[MUSIC PLAYING]
SPEAKER 1: Thank you very much.
And I'm actually going to
introduce our next speaker, who
is Sal Khan.
We're so pleased to
have him with us today.
He's the founder
and CEO of the Khan
Academy, a nonprofit
that provides
free world-class education.
You may have just heard of
him a little bit, right?
I should have told
him that I actually
was encouraging
my daughter, who's
getting ready to take
the SAT, like, you
need to go on and
read the Khan stuff.
And we'll talk later
about some of the feedback
she might have for you.
He's the founder of the Khan
Lab School, which some of you
will get to visit on Friday.
Khan Academy started
as a passion project.
In 2004, Sal began tutoring
his cousin in math,
communicating by phone and
using an interactive notepad.
Word got around.
And soon, Sal was tutoring
several cousins and family
and friends as a hobby.
To better scale, he
began writing software
to assign math practice,
provide feedback, and track
each student's progress.
He also began posting videos
of his hand-scribbled tutorials
on YouTube, where he reached
thousands of students.
In 2009, he quit his day job
and launched Khan Academy.
Today, more than 62
million registered users
access Khan Academy in dozens of
languages across 190 countries.
Today, we are honored
to have Sal Khan join
us to discuss his
personal journey of how
he founded the Khan Academy and
turned it into the organization
that it is today.
We also look forward
to his thoughts
on how he has
re-imagined education
and what's next for the
future of this field.
Without further ado,
please welcome Sal Khan.
[APPLAUSE]
SAL KHAN: Thank you.
SPEAKER 1: Thank you.
SAL KHAN: Wow, this
is [INAUDIBLE] Wow,
that's the most generous
introduction I've ever gotten.
Thank you.
Well, I like to start these
types of presentations--
and it's really going
to be a conversation--
we're going to have time.
But really, just to get to
know you all, how many of you
all are elementary
school teachers?
[CHEERING]
Middle school?
[CHEERING]
Oh!
High school?
[CHEERING]
And then how many of you
all are humanities teachers?
AUDIENCE: Yeah!
SAL KHAN: I'm just
trying to get a sense.
Science?
[CHEERING]
Math?
AUDIENCE: Yeah!
SAL KHAN: OK, and
did I miss anyone?
AUDIENCE: Social studies.
AUDIENCE: Yeah!
SAL KHAN: OK, humanities--
OK, social studies--
very good-- very good.
All right-- and it
sounds like most of you
all have some familiarity
with Khan Academy.
How many of you all
use Khan Academy?
[CHEERING]
OK.
And how many of you don't?
Good, good, good, good.
And how many of you hadn't heard
of it before today, really,
or are not too familiar with it?
Oh, OK, good.
I'm just doing market research.
Well, it sounds
like most of you all
are somewhat familiar with it.
We're often associated with
this collection of videos.
And as was introduced--
I started making
for family members.
But as we'll see, it's a
lot more than just videos.
But just to get everyone
on the same page,
I will start with a montage
of what some of these videos
look like.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
- All these interactions
are just due to the gravity.
- This is age right
after Isaac Newton.
- I'm told the humidity
makes it feel hotter.
Why is this?
- Excellent question, LeBron.
- And you can just see
the pleasure he had.
- The right to privacy, as
such, is not spelled out
in the Constitution.
Of course, the
word "liberty" is.
- Two things actually
can interbreed.
Although, for these
two in particular,
it seems like the mechanics
would get kind of difficult.
- And I can keep playing
with these numbers
and see what kind of
colors I can come up with.
- If this does not blow your
mind, then you have no emotion.
[END PLAYBACK]
I thought you all would
appreciate Euler's identity.
But as I mentioned, it's
much more than just videos.
And some of you
all might already
be using it in your
classrooms, where
students can do exercises.
It's not just math anymore.
It's across subjects and grades.
They get feedback.
There's teacher dashboards.
And I'll talk more about how
we envision-- and actually,
we would love to learn from
you all on how you all envision
tools like this
could help empower--
supercharge-- a classroom.
As was introduced, we're
reaching a lot of folks
these days.
But before talking more about
this and where we're going,
I'll tell you how
all of this started.
And even just listening
to the introduction,
I have a feeling that
the journey that you all
are about to go in
parallels the one
that I've been going through for
the last seven or eight years.
In 2004, as was
introduced, I was
a year out of business school.
My original background
was in tech.
But I'd gone to business school.
Year out-- I was working as an
analyst at an investment fund.
And I had just gotten married.
My family was visiting me in
Boston right after my wedding.
They were visiting
from Louisiana.
Where's Louisiana?
AUDIENCE: Whoo!
SAL KHAN: Oh, very good.
Oh-- we have two teachers
of the year at Louisi-- oh,
kind of-- oh, one.
And it just came
out of conversation
that one of my family members,
my 12-year-old cousin Nadia,
was having trouble in math.
Her mom told me about it.
When Nadia came into the
room, I asked her about it.
She said, well, there
was this placement exam.
It had a lot of unit
conversion on it.
I just don't understand
the unit conversion.
And I immediately
told Nadia, I'm
100% sure you're capable of
understanding unit conversion.
How about, when you go
back to New Orleans,
we'll get on the phone and
we'll work with each other?
And Nadia agreed.
And so over the next few
weeks, every day after work,
I would get on the
phone with Nadia.
At first, she just was
completely convinced
that her brain wasn't capable
of it-- she wasn't even
able to engage in the material.
But after about two weeks,
she started to engage.
She learned unit conversion.
She got caught up
with her class.
Then she, frankly, got a
little ahead of her class.
At that point, I became
what I call a Tiger Cousin.
I called up her school.
I'm sure you all
appreciate calls like this.
And I said, I really
think Nadia [INAUDIBLE]
should retake that placement
exam from last year.
And they said, who are you?
And I said, I'm her cousin.
And somewhat
surprisingly, they let
her retake the placement exam.
And that same
Nadia, who was being
placed into a
remedial math class,
was then put into the
advanced math class.
And so that was pretty
incredible for me
on a whole bunch of levels.
One, it was a way for me to
connect with my young cousin
who was 1,500 miles away.
This was a subject
matter that, frankly, I
always loved to engage in,
even when I was a student.
And I was able to share
that with a family member.
And it was a relatively small
intervention on my part.
And it might help
change her future.
And so I immediately started
working with her younger
brothers, Ali and Arman.
And a few things happened.
The firm I was working
for was quite small.
It was just me and my
boss, Will Capital.
His wife becomes a professor
at Stanford Law School.
So we move out, right
down the street here.
But more importantly, word
gets around the family
that free tutoring is going on.
And so I find myself, every
day after work, with about 10,
15 cousins, family friends,
all over the country,
on conference lines--
whatever-- trying
to help them with their
math or their science
or whatever they needed.
