How Videos Can Reinvent Education

Every March a conference of the biggest minds takes place. The conference is called TED. TED stands for Technology, Education, and Design. Past speakers have included Bill Gates, Sir Ken Robinson, and Steve Jobs and all of the speeches can be found at the TED website. During this years conference a gentleman by the name of Salman Khan did a presentation on how videos can reinvent education. In this video Salman demonstrates how videos are being used to record lectures for homework and then students complete activities at school with support from the teacher. Typically the opposite of most classes where the students take part in discussions in class and practice at home.
 
To provide some context, Mr. Khan was a hedge fund analyst and was helping his cousins on the side with their math homework. The twist is that Salman lived in Boston and his cousins lived in Louisiana. To accomodate for the distance, he would post the videos on YouTube for anyone in the world to view. Fast forward to today and those videos are the backbone of his non-profit organization, The Khan Academy. Here you can find various math and science tutorials (all of which are free) and complete exercises to demonstrate mastery of various topics for K-post high school students. Even though he has created a vast library of tutorials and exercises, the most ingenious thing about the site is the structure of the content. Each set of tutorials has a specific location on a progression map so that all the prerequisite skills are taught before a video and a video leads to new learning. This progression is refered to as a knowledge map and is personalized based on the student.
 
You can view the video at the link below:
 
http://www.ted.com/talks/salman_khan_let_s_use_video_to_reinvent_education.html