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  • SALMAN KHAN: The Khan Academy is most known

  • for its collection of videos.

  • So before I go any farther, let me

  • show you a little bit of a montage.

  • [VIDEO PLAYBACK]

  • So the hypotenuse is now going to be five.

  • This animal's fossils are only found

  • in this area of South America, nice, clean band

  • here, and in this part of Africa.

  • We could integrate over the surface,

  • and the notation usually is a capital sigma.

  • National Assembly, they create the committee

  • of public safety, which sounds like a very nice committee.

  • Notice this is an aldehyde, and it's an alcohol.

  • Start differentiating into effector and memory cells.

  • A galaxy, hey, there's another galaxy.

  • Oh look, there's another galaxy.

  • And for dollars is their 30 million plus the $20 million

  • from the American manufacturer.

  • If this does not blow your mind, then you have no emotion.

  • [END VIDEO PLAYBACK]

  • SALMAN KHAN: We now have on the order of 2,200 videos

  • covering everything from basic arithmetic all

  • the way to vector calculus and some of the stuff

  • that you saw up there.

  • We have a million students a month using the site,

  • watching on the order of 100,000 to 200,000 videos a day.

  • But what we're going to talk about in this

  • is how we're going to the next level.

  • But before I do that, I want to talk a little bit about how

  • I got started.

  • And some of you all might know, about five years ago,

  • I was an analyst at a hedge fund.

  • And I was in Boston.

  • And I was tutoring my cousins in New Orleans remotely.

  • And I started putting the first YouTube videos up, really just

  • as a nice to have, just kind of a supplement, for my cousins,

  • something that might give them a refresher, or something.

  • And as soon as I put those first YouTube videos up,

  • something interesting happened.

  • Actually, a bunch of interesting things happened.

  • The first was the feedback from my cousins.

  • They told me that they preferred me on YouTube than in person.

  • [LAUGHTER]

  • And once you get over the backhanded nature of that,

  • there was actually something very profound there.

  • They were saying that they preferred the automated version

  • of their cousin to their cousin.

  • At first it's very unintuitive, but when you actually

  • think about it from their point of view,

  • it makes a ton of sense.

  • You have this situation where now they can pause and repeat

  • their cousin without feeling like they're wasting my time.

  • If they have to review something that they should have learned

  • a couple of weeks ago, or maybe a couple of years ago,

  • they don't have to be embarrassed and ask

  • their cousin.

  • They can just watch those videos.

  • If they're bored, they can go ahead.

  • They can watch it at their own time, at their own pace.

  • And probably the least appreciated aspect of this

  • is the notion that the very first time, the very first time

  • that you're trying to get your brain around a new concept,

  • the very last thing you need is another human being saying

  • do you understand this.

  • And that's what was happening with the interaction

  • with my cousins before.

  • And now they could just do it in the intimacy of their own room.

  • The other thing that happened is I put them on YouTube

  • just for the....I saw no reason to make it private.

  • So I let other people watch it.

  • And then people started stumbling on it.

  • And I started getting some comments, and some letters,

  • and all sorts of feedback from random people around the world.

  • And these are just a few.

  • This is actually from one of the original calculus videos.

  • And someone wrote on YouTube, it was a YouTube comment,

  • "First time I smiled doing a derivative."

  • Let's pause here.

  • This person did a derivative, and then they smiled.

  • And then in response to that same comment,

  • this is on the thread.

  • You could go on YouTube and look at these comments.

  • Someone else wrote, "Same thing here.

  • I actually got a natural high and a good mood

  • for the entire day, since I remember

  • seeing all of this 'matrix text' in class.

  • And here I'm all like, I know Kung Fu."

  • [LAUGHTER]

  • And we got a lot of feedback along those lines.

  • This clearly was helping people.

  • But then, as the viewership kept growing, and kept growing,

  • I started getting letters from people.

  • And it was starting to become clear

  • that it was actually more than just a nice to have.

  • This is just an excerpt from one of those letters.

