • and there's no obvious resistance, so let's do it,"

  • but our number one goal is actually that.

  • It's actually the organic, word of mouth, kids telling kids about it,

  • teachers direct a student, a one off kid or parent trying to learn,

  • even homeschoolers, that still is.

  • We want Khan Academy to, if you have nothing else,

  • you're still able to get an education.

  • To ask the questions about the searchability,

  • that's something we're working on.

  • 2,200 videos, it's this huge curation problem.

  • We're figuring out ways to categorize it better,

  • ways to make it more searchable.

  • We're getting transcripts on them so they can be text searchable.

  • The Google people have told us that that's actually,

  • it's unfortunate that if you do a text search

  • for alegbra right now, Khan Academy videos

  • they don't even come up on the first page.

  • All sorts of random stuff because there's no text

  • that says "parabola" and all of this type of stuff.

  • We're going to work on that so it becomes

  • a lot more meaningfully searchable.

  • Audience Member: Thanks.

  • Audience Member: In terms of making

  • the Academy's content more palatable to the beast,

  • is there any academic research going on,

  • in terms of the efficacy of the program?

  • Sal: Yeah, we're eager to do more hardcore, rigorous studies.

  • Even in Los Altos, I've been broadly impressed

  • with the whole Los Altos school system,

  • from the teachers, the parents, all the way up to the superintendent.

  • They're not people who get enamored with an idea

  • and say, "Let's just go district wide with it for the hell of it."

  • The two seventh grade classes who have been using it,

  • they call it algebra readiness classes.

  • These classes are actually, I guess you'd call them,

  • they're the students not in the medium track.

  • These students they did a before and after

  • and these kids went from ...

  • I forgot the exact numbers, but it was on the order,

  • I'm not exaggerating, like 20% proficiency

  • of algebra and pre-algebra concepts to, I think, it's like 80% on average.

  • It's a dramatic change.

  • They actually never had these classes before,

  • so they don't know what happened in previous years,

  • but that was pretty powerful for them.

  • Audience Member: Even instead of doing both fifth

  • and both seventh grade class, if you were to do

  • one fifth, sixth, and seventh grade class and not the other

  • and do cohort -

  • Sal: Exactly, the fifth grade we're doing that.

  • They had a fifth grade assessment that they do every year.

  • The results came out and our fifth grade classes,

  • despite the fact that we weren't -

  • I was stressed about it, because the other classes

  • were literally teaching to the test.

  • In our classes, they were doing this crazy stuff

  • that had nothing to do with the exam.

  • Ours did at least or better than those.

  • The good thing is we're definitely not damaging anything,

  • (laughter) which is important.

  • It's amazing how many times that question is not asked.

  • We're definitely not doing damage and everyone's more engaged,

  • so even on that metric alone it makes sense to move forward,

  • but the more powerful thing is, and everyone recognizes this,

  • is that these kids are doing trigonometry and algebra,

  • that's not being measured on the fifth grade assessment.

  • I'm actually going to administer an SAT

  • to a control fifth grade class and to this fifth grade class

  • and I'm hoping to see one thing.

  • Obviously the fifth graders who have been doing algebra

  • will do much better on the SAT, but I have a suspicion

  • they'll do much better than the average high school senior, too.

  • I think if we do stuff like that and then we can do more rigorous stuff.

  • These aren't rigorous studies.

  • This is me administering an SAT,

  • but these will be the data points that tell us.

  • Then we can do a really rigorous study.

  • Audience Member: One of the obstacles you can hit

  • is that those people that went and got a master's degree

  • so they could teach middle school math

  • are going to be reluctant to (unintelligible).

  • Last comment before I turn it over, if you make the effort

  • to map your particular modules to the Common Core standards,

  • that would make it a lot -

  • Sal: We are doing that as we speak.

  • They're like 80% done.

  • We're 80% done mapping.

  • We have to actually add a lot more modules.

  • The videos are pretty comprehensive,

  • but the modules we have to add a lot more.

  • We're doing that, but it's just a spreadsheet right now.

  • We're going to surface that so that you can navigate

  • with the Common Core.

  • To answer the teacher question, this is the other thing,

  • teachers can use this to stay -

  • That's the other side effect, teachers actually using this to learn.

  • There have been studies that show the best teachers

  • are actually the ones who have -

  • The best second grade math teachers are the ones who know calculus,

  • just because the kids know that there's more there.

  • They know what's going on.

  • The teachers can use this to ramp up and stay ahead of the curve.

  • Audience Member: Well, speaking of second grade teachers,

  • I am one, so thank you.

  • I want to say thank you to LinkedIn for inviting me, as well.

  • I'm from northern California.

  • I teach at a charter school and I actually have

  • an employee here's son in my class.

  • I had a question more about taking it back

  • to the actual implementation.

  • The Los Altos schools, are they using a 1:1 ratio

  • of computers in the classroom?

  • Sal: Yes.

  • Audience Member: Are there kids at the computer

  • doing that math lecture the whole time?

  • Sal: They have 1:1, although what we found

  • is you actually don't need 1:1,

  • because so much of the time is spent doing other things

  • that you could probably time share the computers.

  • You could probably do a 3:1 ratio

  • and it would probably work out just as well,

  • just because there's some time where you're actually all working

  • with your peers and you're not even using the computer.

  • That is a gaining factor.

  • At some point, you do have to have internet connectivity.

  • We're thinking about offline use cases for the developing world,

  • but what we'd like to think is, even when I went to school

  • in the 80s and 90s in a fairly middle of the road

  • public school system in Louisiana,

  • there were computers that just went completely unused.

  • I think the skepticism for deploying more money

  • behind computers is justified.

  • It's like, "What are they doing right now with the computers?

  • "How is it actually helping anyone?"

