LE05 Khan Academy

The Khan Academy is a non-profit educational organization, created in 2006 by Bangladeshi American educator Salman Khan, a graduate of MIT and Harvard Business School. Khan Academy started when salman started tutoring his cousin on yahoo Doodle notepad which finally led to his youtube which can be viewed by any. This idea to provide free education on umpteen areas through videos was a very unique idea in its kind. Khan academy aimed at intelligent use of technology for innovative technology They most known for videos, but it isn't just videos. It's also interactive software, plus data feedback.

With the stated mission of "providing a high quality education to anyone, anywhere", the website supplies a free online collection of more than 3,200 micro lectures via video tutorials stored on YouTube teaching mathematics, history, healthcare and medicine, finance, physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy, economics, cosmology, organic chemistry, American civics, art history, macroeconomics and microeconomics, and computer science.

                                                       

Vision

Khan has stated a vision of turning the academy into a charter school. Khan academy feels that too many people around the globe don’t have access to good education materials, or they are forced to learn through a system that doesn't properly cater to their individual needs. They believe that the technology exists today to fundamentally change this, and they are trying to build the tools and resources every student deserves.

Mission

Khan academy aims at excelling in providing free education through videos. Their mission is to use technology to provide education to every student which he/she deserves to get. Khan's long-term goal is to provide "tens of thousands of videos in pretty much every subject" and to create "the world's first free, world-class virtual school where anyone can learn anything.

New Business models

 

Khan academy is used basically as a freeware on the internet as its videos are available free of cost. It highlights itself as a not-for-profit organization. It did get huge backing from the Gates and Melinda foundation and Google. Additionally, it also earned $2,000 a month from ads on the Web site in 2010, until Khan Academy ceased to accept advertising. In 2010, Google announced it would give the Khan Academy $2 million for creating more courses and for translating the core library into the world’s most widely spoken languages

Therefore, despite being not-for-profit organization the Khan academy has been able to manage fund on the basis of its reputation as a provider of free education for all.

Theory X and Theory Y assumption application

This particular concept has been illustrated by the Khan academy by demonstrating how the weaker students can excel brilliantly once they are through with their subject raise ahead. This has been demonstrated very beautifully in latter half of the following video,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTFEUsudhfs

This shows how even the weaker students once given proper training and confidence will raise ahead.

Creative Problem Solving

The Khan academy focuses on bridging the gaps in the concepts of students. The Khan engineers are also working to tweak the exercise platform so it does not confuse genuine mastery with “pattern matching” -- a method of problem-solving wherein a student mechanically rehashes the steps necessary to solve that type of problem without necessarily grasping, conceptually, what those steps represent. Therefore at a time when students are always within arm's reach of a computer and a wireless signal, “mechanic practice schedulers” can spring questions on students at intervals to gauge how well they remember how to do certain types of problems. This would allow Khan's team to collect data on how well students retain their command of different concepts, which in turn would enable them to look back at their original interactions with the concepts and try to spot variables that correlate with long-term retention.

Strategy of Khan Foundation

The Khan foundation has been working on humanizing the education system with the help of technology. Khan Academy’s explicit goal is to teach people fundamental concepts. But in the process, it hopes to break new ground by changing how educators think about teaching, how psychologists think about learning, how employers think about credentialing, and how everybody thinks about the price of a good education. It aims at providing education for all.

 Globalization

   
This is one of the inheriting concepts of Khan Academy. The use of innovative technology enables it broadcast its work throughout the world. This particular advantage is not available in the traditional way of teaching. Moreover introducing this concept free of cost has really led to the success of this model in the modern era