  • "My 12-year-old son has autism, and has

  • had a terrible time with math.

  • We have tried everything, viewed everything, bought everything.

  • We stumbled on your video on decimals, and it got through.

  • Then we went on to the dreaded fractions.

  • Again, he got it.

  • We could not believe it.

  • He is so excited."

  • And so you can imagine, here I was,

  • an analyst at a hedge fund.

  • It was very strange for me to do something of social value.

  • [LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE]

  • But I was excited.

  • So I kept going.

  • And then a few other things started to dawn on me.

  • That not only would it help my cousins right now,

  • or these people who were sending letters.

  • But maybe that this content will never go old.

  • That it could help their kids or their grandkids.

  • If Isaac Newton had done YouTube videos on calculus,

  • I wouldn't have to, assuming he was good.

  • We don't know.

  • [LAUGHTER]

  • The other thing that happened, and even at this point, I said,

  • OK, maybe it's a good supplement.

  • It's good for motivated students.

  • It's good for maybe homeschoolers.

  • But I didn't think it would be something that would somehow

  • penetrate the classroom.

  • But then I started getting letters from teachers.

  • And the teachers would write saying,

  • we've used your videos to flip the classroom.

  • You've given the lectures.

  • So now what we do...and this could actually

  • happen in every classroom in America tomorrow... what I do

  • is I assign the lectures for homework.

  • And what used to be homework, I now

  • have the students doing in the classroom.

  • [APPLAUSE]

  • I want to pause here for a second

  • because there's a couple of interesting things.

  • One, when those teachers are doing that,

  • there's the obvious benefit.

  • There's the benefit that now their students

  • can enjoy the videos in the way that my cousins did.

  • They can pause, repeat at their own pace, at their own time.

  • But the more interesting thing-- and this

  • is the unintuitive thing when you talk about technology

  • in the classroom-- by removing the "one size fits all"

  • lecture from the classroom and letting students have

  • a self-paced lecture at home, and then when

  • you go to the classroom, letting them do work,

  • having the teacher walk around, having the peers actually

  • be able to interact with each other,

  • these teachers have used technology

  • to humanize the classroom.

  • They took a fundamentally dehumanizing experience,

  • a bunch of 30 kids with their fingers on their lips,

  • not allowed to interact with each other.

  • A teacher, no matter how good, has

  • to give this kind of "one size fits all"

  • lecture to 30 students-- blank faces, slightly antagonistic.

  • And now it's a human experience.

  • Now they're actually interacting with each other.

  • So once the Khan Academy-- I quit my job.

  • And we turned into a real organization,

  • or a not-for-profit.

  • The question is, how do we take this to the next level?

  • How do we take what those teachers were

  • doing to their natural conclusion?

  • And so what I'm showing over here,

  • these are actual exercises that I

  • started writing for my cousins.

  • The ones I started were much more primitive.

  • This is a more competent version of it.

  • But the paradigm here is we'll generate as many questions

  • as you need until you get that concept,

  • until you get 10 in a row.

  • And the Khan Academy videos are there.

  • You get hints, the actual steps for that problem,

  • if you don't know how to do it.

  • But the paradigm, it seems like a very simple thing.

  • 10 in a row, you move on.

  • But it's fundamentally different than what's

  • happening in classrooms right now.

  • In a traditional classroom, you have

  • a couple of-- homework, lecture, homework, lecture,

  • and then you have a snapshot exam.

  • And that exam, whether you get a 70%, an 80%, a 90% or a 95%,

  • the class moves on to the next topic.

  • And even that 95% student, what was the 5% they didn't know?

  • Maybe they didn't know what happens

  • when you raise something to the 0-th power.

  • And then you go build on that in the next concept.

  • That's analogous to-- imagine learning to ride a bicycle.

  • And I give you a bicycle.

  • Maybe I give you a lecture ahead of time.

  • And I give you that bicycle for two weeks.

  • And then I come back after two weeks.