  • I think if you actually give a use case for the computers

  • and it's actually, now that these people are -

  • The teachers, the principals, the administrators, the parents

  • are getting this real-time data, then I think the question becomes,

  • "How can we operate without these computers?"

  • Then, there's a narrative here, too, where at least I think

  • you don't need textbooks anymore.

  • That's a cost savings.

  • Audience Member: Then implementing it then multiple grade levels.

  • With the modules you were talking about,

  • I've started working through them myself,

  • because I"m refreshing, trying to get to the calculus level

  • as a second grade teacher, I guess.

  • Implementing it within fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth,

  • at what point are those kids, because there's only so many modules,

  • and if you're in school 186 days a year,

  • how are they going to keep going through all those modules (crosstalk)

  • Sal: Some of these fifth graders are almost done

  • with all of our modules that we have,

  • so we're ramping up, hiring faster so we can stay ahead of them.

  • The funny answer is, it's funny that this is a problem.

  • If I had a 12 year old or 13 year old that did that,

  • I would say, "You know what, just take the SAT,

  • "take the GED, and go work or something." (laughter)

  • "Go explore things for a couple years

  • and if you want to go to college, go to -

  • That's a good problem.

  • It's funny, it sounds like a crazy idea, but someone recommended

  • that we should start schools where it isn't

  • this is the tuition per month or this is tuition for a semester,

  • it's just like if your kid gets over 700 on the SAT, you pay us -

  • Right now, if you go to a private school, $30,000 a year

  • for 12 years is $360,000, right?

  • Most of them are still not getting 700s on the SAT, right?

  • So you say, however long it takes, if it takes them a week,

  • if it takes them 20 years, if your kid gets a 700 -

  • We'll educate them, if your kid gets a 700, pay us 100 grand.

  • It was a joke, but that actually would be good,

  • because if the kid finishes faster, it's good for everyone.

  • It's good for the kid, it's good for the school system,

  • it's good for resource allocation.

  • I know this is being taped, so don't take my idea seriously

  • about this performance, but actually -

  • Anyway, (laughter) the simple answer is it's not a problem.

  • It's an awesome problem.

  • Actually, the best thing to do with that kid is,

  • the kid who's already maxed out everything, make him a TA.

  • Audience Member: Yeah, I'm just seeing the balance between

  • language development, writing, reading (crosstalk)

  • all that other stuff, so you have a sixth, seventh, eighth grader

  • who has maxed out your modules in calculus,

  • but they're not prepared yet, in my opinion

  • to go out to the work field, in terms of their writing ability (crosstalk)

  • Sal: There's two things here.

  • One is because these are fifth grade classes,

  • the same teacher does teach all the subjects.

  • One, these teachers are frustrated with the other subjects now,

  • because they feel like it's like stone ages now,

  • because they don't have this data analytic, self-paced teaching.

  • Hopefully we can expand and build some tools into the other subjects.

  • The other thing is we've even thought maybe we should

  • start one school ourselves.

  • We actually even thought about doing it someplace around here,

  • so maybe you would have an option other than ...

  • It's not by grade level, it's just one room classroom.

  • In the same room you have Kindergartners,

  • in the same room you have 18 year olds

  • and the stuff that you already have maxed out, you are a TA

  • and the other stuff you are being TA-ed.

  • I think if you do a model like that, I think it's -

  • There's all sorts of interesting models

  • about teaching each other and maturity

  • that you can only get in that type of a framework.

  • Right now, you're stuck with just your other ten year olds.

  • We've all seen it.

  • If you have older kids around, you act more mature

  • and if you have younger kids around, you act more mature,

  • because you have responsibility now.

  • I think if we explore that a little bit more,

  • we'll have a way that we can really -

  • Once a kid is giving more into the system

  • than they're taking out, pay them.

  • They should be TAs.

  • Audience Member: As a teacher, thank you, Sal.

  • Sal: Oh yeah, thanks, yeah.

  • Jeff: Speaking of thanks, it's interesting juxtaposition.

  • At our last In day, we do this once a month,

  • where employees have an opportunity

  • to invest time and energy in the things

  • they're most inspired by and excited by.

  • Education's a recurring theme for us, reinventing education.

  • At the last In day, we screened Waiting for Superman.

  • I think a lot of people in the room today saw it

  • and it's hard not to walk away from the film

  • feeling a bit of despair.

  • I think there is an understanding of things need to improve,

  • but I also think, perhaps naively, prior to seeing the film,

  • a lot folks believe that if you live in this country

  • and you wanted to be educated, you wanted to learn

  • and do your best and be prepared for opportunity when it came,

  • that you could and what that movie certainly shed

  • a very, very dark light on was the fact that that's not the case,

  • that it's come down to a lottery

  • and I think most folks here learned the economics

  • of lotteries at a very young age.

  • If we all believe that the future of our country,

  • to a large extent, depends on the next generation

  • and their ability to be educated,

  • we don't want to be placing a bet on a lottery,

  • we want to be placing a bet on people like you.

  • As depressing as some of those themes were,

  • I think you represent the exact opposite.

  • You represent the fact that what could appear

  • as completely intractable, unsolveable problems

  • are absolutely solvable and you and I think

  • you mentioned eight or nine folks,

  • one of the key things we like to talk about here

  • is how to scale and how to transform things.

  • You are living proof of what's possible when someone

  • with incredible vision, intelligence, and energy

  • channels that into something -

  • Sal: Looks (laughter)

  • Jeff: Sure. (crosstalk)

  • Channels that into something so extraordinarily important and valuable.

  • On behalf of all of us, Sal, thank you for everything

  • you and your team are doing to reinvent education.

  • I know I speak for all of us when I say we're going to do

  • everything within our power to help you.

  • Sal: Awesome, yeah, that's exciting. (applause)

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