
Italian: 
Introduzione

Czech: 
Úvod

English: 
Sal: I've been doing this
"Ask Me Anything," on Reddit,
and I've been doing my best
to keep up with the questions,
but my fingers are getting tired, so
I thought I would use, as a backup,
what I'm used to doing, which is
make a video on the questions.
So, this is the Ask Me Anything.
I posted this earlier today,
and I put this little picture of myself
to verify that it was actually me.
Here are the questions, and
I'll try not to be redundant,
so I'm going to focus on the
questions that I haven't answered.
This first one, "As an aspiring teacher,
do you have any tips for new teachers?"
And then I did make a little short
comment that my best teachers,
I felt, were the ones that talked
with us, that treated us as equals,
rather than were at the board and talked
at us, or, in some way, belittled us.
I don't think most teachers
do that, but some do.
It didn't feel good.
I would say on top of that, I
think the energy or the interest
or the passion that someone takes into
a subject is a pretty good indicator

English: 
of how students will perceive the subject.
I think human beings are very
cued into other people's tonality
and, in fact, more cued in
than most people realize.
If you, yourself as a
teacher, are not passionate
and really interested in what you're
saying and really excited about it,
it's going to be very hard
to get students there.
So I would say talk with
them, be conversational,
make sure it's clear that
you're on the same side as them,
that it's not you against them,
and show a real deep
passion for the subject.
Obviously, it wouldn't hurt if
you have a very deep grounding
in what you're teaching.
I think if that happens,
you'll do just fine.
Now let's go down here.
There's a bunch of comments here,
but I'll try to focus at
these top-level questions.
And someone here, I think,
had a very good comment.
"Teach your kids passion
and love the subject
"and not for study for the test."
I think once again, a lot of that
comes from the tone and the passion
that the teacher themselves have.
Then you say, "Which subject did
you enjoy teaching the most?"
and I had a little answer here.

Italian: 
Domanda 1: Che consiglio daresti a un giovane insegnante?

Czech: 
Otázka 1: Máte nějaké tipy pro nové učitele?

Czech: 
Otázka 2: Který předmět jste se učili nejvíce?

English: 
It is true, I found
subjects that, 10 years ago,
if you would ask me, "Do
you find that interesting?"
I'll say, "Oh, I don't know.
"I haven't really looked
into that deeply."
But once I start really
getting into the subject,
I have been making a few videos
very recently about agriculture,
and I am finding them as
interesting as any of the videos
that I've done about galactic
collisions or the financial crisis.
It really is just how you view it.
All of these things really do tell us
about how the universe is structured
and how we, as humans, came
about being who we are.
Let's see.
Let's see what else I can answer here.
There are some very nice comments.
That's a nice quote there, not mine,
"Those who seek beauty will find it."
I agree.
Let's see.
This person right over here is ctngu.
"I passed statistics and chemistry.
"Thanks for your videos."
This was a thank you.
OK.
"How long does it take you to
create one of your tutorial videos?"
I did answer it a little bit.
My comment, depends on what I'm doing.
If I'm doing a fairly
straightforward algebra work example,
it will take me really
the length of the video.
I like to do them in real time
and let the thought process
actually show up in the video.

Italian: 
Domanda 2: Quale materia preferivi insegnare?

English: 
If I'm doing something like just now,
I made a video on Thomas Malthus
and his views on population
limits and things like that,
I already knew about Thomas
Maltus and his views,
but I did read up a little bit.
I spent a couple of hours making sure
that I had all of the
interesting ideas that he was,
and making sure that I
had his ideas straight.
But then I just made the video.
I don't like to script or over-prepare
because it kills spontaneity that way.
Sometimes, if I'm doing a video
on something that's a relatively,
I would say, new concept,
for example, I took organic chemistry
in college, and I did just fine in it.
But I felt when I went
through it in college,
I didn't gain an
intuition for the subject.
One of my litmus tests for
whether I will do a video is
do I have an intuition, do I
have a passion for the subject?
For me, to do that in organic chemistry,
it took me about two weeks.
I immersed myself with tons of
textbooks, asked people questions,
and then I kind of got it.
I got the intuition, and then
I was ready to really teach it.

English: 
And because I wanted to teach
it so it wasn't based on
memorization of mechanisms,
I wanted people to see the underlying
underpinnings of organic chemistry.
There are a couple of comments there.
I'm still trying to ...
I'm a relatively new Reddit user,
so I am still trying to figure
out the best way to use it.
Let's see.
Someone was envious.
"You get to learn new subjects."
They should be.
"I consider myself the
luckiest guy on the planet,"
that was my comment right over there.
"It's true, I'm having
the time of my life."
Let's see.
There's all these other comments.
I see "Load more comments."
Load more comments.
Let's see.
Let me scroll down just a little bit.
Let's see.
One way, "on your way to work?"
"I thought you quit your job?"
Yes, I did quit my old job in finance,
but then I started doing
the Khan Academy full time,
and so you might call it a
"work" in quotation marks,
but this is where I work now, and
so yes, I work at the Khan Academy.
OK.
OK.
"I'm glad they decided to hire you."
Yes, I am glad that the Khan
Academy decided to hire me as well.