And with a background
in software, I said, oh.
Well, you know, I see
some patterns here.
A lot of my cousins, even the
ones that are A or B students--
and they might be in
middle school-- they're
a little bit foggy on
their dividing decimals
or negative numbers.
Or if they're in
algebra, they're
still a little bit foggy on
exponents or whatever else.
So I started writing
this exercise platform.
That was the first Khan Academy.
It had nothing to
do with videos.
And I was showing this
off at a dinner party
not too far from here.
All my friends knew that I
had this kind of crazy side
project.
And the host of the
dinner party said, well,
this is all cool, Sal.
But how are you
scaling your lessons?
And his name's Zuli.
I said, hey, Zuli, you're right.
It's hard to do, with 15
cousins, what I was originally
just doing with one or two.
And he said, well,
I have an idea.
Why don't you record
your lessons as videos
and upload them onto
YouTube for your family?
And I immediately said, no.
That's a horrible idea.
YouTube is for
cats playing piano.
It is not for
serious mathematics.
But I went home that weekend.
I got over the idea
that it wasn't my idea.
And I decided to give it a shot.
And those first lessons--
and they're still up there.
If you do a search on our
YouTube channel, at least,
by date upload,
it's November 2006.
These were the
things that I just
thought my cousins were
asking a lot about.
It was very simple
things-- adding fractions
with unlike denominators,
negative numbers,
dividing decimals-- just
very, very basic things.
And I started telling
my family, hey,
why don't you watch
this ahead of time.
Email me any requests you have.
And that way, when
we get on the phone,
we can dig a little
bit deeper into things.
And after about a month,
I asked them for feedback.
And they somewhat backhandedly--
and famously-- told me
they like me better on
YouTube than in person.
And it's worth
introspecting on that,
because I think there are some
things that they were saying
and there's some things
that they weren't saying.
So what they were saying--
and when you really put yourself
in the shoes of a learner--
and we've all been
there-- it makes sense.
The first time that
you're trying to get
your head around something--
we've all been
there, where you ask
a friend or a family member,
hey, how does this work?
And they say, oh,
it's really easy.
A leads to B, leads
to C and because
of blah-blah blah-blah-blah.
It makes a lot of sense, right?
And you feel pressure.
You're like, oh, yeah--
yeah, it makes sense.
You don't want to
waste their time.
Even if they're not
judgmental, you're
afraid they might judge you.
Then an hour goes by or
later that night, when you're
actually trying to
do it again, you're
like, oh, what did they say?
I don't quite remember it.
But now, my family
was able to get it
at their own time,
their own pace.
If they were an algebra
student or a calculus student
but they were foggy
on dividing decimals,
they didn't have
to be embarrassed.
They could just access it
at their own time and pace.
But what they weren't saying is
that they didn't appreciate me
in their life.
If anything, this liberated
for more human interactions
when we got on the phone.
We could focus more on either
higher-level problems or deeper
engagement.
Or really, frankly,
the math or the science
was just an excuse
to get on the phone
and talk about what was
going on in their lives.
And so I took that
as positive feedback.
And I kept going, kept
uploading to YouTube.
And it just happened
to be public.
And it soon became clear that
there were people who were not
my cousins who were watching.
And at first, I'd just
see the view count grow.
And it was growing quite fast.
And then the comments
start to come in.
A lot of those early
comments were just simple--
thank you.
Even that I thought
was a pretty big deal.
I don't know how much
time you spend on YouTube.
AUDIENCE: Yes.
SAL KHAN: Most of the
comments are not thank you.
They're--
[LAUGHTER]
--a little edgier.
But then they got intense.
Started getting comments
like, I thought I hated math.
But now, I was able
to fill in this gap.
Or this is the reason I was able
to get an A on my physics exam.
Or I never thought I
was a science person.
But now, I want to go
become an engineer.
And so in those early days--
this was probably spring
of 2007--
this really incredible
letter from a mother
came through the
YouTube messaging thing.
And I brought my wife over.
I was like, this is incredible!
She wrote that both of her
sons had a learning disability.
And these videos
were the only way
that they were able to
keep up with their class.
And because of that, her
and her entire family
were praying for me and my
entire family every night.
AUDIENCE: Ah.
SAL KHAN: And you can imagine
how powerful and strange
that was for me on some level.
You have to remember, I was
an analyst at a hedge fund.
I was not used to
people praying for me--
at least in that way.
And so I kept going.
You fast forward
to fall of 2009.
There was about
100,000 people who
were using the software
and the videos every month.
Frankly, I wasn't even
focusing on my day job.
Every day, I was
focused more on requests
I was getting from
all over the world--
what's the next piece
of content or exercise
I was going to write on
the software platform?
And it felt like there
was something real here.
Hey, if it's reaching
100,000, maybe it could reach,
one day, 1 million.
Maybe one day, it
could reach 10 million.
I wouldn't have even
imagined numbers like this.
And so my wife and I sat down.
Our first child
had just been born.
But we had some
savings, essentially,
for a down-payment on a house.
But we said, hey, it looks like
there's something real here.
Why don't I give it a shot?
And so I quit my day job and set
up Khan Academy as a nonprofit.
And anytime you do
anything entrepreneurial,
whether it's for
profit or nonprofit,
you almost have to have a
delusional optimism when
you start.
It's like, surely--
in this case--
the social return on investment
is just off the charts.
You could reach so many
people around the planet.
And I started talking
to some philanthropists
of some foundations.
But very quickly you come
to terms with reality.
You get a lot of, oh, this
is really interesting.
But it's not quite what we fund.
Or we've already allocated
our budget for this year.
Talk to us next year.
And so, you can imagine,
about seven months into that--
I had a pretty good job before.
We were now digging $5,000
a month into our savings
with a young child in the house.
Our expenses had gone up.
It was stressful.
It was probably the most
stressful time of my life.
I'd wake up in the
middle of the night--
what have I done to my family?
What have I done to my career?
And I was getting
donations off of PayPal.
It was amounting to a few
hundred dollars a month.
If it was any of you, thank you.
But you can imagine,
it was tough.
But then, all of a sudden--
May of 2010--
I get a $10,000 donation.
So I see who it is.
Her name is Ann Doerr.
She was local.
I was in Mountain View.
She's in Palo Alto,
right down the street.
And so I immediately email her.
And I say, thank you so much
for this incredibly generous
donation.
This is the largest donation
that Khan Academy has ever
received.
If we were a
physical school, you
would now have a
building named after you.
And Ann immediately
replied back and said,
well, I use it myself.
I use it with my daughters.
I see that you're nearby.
I would love to meet
with you and learn more
about what you're up to.
And so about three
or four days later,
we're at an Indian buffet
restaurant in Palo Alto.