  • And I say, well, let's see.

  • You're having trouble taking left turns.

  • You can't quite stop.

  • You're an 80% bicyclist.

  • So I put a big C stamp on your forehead.

  • And then I say here's a unicycle.

  • But as ridiculous as that sounds,

  • that's exactly what's happening in our classrooms right now.

  • And the idea is you fast forward.

  • And good students start failing algebra all of a sudden,

  • and start failing calculus all of a sudden,

  • despite being smart, despite having good teachers.

  • And it's usually because they had these Swiss cheese

  • gaps that kept building throughout their foundations.

  • So our model is learn math the way you would learn anything.

  • Like the way you would learn a bicycle.

  • Stay on that bicycle.

  • Fall off that bicycle.

  • Do it as long as necessary until you have mastery.

  • The traditional model, it penalizes you

  • for experimentation and failure.

  • But it does not expect mastery.

  • We encourage you to experiment.

  • We encourage you to failure.

  • But we do expect mastery.

  • This is just another one of the modules.

  • This is trigonometry.

  • This is shifting and reflecting functions.

  • And they all fit together.

  • We have about 90 of these right now.

  • And you could go to the site right now.

  • It's all free.

  • Not trying to sell anything.

  • But the general idea is that they all

  • fit into this knowledge map.

  • That top node right there, that's

  • literally single-digit addition.

  • It's like 1 plus 1 is equal to 2.

  • And the paradigm is, once you get 10 in a row on that,

  • then it keeps forwarding you to more and more advanced modules.

  • So keep-- this is further down the knowledge map.

  • We're getting into more advanced arithmetic.

  • Further down, you start getting into

  • pre-algebra and early algebra.

  • Further down, you start getting into algebra one, algebra two,

  • a little bit of precalculus.

  • And the idea is, from this, we can actually teach everything.

  • Well, everything that can be taught

  • in this type of a framework.

  • So you can imagine.

  • And this is what we are working on--

  • is from this knowledge map, you have logic.

  • You have computer programming.

  • You have grammar.

  • You have genetics.

  • All based off of that core of, OK, If you know this and that,

  • now you're ready for this next concept.

  • Now that can work well for an individual learner.

  • And I encourage one, for you to do with your kids.

  • But I also encourage everyone in the audience to do it yourself.

  • It'll change what happens at the dinner table.

  • But what we want to do is use the natural conclusion

  • of the flipping of the classroom that those early teachers

  • had emailed me about.

  • And so what I'm showing you here,

  • this is actually data from a pilot in the Los Altos school

  • district, where they took two fifth-grade classes, and two

  • seventh-grade classes, and completely gutted

  • their old math curriculum.

  • These kids aren't using textbooks.

  • They're not getting "one size fits all" lectures.

  • They're doing Khan Academy.

  • They're doing that software for roughly half

  • of their math class.

  • And I want to make it clear.

  • We don't view this as a complete math education.

  • What it does is-- and this is what's

  • happening Los Altos-- it frees up time.

  • This is the blocking and tackling.

  • Making sure you know how to do the system of equations.

  • And it frees up time for the simulations, for the games,

  • for the mechanics, for the robot building,

  • for the estimating how high that hill is based on its shadow.

  • And so the paradigm is the teacher walks in every day.

  • Every kid works at their own pace.

  • And a teacher-- this is actually a live dashboard from Los Altos

  • school district-- and they look at this dashboard.

  • Every row is a student.

  • Every column is one of those concepts.

  • Green means the student's already proficient.

  • Blue means that they're working on it, no need to worry.

  • Red means they're stuck.

  • And what the teacher does is literally just says,

  • let me intervene on the red kids.

  • Or even better, let me get one of the green kids who

  • are already proficient in that concept

  • to be the first line of attack and actually tutor their peer.

  • [APPLAUSE]

  • Now I come from a very data-centric reality.

  • So we don't want that teacher to even go and intervene and have

  • to ask the kid awkward questions.