Italian: 
Domanda 3: Quanto tempo ti ci vuole per creare una delle tue lezioni in video?

Czech: 
Otázka 3: Jak dlouho trvá, než vytvoříte jedno z Vašich výukových videí?

Czech: 
Otázka 4: Myslel jsem, že jste opustil svoji práci
Sarkasmus

English: 
"They hired him because
he is in the CEO's family.
"Just look at his last name."
It's true.
Nepotism at its worst form
occurring at the Khan Academy.
I have the same last name as the founder,
Although for not for profit, not
the CEO, the executive director.
Then let's see, "Khan Academy = job?"
"The grow on jobies."
I don't understand that.
"They grow on jobies."
Oh, what are jobs?
I see.
I guess.
Let's see.
This is ... all right.
Let's see.
I'm trying my best to get through them.
I think there's 1,500
or 2,000 comments here.
Let's see.
"I remember finishing orchem.
"I never want to say ...
"Thank you for putting a great effort."
OK, let's see.
OK.
Let's see.
"I don't do any prep."
"Yes, that's not surprising."
Perhaps a sarcastic comment.
But yes, I try not to do
any significant scripting.
The way I tell people
is, "Prep your mind."
I try to get the concepts
distilled down as much as possible
and for me to really have
some clarity around it,

Italian: 
Domanda 4: Pensavo avessi lasciato il tuo lavoro.
[Sarcasmo]

Italian: 
Domanda 5: Nel prepararti a confezionare nuovi video, perché non usi una traccia scritta?
Domanda 6: Che strumenti hai usato tu per studiare?

English: 
but I like to be a little extemporaneous
in the actual delivery of the video.
It keeps it fun for me.
Let's see.
OK, this guy just or
this gal just discovered
that we do have organic chemistry videos,
and then, "What did you use to study?"
I forgot the exact names of the books.
I had my old organic textbook.
I think it was a ...
Kemp was a professor, and he
was my professor in college too.
He was actually quite a good professor.
He had this dramatic-speaking
voice and all the rest.
Actually, it would be pretty neat
to get him to do YouTube videos.
OK.
"Where has your site
had the biggest impact?
"Are you seeing much use
in developing nations?
"Can you share your best success stories?"
From Day 1, and to a large degree, this
is what has motivated me to keep going,
is we've got tons of letters.
If you go to our YouTube channel,
you'll see them, or our Facebook page.
I asked for some testimonials recently.
I'm in the process of writing a book.
We got some of these pretty
amazing testimonials.
This was one of them
that I copied and pasted.
I covered his name up, although he
probably wouldn't mind sharing it.

Czech: 
Otázka 5: Při přípravě videa: proč používáte skript?
Otázka 6: Co jste použili ke studiu?

English: 
This was a mind-blowing story.
He was into drugs, and then he
became a really awesome student.
Then some other people
contributed right over here.
These are pretty cool stories too.
Then, let's see.
We got this one, South Africa.
There's a ton of these.
Actually, we're hoping to collate
these so that the world can see,
at least the ...
There is no doubt in our mind,
and I say "our," not just me
because we're a team now.
We're 22 people, and we're
growing as an organization.
But there's no doubt in our mind
that there are people out there,
because they're sending us
their letters and their videos,
that have been heavily influenced
by some of the work we've done.
Frankly, in our minds,
these people did 99% of it,
and we just gave them the tools, the
outlet for them to improve themselves.
But we're also seeing more, I guess
you could call it, "analytical data"
in more controlled settings.
For example, in Los Altos,
Los Altos is an affluent area,
but they also piloted Khan Academy
with their Algebra-Readiness kind of a ...
It was kind of a remedial math class.
Most of these students were not affluent.
Most of them did not come from
families that spoke English at home

English: 
or that had had college degrees.
In that, we saw very
promising results last year,
double the number of students who
are at grade level in six months,
and some of them leapfrogged
ahead to be advanced,
which we had never expected and the
school district hadn't seen that before,
where students in remedial class
actually jumped ahead of the kids
who weren't in the remedial class.
That's why they've brought
in the program this year.
We've also this year started
some pilots in other classrooms,
some charter schools, public/private
schools in different demographics.
So far, the results have
been very promising.
Our goal is Khan Academy will always
be primarily for the bulk of students
who are using it independently
of any formal structure.
But we think it can be kind of ...
It can super charge what happens if you
do have access to an amazing classroom.
What we hope to do at these pilots,
it isn't a prove or not prove,
although it is definitely awesome
validation when we get the type of data
that we saw in Los Altos.