And Ann asks, so
what's your goal here?
And I told her, when you fill
out the paperwork with the IRS
to be a nonprofit, there's a
part of the form that says,
mission colon.
And they give you about
a line and a half.
And I filled out-- a free
world-class education
for anyone, anywhere.
And Ann said, well,
that's ambitious.
How do you see
yourself doing that?
And I said, just
to be very clear.
This is a mission.
I don't plan on being able to
just check it off this weekend
and then move on to
health care or something.
[LAUGHTER]
I've got some ideas.
But I used to walk around with a
big stack of these testimonials
that I was getting.
I showed her the chart of
how people were using it.
I showed her the software
that I had written originally
for my cousins.
And I said, this is
just the beginning.
What I imagine doing
is translating this
into the languages of the world.
I had some very
basic teacher tools
that, frankly, I was using.
And there's actually
a few teachers
that I knew that were
starting to use it,
where I said, hey, look.
In this world, a
teacher could know
where every student in
the classroom is at.
It could happen
anywhere in the planet.
It should be free, accessible,
et cetera, et cetera.
And Ann said, well,
you're surprisingly
making a lot of progress.
I only have one question.
How are you supporting yourself?
And in as proud of a way as
possible, I said, I'm not.
And so she processes that.
We pay the bill.
We part ways.
10 minutes later, I'm
driving into my driveway
in Mountain View.
And I get a text
message from Ann.
And it says, you really need
to be supporting yourself.
I've just wired you $100,000.
So that was a good day.
It was a little bit--
a little bit.
And then, frankly, that was the
beginning of a whole series--
a whole cascade of events.
At that early stage,
some folks from Google
started to reach
out and say, hey,
we're curious about
what you're doing.
It turns out, a lot
of our executives
have been using Khan
Academy with their children.
It seems like there might be
something interesting here.
I remember Alfred Spector,
who was the head of research.
He also was able to donate
at a reasonable scale too.
So I was like, wow, at least
I could do this-- at least
for, maybe, another
year, a year and a half.
And then-- this is
now June of 2010,
about six weeks after
Ann's donation--
I was running a summer
camp not too far from here.
And the reason I was
running a summer camp
is I never imagined that
the virtual stuff is somehow
in competition
with the physical.
It's not like amazon.com
versus Barnes and Nobles.
I always viewed this as, this
could liberate the physical.
If you can get explanations
at your own time and pace,
if you can get as much
practice as you need,
feedback, tools
for teachers, then
when people get in the
room, they can interact.
They can have dialogue.
They can do simulations, games--
whatever it might be.
And so that's why I
was running this summer
camp, to experiment with that.
And so I was in the middle
of one of these simulations.
I had six 7th graders
playing a game of Risk,
while the other 20
traded securities
based on the outcome
of the game of Risk.
It's a good game.
And while that was
happening, I start
getting text messages from
Ann, which you can imagine,
I now take very seriously.
And there were five
or six of them.
It wasn't clear what
order they came in.
But they read along the lines
of-- and this is Ann writing.
I'm at the Aspen Ideas Festival.
I'm in the main pavilion.
And Walter Isaacson
interviewing Bill Gates--
Bill Gates, last five minutes,
talking about Khan Academy.
So I didn't know
what to make of this.
So I immediately boot the
nearest 7th grader off
of a computer.
And I'm looking for some
evidence of this thing
that Ann seems to
be writing about.
And about 10 minutes
later, I actually
was able to find
the live stream.
And this is what I saw.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
- There's a website
that I've just
been using with my kids
recently called Khan Academy--
K-H-A-N-- just one guy doing
some unbelievable 15-minute
tutorials.
My favorite vignette is
that guy Salman Khan--
he was a hedge fund guy,
making lots of money.
And he quit to do these
little web videos.
And so we have moved, I'd
say, about 160 IQ points,
from the hedge fund category
into the teaching many,
many people in a
leveraged way category.
So that was a good day,
the day that his wife
let him quit his job.
[END PLAYBACK]
[APPLAUSE]
You can imagine what
was going on in my head.
I was literally shaking.
I was like, is this
really happening?
And I was nervous.
I was like, those videos were
for Nadia, not Bill Gates.
And he clearly knew about it.
He's talking about my wife.
And I remember dinner
that night with my wife.
And I showed her this video.
And I was just like,
what do I do now?
Do I call him?
I'm assuming he's not listed.
And they left me in that limbo
state for about two weeks.
Two weeks later, I'm
in my walk-in closet,
about to record a video.
And I see my cell phone rings.
It's a Seattle number.
I answer it.
Hello?
Hi, this is Larry Cohen.
I'm Bill Gates' chief of staff.
You might have heard
that Bill's a fan.
Yeah, I heard that.
And if you're free in
the next few weeks,
we'd love to fly
you up to Seattle
and learn more about
what you're doing--
and maybe ways to work together.
And I was looking at my
calendar for the month--
completely blank.
I says, yeah, maybe
next Wednesday.
I got to cut my nails,
do some laundry.
But I think I meet Bill Gates.
So we had that meeting.
And it was eerily similar
to the meeting with Ann.
What would you do
with more resources?
I would build out
the software platform
so students can learn at
their own time and pace--
the dream of
differentiated instruction.
I had these nascent
tools for teachers.
I wanted to make
them way better,
so that it's accessible to
every teacher on the planet,
internationalize the content--
et cetera, et cetera--
cover well beyond math.
And they seemed to be
sympathetic to the cause.
At the exact same
time, those early
conversations with Google--
they brought me in.
And they said, hey, there's this
10 to the 100th project, where
we're going to give
$10 million to projects
that could change the world.
And we're interested in
Khan Academy potentially
being one of those projects.
And what would you
do more resources.
I told him the same thing--
I would internationalize it.
We could reach millions one day.
And so all of a sudden,
October of 2010,
the Gates Foundation and
Google each gave $2 million to,
essentially, allow Khan Academy
to become a real organization,
get office space,
start hiring up a team,
et cetera, et cetera.
And ever since then,
we've been able to grow
as an organization.
And what we immediately started
working on with those resources
was the software platform.
And what you see here-- and
it sounds like some of you
all use it in their classroom.
These are just examples of
what, at least, some of the math
exercises look like
on Khan Academy.
But I use this as a
framework to just think
about this idea of mastery
learning, which people talk
about in ed schools.
But it's really
hard to implement.
In a traditional academic
structure, the one most of us
grew up in and maybe
still operate in,
is you group students
together by age.
And then you move them all
together at a set pace.
And what will typically happen--
this is a unit.
I guess this is on
equation of a line.
So let's say we're
in a Algebra 1 class.
And the first lesson is, this
is how you calculate the slope.
The teacher will give
a few lectures on it.
There'll be homework every
night-- lecture, homework,
lecture, homework.