  • Oh, what do you not understand, or what do you understand,

  • and all of the rest.

  • So our paradigm is to really arm the teachers

  • with as much data as possible.

  • Really data that, in almost any other field, is expected.

  • If you're in finance, or marketing, or manufacturing.

  • And so the teachers can actually diagnose

  • what's wrong with the students, so that they

  • can make their interaction as productive as possible.

  • So now the teachers know exactly what

  • the student's been up to, how long they've

  • been spending every day.

  • What videos have they been watching?

  • When did they pause the videos?

  • What did they stop watching?

  • What exercises are they using?

  • What have they been focused on?

  • The outer circle shows the exercises they were focused on.

  • The inner circle shows the videos they're focused on.

  • And the data gets pretty granular.

  • So you can actually see the exact problems

  • that the student got right or wrong.

  • Red is wrong.

  • Blue is right.

  • The leftmost question is the first question

  • that the student attempted.

  • They watched the video right over there.

  • And then you could see eventually they

  • were able to get 10 in a row.

  • It's almost like you can almost see

  • them learning over those last 10 problems.

  • They also got faster.

  • The height is how long it took them.

  • So when you talk about self-paced learning,

  • it makes sense for everyone-- in education speak,

  • differentiated learning.

  • But it's kind of crazy what happens when you actually

  • see it in a classroom.

  • Because every time we've done this,

  • in every classroom we've done, over and over again, if you

  • go five days into it, there's a group

  • of kids who have raced ahead.

  • And there's a group of kids who are a little bit slower.

  • And in a traditional model, if you did a snapshot assessment,

  • you say, oh, these are the gifted kids.

  • These are the slow kids.

  • Maybe they should be tracked differently.

  • Maybe we should put them in different classes.

  • But when you let every student work at their own pace,

  • and we see it over and over and over again.

  • You see students who took a little bit extra time

  • on one concept or the other.

  • But once they get through that concept, they just race ahead.

  • And so the same kids that you thought

  • were slow six weeks ago, you now would think are gifted.

  • And we're seeing it over and over and over again.

  • And it makes you really wonder how much

  • all of the labels a lot of us have benefited from

  • were really just due to a coincidence of time.

  • Now, as valuable as something like this

  • is in a district like Los Altos, our goal

  • is to use technology to humanize,

  • not just in Los Altos, but kind of on a global scale, what's

  • happening in education.

  • And actually that brings an interesting point.

  • A lot of the effort in humanizing the classroom

  • is focused on student to teacher ratios.

  • In our mind the relevant metric is

  • "student to valuable human time with the teacher" ratio.

  • So in a traditional model, most of the teacher's time

  • is spent doing lectures, and grading tests, and whatnot.

  • Maybe 5% of their time is actually

  • sitting next to students and actually working with them.

  • Now 100% of their time is.

  • So once again, using technology, not just

  • flipping the classroom, you're humanizing the classroom,

  • I'd argue, by a factor of five or 10.

  • And as valuable as it is in Los Altos,

  • imagine what that does to the adult learner who's

  • embarrassed to go back and learn stuff that they should have

  • known before, before going back to college.

  • Imagine what it does to a street kid in Calcutta who

  • has to help his family during the day.

  • And that's the reason why he or she can't go to school.

  • Now they can spend two hours a day

  • and remediate or get up to speed and not

  • feel embarrassed about what they do or don't know.

  • Now imagine what happens where-- we talked about the peers

  • teaching each other inside of a classroom.

  • But this is all one system.

  • There's no reason why you can't have that peer

  • to peer tutoring beyond that one classroom.

  • Imagine what happens if that student in Calcutta

  • all of a sudden can tutor your son.

  • Or your son can tutor that kid in Calcutta.

  • And I think what you'll see emerging

  • is this notion of a global one world classroom.

  • And that's essentially what we're trying to build.

  • Thank you.

