Go Learn Something

Edu­ca­tion is a fun­da­men­tal ingre­di­ent in indi­vid­ual, orga­ni­za­tional and soci­etal suc­cess.  In a world fueled by global com­pe­ti­tion, tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion, and high speed com­mu­ni­ca­tion, edu­ca­tion mat­ters now more than ever.  Recently I dis­cov­ered some­thing called The Khan Acad­emy, an amaz­ing online resource for edu­ca­tion. The site is free and fea­tures instruc­tional videos and inter­ac­tive exer­cises on top­ics rang­ing from basic math­e­mat­ics to Ther­mo­dy­nam­ics.  The videos are led by Salman Khan, who in 2006 was tutor­ing his fam­ily and decided he needed a bet­ter way to scale up his lessons.  So he started cre­at­ing videos and then thought it would be worth­while to share them with the world.  These videos have grown into what is now a com­pre­hen­sive library of edu­ca­tional mate­ri­als and inter­ac­tive exercises.

The plat­form he cre­ated is so impres­sive to me.  It allows for stu­dents to log-in and per­form exer­cises, earn points, and gain instruc­tion when needed.  This sim­ple plat­form makes edu­ca­tion both more acces­si­ble and more enjoy­able.  For teach­ers and par­ents, it has the poten­tial to pro­vide a real time dash­board of what a child is learn­ing, how much time and effort they are putting into edu­ca­tion, and when and where help is needed.  I am fas­ci­nated by the poten­tial this tool has to help edu­cate human beings.  The instruc­tional videos can enable par­ents, teach­ers, and stu­dents to work together toward the goal of edu­ca­tion — get­ting every­one more actively involved in the process.

With all of our recent empha­sis on stan­dard­ized tests and our obses­sion with mea­sur­ing out­comes, this bril­liant plat­form makes it pos­si­ble to mea­sure the activ­ity that dri­ves the out­comes.  It is not enough to sim­ply say “we have to make teach­ers more account­able based on test scores.”  That logic is flawed in so many ways — mostly because it ignores the need for stu­dents and par­ents to take own­er­ship and puts all blame on teach­ers.  Teach­ers are over­bur­dened, under­paid, and under appre­ci­ated.  Yes, out­comes mat­ter, but they are the result of a sys­tem.  This plat­form can give us bet­ter insight into the edu­ca­tional sys­tem of each and every stu­dent, each and every day.  Where are indi­vid­ual kids strug­gling?  How much time are they spend­ing on a sub­ject both in and out of the class­room?  What help do they need to learn more?  How do we keep them from get­ting stuck, falling behind, and los­ing hope?  The abil­ity to gather data on the day to day process of edu­ca­tion allows us to truly focus on where atten­tion is needed.  What a great resource for teach­ers to be able to use in the classroom.

Another excit­ing aspect of this plat­form is that it empow­ers par­ents to learn or relearn mate­r­ial along with their chil­dren and to be more involved.  This pro­foundly changes sum­mer vaca­tion.  With a tool like this, par­ents can help kids to con­tinue learn­ing all year round — even if just an hour a day dur­ing June, July and August.  Just keep­ing kids from for­get­ting what they learned the year before could rad­i­cally improve their per­for­mance come Sep­tem­ber when they return to school.

Per­son­ally, I am inter­ested in learn­ing more about so many of the top­ics on the site.  Physics, Biol­ogy, Chem­istry, Math­e­mat­ics.  Mov­ing for­ward I plan to spend con­sid­er­able time explor­ing the mate­r­ial on the site and expand­ing my own intel­lec­tual capacity.

It is amaz­ing to imag­ine the poten­tial this plat­form, and oth­ers like it have to spread edu­ca­tion around the globe.  The world is get­ting smarter before our eyes.  We live at the most amaz­ing time in human his­tory.  Like never before the human race has access to knowl­edge, the capac­ity to learn, and the abil­ity to change the world.  May we have the wis­dom to use it all wisely.

I encour­age you to go check out the site along with other emerg­ing sources of edu­ca­tion that are avail­able for free on the web.  Go learn something.