Then we get a test after
about two or three weeks.
And then, on that test,
let's say I get a 70%.
You get an 80%.
You get a 95%.
Even though we identified
gaps on that test--
I didn't know 30%
of the material that
happened to be on that test.
Even the A student-- it could
have been a careless mistake.
Or maybe it was something
really important.
You know, what's the
slope of a vertical line?
Or a horizontal line?
Even though there was
that gap, the whole class
then needs to move on
to the next concept.
It's not the fault
of the teacher.
Every teacher I talk
to recognizes that.
And they're like, I wish I
could sit with those students
and fill in those gaps.
But I've got to cover these 60
standards in these 180 days,
so I have to move on.
But then, when you move on,
it'll be on the next concept.
How do you graph a
line, where you're
assuming that the students
know what a slope is?
And how am I going
to learn that,
if I didn't know 30% of
the prerequisite material?
And to understand or
appreciate how absurd
that world that we're kind
of forced to be into is,
imagine if we did other
things in our life that way--
say home building.
So we bring the contractor in.
We say, we've been
told that we have two
weeks to build the foundation.
Do what you can.
So the contractor
does what they can.
Maybe it rains.
Maybe some of the
supplies don't show up.
Two weeks later, you
bring in the inspector.
The inspector looks
around and says, OK.
Maybe the concrete's
wet over there.
That part's not
quite up to code.
I'll give it an 80%.
You say, great.
That's a C. Let's
build the first floor.
Same thing-- we
have three weeks.
We've been told by the
state, you have three weeks.
Do what you can.
So do what you can--
it's an 80%--
20% gap.
Fine.
Let's build the second floor.
And then, all of a sudden,
while you're doing that,
the whole structure collapses.
And if the reaction to
that is what we typically
have in the public
discourse in education,
they're like, oh, well, maybe
you needed a better contractor.
Or maybe you needed
more inspection.
But that wasn't
the problem at all.
You could have had the best
contractor on the planet.
And you could have had the
best inspection on the planet.
But it was the process
that was flawed.
You're artificially
constraining the amount of time
this incredible contractor
had to work on something.
You took the trouble
of measuring it.
But then, when you
identified gaps,
you did nothing about them.
And you forced the contractor
to build on top of it.
And if I was giving this
talk 30 or 40 years ago,
it would have been
like, yeah, but there's
no other practical
way or economical
way to have 30
students being taught.
But what's exciting now is the
dream of personalized learning
and mastery
learning-- it's like,
hey, we can start to have
tools that can empower teachers
so they don't have to
make that trade-off,
so that they can actually
address students' gaps as they
emerge and allow students-- some
students are ready to move on.
Let them move on.
If some students need
more preparation,
let them work on
that preparation.
To get a sense of how it
can affect a classroom,
this is one of our
teacher partners
at Phillips Andover Academy
who teaches calculus.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
- We have this big moment.
And the moment is that, for 35
years of my teaching career,
I walked into the classroom
having no idea if the kids had
done the homework or what their
commitment was to the subject.
And then suddenly, there's
this coaching platform
on Khan Academy that was a
total game-changer for me.
I wasn't imagining that
the Khan Academy calculus
content would become a big
part of our curriculum.
I imagined, frankly and wrongly,
that we'd use these exercises--
suggest kids use it for review.
And when we discovered
the coaching platform
and how powerful that
was, a group of us
said, let's give it a go.
Let's try using Khan Academy as
a major part of our curriculum.
And my goodness-- it
changed the way I teach.
For instance, five minutes
before I walk into class,
I can go to the platform.
And I can look through
my list of students
to discover that all but two
of them had done the homework,
had watched the
videos, had cleared
the hurdle, if you will,
of the exercises that I
had given them.
So when I walked in
the room, I didn't have
to go over homework anymore.
And that was liberating.
And so, if there
were two students who
didn't do the homework, it gave
me the opportunity to pull them
aside and say, hey, I
see you didn't get to it.
Or I see you struggled with it.
Is there a way that you
and I can meet later today?
It's because I don't want
you to get behind in this.
And the first 15 minutes of
class now, all of a sudden,
we're breaking new ground.
We're doing harder problems.
And the kids responded so
well to it because, I think,
they had years and years
and years of math teachers
going over the homework for
the first 15 minutes of class.
And the poor kids must
have been bored to death.
Or why bother
doing the homework?
Because he'll do it
on the board anyway.
So that was just
totally liberating.
And it gave me an opportunity
to really think hard
about teaching.
Since we started
using Khan Academy,
the one thing that we
can't help but notice
is that we're having
more kids make it
to the end of BC calculus.
And it's clear to me that we're
having more girls and more
under-represented kids
finish our BC calculus
class than we ever did before.
And I got to believe it's
our new way about thinking
about teaching and using
Khan Academy in the classroom
and for homework assignments.
It has got to be a
big part of that.
[END PLAYBACK]
And one--
[APPLAUSE]
--and Bill actually, him
and the team at Andover
have been major inputs into the
calculus work on Khan Academy.
And one of the
reasons I'm here is
we're always looking for
people to collaborate with,
to help work and create
content together.
Another exciting thing that
some of you all know about
is the College Board--
the folks who do the AP
and, also, they do the SAT.
They reached out to us
a couple of years ago
and said, hey, look.
We're revamping the
SAT, so it's actually
aligned with the Common Core
and what students are actually
going to be learning in school.
But as part of that, we
want to address decades' old
perception-- at least--
around this inequity
around test prep.
And we want to work with you
to make the world's best test
prep that happens to be free.
And so this is a little
video that some of you
all might have-- this
was on the "Today
Show" about Khan Academy
working with the College Board
around the SAT.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
- Today is the last day
students around the country
will take the SAT
in its current form.
That's because,
starting in March,
a new test with lots of
changes will be there
for high schoolers.
Here's NBC's Ann Thompson.
- I wanted to start
my own business,
specializing in robotics.
- And I think I'd
like to be a chemist.
- The first hurdle to
achieving those dreams--
the SAT.
Today is the last day
students will be offered
the test in its current form.
The new SAT promises
to be quite different.
All high school students, like
Amelia Taneo and Minchailou
Kanoute, now also have access
to free online tutoring
from the Khan Academy.
- The software itself
acts like a tutor.
It shows you, hey, you
should probably work on this.
- Complete with
points and badges--
- And once you get to
the more advanced stuff,
you get really cool badges.
- It sounds like a video game.
- Yeah, exactly.
- What is this question asking?
- Students have been
practicing for months
with sample tests meant
to mirror the new SAT
exam beginning in March--
And how have you done
on the mock SATs?
- I have done well.
By the time that
I went to mock 2,
I boosted my scores
by 200 points.
--building confidence along
the way to achieve new
possibilities in the future. --
- [INAUDIBLE] that you're dumb.