  • [APPLAUSE]

  • [SIDE CONVERSATION]

  • [APPLAUSE]

  • BILL GATES: I've seen some things

  • you're doing in the system that have to do with motivation

  • and feedback-- energy points, merit badges.

  • Tell me what you're thinking there.

  • SALMAN KHAN: Oh yeah, no, we have an awesome team

  • working on that.

  • And I have to be clear.

  • It's not just me anymore.

  • I'm still doing all the videos.

  • We have a rock star team doing the software.

  • Yeah, we've put a bunch of game mechanics

  • in there, where you get these badges.

  • We're going to start having leader boards by areas,

  • and you get points.

  • It's actually been pretty interesting.

  • Just the wording of the badging, or how many points you

  • get for doing something, we see on the system-wide basis

  • tens of thousands of fifth graders

  • or sixth graders going one direction or another, depending

  • on what badge you give them.

  • [LAUGHTER]

  • BILL GATES: And the collaboration you're

  • doing with Los Altos, how did that come about?

  • SALMAN KHAN: Yeah, Los Altos was kind of crazy.

  • Once again, I didn't expect it to be used in classrooms.

  • Someone from their board came and said, what would you

  • do if you had carte blanche in a classroom?

  • And I said, well, I would just-- every student

  • work at their own pace on something like this.

  • We'd give a dashboard.

  • And they said, oh, this is kind of radical,

  • we have to think about it.

  • And me and the rest of team were like,

  • they're never going to want to do this.

  • But literally the next day they were like,

  • can you start in two weeks?

  • [LAUGHTER]

  • BILL GATES: So it's fifth-grade math

  • is where that's going on right now?

  • SALMAN KHAN: It's two fifth-grade classes

  • and two seventh-grade classes.

  • They're doing it at the district level.

  • And I think what they're excited about

  • is they can now follow these kids.

  • It's not an only in-school thing.

  • Even on Christmas, we saw some of the kids were doing.

  • And we track everything.

  • So they can actually track them as they

  • go through the entire district, through the summers, as they

  • go from one teacher to a next.

  • You have this continuity of data that, even at the district

  • level, they can see.

  • BILL GATES: So some of those views

  • we saw were for the teacher to go in and track actually

  • what's going on with those kids.

  • So you're getting feedback on those teacher views

  • to see what they think they need?

  • SALMAN KHAN: Oh yeah.

  • Actually, most of those were specs by the teachers.

  • We made some of those for students

  • so they could see their data.

  • But we have a very tight design loop

  • with the teachers themselves.

  • And they're literally saying, hey, this is nice.

  • But, like the focus graph, a lot of the teachers

  • said I have a feeling that a lot of the kids are jumping around,

  • and not focusing on one topic.

  • So we made that focus diagram for them.

  • So it's all been teacher driven.

  • It's been pretty crazy.

  • BILL GATES: Is this ready for prime time?

  • Do you think a lot of classes next school

  • year should try this thing out?

  • SALMAN KHAN: Yeah.

  • It's ready.

  • We've got a million people on the site already.

  • So we can handle a few more.

  • And no, no reason why it really can't

  • happen in every classroom in America tomorrow.

  • BILL GATES: And the vision of the tutoring thing.

  • The idea there is, if I'm confused about a topic,

  • somehow right in the user interface,

  • I'd find people who are volunteering,

  • maybe see their reputation.

  • And I could schedule and connect up with those people.

  • SALMAN KHAN: Absolutely.

  • And this is something I recommend everyone

  • in this audience to do.

  • Those dashboards the teachers have, you can go log in right now.

  • And you could essentially become a coach

  • for your kids, your nephews, your cousins, or maybe

  • some kids at the Boys & Girls Club.

  • And you can start becoming a mentor or tutor really immediately.

  • But yeah, it's all there.

  • BILL GATES: Well, it's amazing.

  • I think you've just got a glimpse

  • of the future of education.

  • Thank you.

  • SALMAN KHAN: Thank you.

  • [APPLAUSE]

SALMAN KHAN: The Khan Academy is most known

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