- For "Today," Ann Thompson,
"NBC News," the Bronx.
- [INAUDIBLE].
- Yeah.
[END PLAYBACK]
So one of the things that's
been really exciting about this
is, when we started
doing the partnership,
the College Board said,
there's this PSAT.
And when all of
us took the PSAT,
it was kind of this
random test that you'd
take in 10th or 11th grade.
And if you do well, you
might get some letters
from colleges and things.
But they said, well,
what if the PSAT
could act as a diagnostic
for the practice?
And so now, when students get
their score for the PSAT--
which 80% of American
students take--
they can sync their accounts.
And once again, this
is all nonprofit.
This is all free.
None of this has even a
hint of commerciality to it.
The PSAT acts as the
world's largest diagnostic
for learning for your
next few years to the SAT.
And there was a
efficacy study that
was released last summer where
students who work 20 hours--
they double their gains
from the PSAT to SAT.
They have at least
a 100-point gains.
And it actually keeps going.
We know students that--
we didn't publish it--
but went 30, 40, 50 hours.
And they're actually able to get
more gains than people expect.
So everything I've
talked about so far-- oh,
and this was the
efficacy study there.
Idaho-- and I see
there's connections here.
We did a big study in Idaho
with the Albertson's Foundation,
where we saw students
who completed
60% of their coursework or
the mastery on Khan Academy.
They saw 1.8 times
the growth that you
would have otherwise expected.
In Brazil, we saw
a situation where,
if the students did about
60 minutes of Khan Academy
as part of their classroom, that
they saw 30% more growth than
expected.
And on that last point, most
of what I've talked about
is the world we live in.
But what about the
rest of the planet?
And all of these are pictures
of Khan Academy being
used throughout the planet.
They're all really
interesting stories.
And credit really goes
to the organizations
that are taking it
out to the villages.
But probably the neatest story
is the one in the top right.
I used to give talks like
this and say, who knows?
Maybe one day, it will be
used in Mongolia-- just
imagining the furthest
place on the planet.
And then a few months later,
I got a letter from Mongolia.
And it's from that young
girl in the top right.
Her name is Zaya.
And at first, she had,
actually, a YouTube testimonial.
So I look at her testimonial.
She talks about using Khan
Academy, how she enjoys
math, et cetera, et cetera.
And I immediately
assume that she
must be middle class
or upper middle class.
Her English was quite good.
She clearly had access
to the internet.
But then I read the text
of her email more closely.
And it turns out that there
was a group of engineers
from Silicon Valley that
were using their vacation
time to go to Mongolia and set
up computer labs with internet
in orphanages.
And what do you see--
[APPLAUSE]
What you see in the
top right there,
those are the orphan
girls using Khan Academy.
And Zaya was one
of those orphans.
And what's especially
incredible about that is--
and it just shows you how
much potential there is
on the planet if you
let people tap into it--
Zaya has since become one
of the biggest contributors
to Khan Academy in the
Mongolian language.
So she's now helping
to teach her people.
And a similar story--
this was actually in the "New
York Times" about a year ago.
It turns out, a young girl--
12-years-old, lives
in Afghanistan.
Taliban takes over her town--
forbids young girls
from going to school--
horrible things-- threatens
with acid attacks and things
like this.
So Sultana doesn't
go to school anymore.
But she is lucky enough
to have a family that
wanted to support her.
She had a computer.
I think one of her
brothers got her a computer
with an internet connection.
And so she uses that,
first, to self-teach
herself English off
the internet, which
sounds a little scary.
But it seemed to work for her.
And she started telling
any family members, hey,
can you get me some
reading material?
And so one of her family
members was going to Pakistan,
brought back a Time
magazine in English.
It happened to have an
article about Khan Academy.
So she's like, oh,
this is what I need.
And so she started learning.
And so for the next
four, five, six
years-- she goes from, like,
a late elementary school
level all the way to
a high school level.
She realizes that she
wants to be a physicist
and come to the US
to study physics.
So she smuggles
herself into Pakistan--
because the SAT is not
available in Afghanistan--
to take the SAT.
She does shockingly well.
And that's when
we hear about her.
Someone that she met through
the internet contacts us,
is like, there's
this young girl.
You could-- and so
we get in touch.
We're like, how do we get her
into the country to come here?
She's brilliant.
Luckily, Nicholas Kristof
from the "New York Times"
hears about her as well,
writes this op ed about her--
"The Taliban's Worst Fear"--
which allowed her to
get political asylum.
And right now, Sultana
is in the United States
doing research with one of
the top physicists at MIT.
[APPLAUSE]
And so you can imagine,
we collectively
want to reach the entire planet.
These are all screenshots
of what Khan Academy looks
like in various languages.
To think about what the videos
feel like in other languages,
I'll show you this.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [SPEAKING FRENCH]
- [SPEAKING MANDARIN]
- [SPEAKING HINDI-URDU]
- [SPEAKING ARABIC]
- [SPEAKING FARSI]
- [SPEAKING HEBREW]
- [SPEAKING SWAHILI]
- [SPEAKING XHOSA]
- [SPEAKING TURKISH]
- [SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
-
[END PLAYBACK]
I--
AUDIENCE: Wow.
[APPLAUSE]
SAL KHAN: I watch
that when I get lazy.
Anyway, these are more
pictures of Khan Academy
being used all over the world.
And whenever I see this
and we get these letters,
you know what?
I tell everyone involved--
and to be clear,
Khan Academy is much
more than me now.
We have 150 full-time employees.
We have-- I think the
number is something
like 14,000 people who
have helped translate,
subtitle videos.
Obviously, there's all
of the people working
at the NGOs and teachers
actually working
with the students.
And what I tell all the
stakeholders of Khan Academy--
and I hope that I'm
not presumptuous.
I view you all as
part of this mission--
more so than, frankly, most
of the audiences that I might
ever speak to--
is that a free world-class
education for anyone,
anywhere-- it was never
imagined that it would somehow
be done by one person or
even one organization.
It's really going to be
a collaborative effort.
We're going to work on
some content, some tools,
hopefully, in
collaboration with you all.
But then it's, how do you
work it in the classroom?
How do you create access, so
that students can have access
to computers and the internet?
There's a million questions that
we have to address together.
But I'll leave you with a
little thought experiment,
just so that we can appreciate
what's possible as a group.
If you were to go back in time
400 years to Western Europe--
which, even then, it was one
of the more literate parts
of the planet--
you would have seen about
15% of the population
was literate-- about 20%
of men and 10% of women.
And I suspect that if you asked
someone who was literate, say,
a member of the clergy, what
percentage of the population
do you think is even
capable of reading?
They might have said, well, with
a great education system, maybe
40%--
maybe 50%.
Well, you fast-forward
400 years,
we know that that
would have been
a wildly pessimistic
prediction-- that
pretty close to 100%
of the population
is capable of reading.
But if I were to ask
all of you all today,
what percentage
of the population
is capable of writing
the next great novel?
Or starting the next Google?
Or deeply understanding physics?
Or contributing to
cancer research?
Or becoming Teacher-of-the-Year?
You might say, oh, well,
today, that's sub 1%.
Maybe with a great
education system--
maybe-- it could be 10%.
Maybe it could be 20%.
But what if we're making
that same estimation
with the same blinders on
that that clergy member might
have made 400 years ago?
The blinders of just what
we've observed-- a world where
we were all pushed ahead, we're
actuating a gap here, there,
here, there.
We saw a lot of our peers--
you all see students every day
where, at some point,
the gaps become
so large that they hit a wall.
And that wall is often
in an algebra class
or in a physics class.
But it could be in any class.
It could be in your English
class, in your history class.
And they hit that wall not
because algebra is difficult
or because they're not bright.
It's because they
didn't really master
decimals and fractions
and something that
completely can be remediated.
And so, if we had a world where
they could fill in those gaps--
those Swiss cheese gaps--
maybe the actual number
could be quite higher.
Maybe it could be 30%, 40%, 50%.
And every day that goes on,
I'm becoming more and more
convinced that that number
actually could be a lot closer
to the number for literacy.
That could be 80%,
90%, even 100%.
And if we pull that off--
free world-class education
for anyone, anywhere--
that's what mass public
education was all about.
That's what has made--
if you look at the wealthiest
countries in the world--
the United States,
Western Europe, Japan--
these were the first countries
that had public education.
And so it's not a
coincidence that these
were the first to
industrialize, these
were the first to have a
high standard of living.
But I think the opportunity
that we can do together
is take everything
to the next level.
And if we can get that level of
a free world-class education--
so it just becomes like clean
drinking water or basic shelter
and just a fundamental
human right.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
SPEAKER 2: I will let you
take a pause for a moment.
We're going to do a
little bit of Q&A now.
So get your questions ready.
We'll have some
microphones moving around.
But Sal, thank you
so much for sharing
that moving, fascinating,
and hilarious talk with us.
Yeah-- it was really inspiring.
And thank you for
everything that you
are doing with Khan Academy.
I want to address
though-- first up I'm
going ask the first question.
And then I'm going to pass
it over to the audience.
The question that I'm
sure you get asked a ton--
and I just want to deal with
it head-on and get it out
of the way.
And you dealt with a lot
of it in the presentation.
But people who say, I
don't just want my kid
in front of a computer all day--
computers can't
replace teachers.
I don't want them to just be
an automated robot that's just
going through things online.
How do you respond when
people put that to you?
SAL KHAN: Yeah, I
remember in the early days
when Khan Academy was first
getting on people's radar.
And I would look at some
of the criticism, which
would be exactly
that-- like, hey,
the important part
of teaching happens
when there's a human in the room
and when you are interacting.
And it's not just
about a screen.
And it was funny,
because I couldn't
have agreed more with some
of our strongest critics.
And I think, sometimes,
what happens is the press
or whatever-- they like
to take a narrative.
Like, hey, this could be
like Amazon for education
or something like that.
But it is one of those
things that we are constantly
saying, no.
This is not what we believe.
And as I mentioned--
and I've been
running summer camps forever.
I've always dreamed
of starting a school.
And I'll talk about
that a little bit.
But I think-- what I
write in my book is
it's all about,
what can technology
do to allow humans to be human?
And the first Ted talk I gave--
there's a lot of
debate sometimes about
student-to-teacher ratio--
and obviously, the
lower the better.
But what I think technology
can, ironically, optimize
is "student to valuable
time with the teacher ratio"
or "student to human time
with the teacher ratio."
And so if you're
Sultana or you're Zaya
or if you're in a really
under-resourced school
someplace--
yes, some of them might be
heavily reliant on that.
But that is not ideal.
The ideal is you
have a real classroom
with real resources with
an incredible teacher
and that this--
education is a whole
spectrum of things.
At this end is just your basic,
almost, recall of things.
Then you can imagine
Bloom's Taxonomy.
Here, you have your
understanding, your synthesis,
your evalu-- and then, here,
you have your creation.
And because there's so much to
cover in a traditional model,
even though teachers
want to focus here,
they have to spend
a lot of time here.
And I think the opportunity
is, if technology
can do some of this
and even help out
with some of this stuff up
here, it's not like there's
an end to what's there.
Then you can do a lot more
of the interesting stuff
when you're in a classroom.
And the teachers I talk to--
that's why they
became a teacher.
They want those personal
connections with the students.
They want to be able to
meet each of the students
where they are.
And one way to really show
that this is what we believe
is-- that's why we
started the lab school.
A lot of peoples say, wait!
But you all are a virtual thing.
Why would you start
a physical school?
This doesn't scale, et cetera.
And it's like, no.
We're doing this to
show how important
the physical experience and what
could the physical experience
look like in a world where some
of these types of tools exist.
And I think-- and I was
happy to hear that you all
are going to be able to tour.
But I think we actually have
done a little bit of auditing
of the students
of, how much time
are you with
another human being?
How much time are
you interacting?
How much time are you outside?
How much time are you creating
versus passively-- and those
are the benchmarks for where
we say, these are success.
And so everything
that we look at--
we have several members of
our Khan Academy team here.
Those are all the people
who work with teachers
and try to understand what
teachers need, how do we
improve the tools, so that we
can have more classrooms that
are liberated in this way.
SPEAKER 2: Yeah, I've
been fortunate enough
to visit the Khan Lab School, as
some people here will tomorrow.
And it's clear that the screen
is not the primary element
of those schools.
OK, let's go to the audience.
Who's got a question for Sal?
Yes, ma'am?
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].
Thank you, first of all.
That was unbelievable
and inspiring.
I really appreciate
what you're doing.
I am not a teacher-of-the-year.
I'm a coordinator.
My teacher is
Cicely, right there.
Cicely, raise your hand.
She's awesome!
Whoo-hoo, Tennessee!
So what I'm wondering
is, since your background
is in business and
software, how did you
learn all of the things about
what makes a great teacher?
SAL KHAN: No-- and look.
Talk about having an
impostor complex, especially
in this room right over here.
I think the valuable
thing for me was--
this is something that was
always interesting to me.
Even the story I just told and
the press narrative-- sometimes
it's like, yeah, this guy,
he was working in finance.
And he just, on a whim,
decided to become--
that's not exactly--
and I think it started
in high school,
where it might not
surprise people that I was
the president of the Math Club.
But a big part of
that, actually,
was we used to run
these tutoring programs
with our peers and volunteer.
And I remember thinking
this in high school.
Because I was on
the wrestling team.
And I was not a strong
member of that team.
But I was on the wrestling team.
And I was always intrigued
by the difference
that I sometimes saw with what
happened in wrestling practice
and what sometimes
happened in the classroom.
Where, in wrestling practice,
the coach would be like, hey,
I want you to go run 10 miles.
It was like, yes, sir!
I want you to do 50 pu--
I'm going to do it!
These painful things--
but most of practice
was also interacting.
We had a kid on our team
who was the state champion.
And then he was our captain.
And he would go
around and do tutor--
and then I would think
about the difference.
And if I had a gap in
my wrestling skills,
there was always
someone there who
could help me fill in that gap.
And I had an incredible
math teacher, Mr. Hernandez,
who I'm still very close to.
And I credit him for
a lot of my success.
I used to talk to--
because he was the
advisor for the Math Club.
And he used to say,
yeah, it's so frustr--
he wished he could run
his class like that,
the way that the
wrestling team runs--
where most of the class time
were students working on what
they need to work.
But he had to show me what
he had to cover in a year.
And he used to show me this.
I was like, oh, man!
And then I used to
see in the tutoring
that, when we did
have an opportunity
to address some of
these gaps, some
of these kids that
were failing classes
could actually race ahead.
So that was the first time
I started thinking about it.
I think we've all had the
experience of a lot of friends,
and even ourselves, where
they can beat you at chess.
But all of a sudden, they
failed algebra class.
And you're like,
why did that happen?
Or all of a sudden, you get to
some point where you're like,
I don't understand
this class anymore.
But it's probably because I
didn't pay attention to the one
before it, or whatever it is.
So there was all these things.
And even in college,
I had a fellowship
to try to work on
software for education.
I got rejected for the
Rhodes Scholarship twice.
Because I wanted to study
to get a PhD in education.
So I kept getting
thrown away from that.
But yeah, it ended up,
at the end of the day,
falling into it.
I will say that,
even the hedge fund,
it definitely helped that
it was a renumerative career
and things like--
but the reason I was
really intrigued by it
is it was an opportunity to
kind of learn about the world.
That one moment you
would have to think
about how tanker prices are
affecting the economy of Japan.
And the next thing, you're
talking about a biotech.
So I've always-- the
biggest joy in life,
the thing that makes us
most human, is learning.
And so I think it was
always a high for me
to be able to work with
my cousins initially,
to engage in some of
this beautiful material.
And I think now, one
of my indulgences
is I've gone beyond--
I've even done some stuff--
and I'm not the only person
making content on Khan Academy.
But I definitely have gone
beyond my original expertise,
where recently I've done
videos on the Constitution.
But what I view as--
what's so exciting
is I get to dig into
it in a way that you
don't get to dig into it
when you're in college.
Because I'm like, I'm going
to do it for the passion
and for the interest of it.
And all of this stuff is
incredibly interesting.
And I'm blessed now to have--
if I have a question, I
can call up some people
and say, hey, you're
a famous judge.
How does this work?
But I think it's
a learner's dream.
And the least that I can do
is help share some of that
and help--
and you all are
doing it every day.
I still miss the time that I
used to have with my cousins.
And actually, that's
another selfish reason
why I personally run some of
the seminars at the Lab School.
Because I just need that
energy with students
to keep doing what
we're trying to do.
AUDIENCE: This is a question
that doesn't necessarily
have to deal with
Khan Academy, but I'm
interested in you,
your thoughts, or--
through a lens
that's remarkable.
And you're very
interesting person.
Who's your favorite--
SAL KHAN: Thank you.
AUDIENCE: --teacher of all time?
If you look back on your life--
an influential teacher that
had an impact on you-- would
you describe that teacher to me?
SAL KHAN: So I would say there's
three that immediately come
to mind-- although maybe four.
If I dig deeper,
there's probably 20.
Mr. Hernandez was one of them.
I think what really stood out,
why he was so important to me,
was he was my Algebra 2 teacher.
And he was the advisor for the
Math Club and the Math team.
But he kind of treated me like
an equal in a lot of ways.
He was my mentor
in a lot of ways.
But he was the first teacher
that I didn't view as, like,
a teacher.
He would show-- he was
kind of vulnerable.
He was like, hey, this is what
I got to do, and this and that.
And it was the first time
that I had this deep empathy.
And also, he believed in me.
He wrote my
recommendations for MIT.
There aren't a lot of kids that
go from Metairie, Louisiana
to--
and he is a guy that told
me, I think you should apply.
I think you should-- and I was
like, no one from our school
has ever gone.
Like, what is-- and so,
I think, him for sure.
Miss Kennedy, who was actually
our journalism teacher--
I was on the school newspaper.
And it was a class at the
high school that I went to--
Grace King High School.
And she ran that class
like a newspaper--
like a real newspaper.
And so I think it
was really powerful.
Because once again, she treated
me like a member of the team.
There wasn't the separation
between teacher-student.
If you go earlier, I
remember in second grade.
And this is one of my earliest
formative experiences.
It's funny.
My sister was always
the high achiever.
And she was in all the
gifted classes and all that.
I thought I was
in gifted, until I
realized it was speech therapy.
And--
[LAUGHTER]
But because of my sister--
because of my sister,
they kept testing me.
They're like, oh,
surely, that last test--
because Farrah is so
strong, surely her brother--
they kept-- I'm serious.
And I don't think most
kids get this opportunity
to keep getting tested.
But I eventually did
end up in the program.
And the first day I showed
up-- and I remember,
it was in second grade.
And it was this weird
thing where, every day,
they would take you out of
a different class period
to go to this program.
I walked to this room.
And it was Miss Krauss
and Miss Ruselle.
And I was 7-years-old.
But the memory is
seared in my head.
And it was a classroom like
I had never seen before.
It wasn't all the
tables in one direction.
There was a bunch of kids--
mixed ages-- all doing
different things.
Some were playing chess.
Some kids were drawing.
And I was like, what
is this secret world
that I've fallen in myself.
And they said, oh, you're new.
Come here.
And there's two teachers.
And they said, so what
are you interested in?
And I was like,
are you asking me?
I was-- and I was
like, I like to draw.
What they went, well,
then we'll draw.
I like puzzles.
I said we'll do puzzles.
And I thought I
was getting away.
I was like, I can't
tell anyone about this.
This is some type of scam that's
being run within the school.
But when I really think
about some of my id--
I don't remember a lot
more of second grade.
But I remember those moments.
So I think that
the theme is that,
when I was able to have human
interactions and get that
one-on-one time--
even, one thing we try
to do at the Lab School
is every student gets at
least 15 minutes, one-on-one,
with the teacher every week.
And it might not
sound like a lot.
But if we all
introspect on how much--
those one-on-one moments
with caring adults
are the stuff that's
seared into your head.
And so I think, those
are the teachers
that have had a really big--
there was also a teacher at the
University of New Orleans, Dr.
Hiro Santania, that
took me under his wing
when I was in high
school, because I
was taking a few courses there.
And he's also the one who's
like, you should do this.
You should think about this.
I didn't have access to
a computer at my house.
So he lent a computer to me
so I could learn to program.
So there's some
incredible teachers.
I could keep going-- yeah.
AUDIENCE: When I came back
into teaching three years ago,
I was asked to be a long-term
sub as a advanced algebra
teacher.
I am not a mathematician.
I'm a social studies teacher.
And I survived three weeks
of teaching advanced algebra
and moving the kids
forward, because I
could go home at night and
I could work Khan Academy--
[APPLAUSE]
--problems.
SAL KHAN: I want to--
if you're willing, that
could be a great testimonial.
We have someone--
AUDIENCE: I'm happy to do that.
I'm free.
It's easy.
SAL KHAN: OK.
AUDIENCE: So when you deal
with math and science,
you're in sort of a
black and white world.
SAL KHAN: Mm-hm.
AUDIENCE: As you move into
the humanities, though,
and as you move
into social studies,
now you get into more
partisan subjects.
So how are you dealing
with that in your content?
SAL KHAN: Yeah,
it's fascinating.
And I'm learning all sorts--
I remember-- I did
this on a whim.
It was about six,
seven years ago.
I read, like, a
news report that's
like, the CIA had declassified
some of their interventions
that they had done in other
countries during the Cold War.
And there was this
thing about Allende,
how they overthrew him.
And I thought, well,
this is incredible.
I'm going to make
a video on this.
And so, actually, I
went to the CIA.gov.
I took the primary
documents of--
this isn't like Sal's
made up conspiracy theory
type-- this is like, the CIA
has released these documents.
But this is a really
valuable part of history.
And so I said, this happened.
And it was fascinating.
As soon as I uploaded
it, the comments
just started to come in.
A lot of American kids
were like, well, no.
I appreciate you did this.
But I don't think you
are fair to the CIA.
Because you have to
understand, at that time,
we were afraid of
communism taking over--
[MURMURING]
Oh, it's a good point.
But then I start getting, like,
you are an imperialist pig.
You have whitewashed the
history of my country.
My uncle died in
that intervention,
killed by your CIA.
And I was like, this
didn't happen in--
well, first of all, this doesn't
happen in algebra videos.
And second of all,
this didn't happen
in the world history or
the current events classes
that I remember.
And then I said, well,
why didn't it happen?
Why didn't a Chilean
kid walk into the room--
you imperialist pig!
This is our view of history.
And so I think there's
two takeaways here.
Obviously, at Khan
Academy, we want to be--
it's impossible to be bias-less.
We all grew up in a certain
context, in a certain--
but as much as
possible, I think,
when people watch anything from
Khan Academy, they feel like,
wow, they're--
it's hard to tell whether Sal's
a Democrat or a Republican.
It's hard to tell what their
political leanings are.
It's hard to say
if he's religious
or if he's not religious.
It's hard to-- and I think
everything about Khan Academy
has to be like that.
But at the same time,
because it's out there,
because it's out in the
open, it's transparent.
It's there for the
world to say, no--
one, as long as people are
respectful on the comments,
we leave them out there.
People can say, I disagree.
This is wrong.
This is-- and I think that's the
way these things should work.
It actually is already starting
to be a little bit more
challenging in
other countries that
are a little bit more sensitive
about some of these things.
So it is still an
open question about--
in Iran-- and I don't know
if this is made public.
But edit this part out.
But should we just go with
the math and science first?
Because some of the
other stuff might
be so controversial
in China or whatever.
So that is a question
that we're trying
to think about right now.
AUDIENCE: So I teach
immigrant and refugee students
in Spokane.
And my question is
always about access,
because we take for granted
that all of our students
have access.
Because most of them
have smartphones.
But they don't have data plans.
They just use them for
taking pictures or listening
to music or playing games.
And they have to have
Wi-Fi access in order
to be able to access
this kind of content.
And I think we, as educators,
often do that as well.
We assign-- go to Khan Academy.
Do this.
And then we don't
realize that, in order
to do that, they have
to go to the library,
sign up for 30 minutes.
And then Wi-Fi-- you can
get Wi-Fi for $5.99 a month.
And then you find out
that it's slow as molasses
and you can't actually
look at video.
You can maybe read
some text sometimes.
SAL KHAN: Mm.
AUDIENCE: So you mentioned that
you're talking about access
and you're trying to
figure out how we do that.
So how do we--
with things like net neutrality
and things like that,
how are you going about
ensuring that, literally, it
is a world-class education
for anyone, anywhere?
SAL KHAN: Yeah, that's another
central question for us
that we are--
we're not a big telecom company.
And we're still relatively small
in the whole scheme of things.
So there's two ways
we think about it.
One is-- OK-- we
look at the trends.
And we wish we could reach
every single student that--
so they have access today.
But we know that's
not the reality.
But hey, in five years, in
seven years, in 10 years,
it's going to be much
more of a reality.
So let's build for that.
It's not the best answer,
but that's one of the things
that we can only do.
The other thing is, we can
use-- even though we're
small-- we have a voice now.
We work very
closely with Google.
We worked very closely with
Comcast and other countries--
Telcel and Telmex in Mexico.
We're working with
all of these people
to, one, advocate, so that
the $5.99 or the $10.99
is actually real internet.
In Telcel in Mexico,
they've actually 0 rated--
so in Mexico, most people are
prepaid on their data plan.
But if you access Khan Academy,
it doesn't hit your data plan.
And so, I think, things like
that are solutions that we want
to explore in other countries.
And the argument
I make there is,
there's a reason why
public education is free.
And there's a reason
why everyone clears off
the road when an ambulance
is going down the road.
And I do argue that education--
not just Khan Academy,
but anything that is going to
be really useful for students--
should get that type of-- they
shouldn't have to pay for that.
And by the way, from the State's
point-of-view, it is such a--
someone wants to learn and
the only reason they're not
is because of that?
That seems really
silly from, just even
if you're thinking
about the future
of your nation or your state.
So yeah, we advocate.
Google does a ton.
And they've helped us.
Even in the Bay
Area here, they've
distributed Chromebooks for
classrooms that have done
some really incredible things.
So yeah, we just
try to use our voice
to help influence
bigger players--
simple answer.
SPEAKER 2: Sal, thank you so
much for coming and speaking
with us this morning.
Please, everyone, join me in--
[APPLAUSE]
--thanking--
SAL KHAN: Thank you.
SPEAKER 2: --Salman Khan.
SAL KHAN: Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