Italian: 
Domanda 7: In quale ambito credi il tuo sito abbia avuto maggior impatto?

English: 
Our goal is to see how can this work?
What settings is it applicable in?
What settings is it not applicable in?
And where it is applicable,
seeing how we can improve it.
What are the best practices?
What are the things that
lead to better results?
The real exciting thing is
that we have a platform.
It has traction.
We're getting data on it.
In our minds, we can only
improve from where we are,
but we think we're at the very
early stages of what's going on.
All right.
Let me get the questions.
All right.
"When do you plan on making more
advanced videos like quantum mechanics,
"general relativity, and
more advanced mathematics?
"Thanks, and I love everything you do."
Thank you.
Yes, we want to do all of the above.
I do not know quantum mechanics
and the depth that I need to know
in order to make videos on it tomorrow.
I have had a few conversations with
people who might be good at that,
but it's always an interesting
question of what constitutes good
because they should have
deep subject expertise.
They should have, I would call them,
they should be good communicators.

Czech: 
Otázka 7: Kde Vaše stránky měly největší vliv?

English: 
When I say "good communicators,"
not just good oratorical skills,
but they should be able to
get in the mind of the learner
and understand what the learner
might be having trouble with.
Then for that small subset of people,
you have to find the ones that want to
spend a lot of time making YouTube videos.
But we're working on it,
and they will exist soon.
What was especially exciting,
there was a gentleman right over here,
and this is his handle right over here,
who is one of the leaders
in quantum computing,
and it looks like he is
that small subset of people
who is interested in not only
being a leader in his field
but also maybe making YouTube
videos so that the rest of us
can understand quantum computing.
I look forward to a future
conversation with Michael Nielsen.
We've already contacted each other.
Let's see.
What other questions are there?
What other questions are there?
I'm looking for the questions.
All right.
Let's see.
"I'm a student, terribly
bureaucratic school system.
"One of the biggest problems I see
is that many inner city students
"simply don't care or apathetic.
"Do you have any suggestions on
how we can motivate them to learn

Italian: 
Domanda 8: Quand'è che decidi di creare video che prevedono livelli più avanzati di competenze come per esempio la meccanica quantistica, la relatività generale e una matematica più complessa?

Czech: 
Otázka 8: Když plánujete pokročilejší videa, kvantovou matematiku, obecné teorie relativity a pokročilejší matematiku?

English: 
"and enjoy it too so that
they can make the curve?"
As I already answered it in text,
very hard question,
I don't claim to have some
magic solution to that.
On one-off bases, we are
seeing encouraging things.
We've worked with some charter schools,
or starting to work with some
charter schools this year,
in under-served communities,
and we are seeing that
when you allow the students
to have a self-directed
version of learning
when they can set goals for themselves
and then see how well
they achieve those goals,
when the culture of the
classroom isn't about
passively listening to the teacher
but actively working on your own goals
and helping each other and
working alongside of the teacher,
it does look like it's
kind of a universal thing,
that people really do get into it.
But we don't know the answer,
and this is something that we're
going to constantly try to work on
and see what can happen.

Italian: 
Domanda 9:

English: 
Let's see.
"Why don't you have
all the answers, Khan?"
Yes.
All right.
Let's see.
"Who or what inspired you to take so much
time to do something so significant?"
As I answered, when I started this,
and I think if you read
the rest of this story,
it will be clear that I read a
lot of science fiction books.
But when I started it, sometimes
when I daydreamed about it,
I hoped that it would be something
that many, many people could use.
There was this idea there's
no reason why it couldn't be.
But at the same time, I had
tried many ventures in the past
that never got any traction,
so I, at this point, had
become, I guess, mature enough
to realize that it's one
thing to have an idea.
It's another thing to actually
maybe have it be useful.
But what excited me from the beginning was
even for those first cousins
that I was working with
and for those very first
people who happened to bump
into the content on YouTube,
it seemed like, based on
what they were telling me,
that it was having a real impact.

Czech: 
Otázka 9:

Czech: 
Otázka 10: Kdo nebo co Vás inspirovalo vzít tolik času na něco tak významného?

Italian: 
Domanda 10: Chi o cosa ti sono stati d'ispirazione per dedicare così tanto tempo a fare qualcosa di così importante?

English: 
And so just that made it really
worthwhile to make the content,
and it was a fun idea that a minimum would
be just a little thing for our family
and for the small percentage
of people in the world
who happened to bump into them,
and it's been a little surreal
because it looks like it's
turned into much more than that.
OK.
"Do you ever think about what you
achieved with the Khan Academy
"in the short amount of
time it's been around?
"And if so, how does it make you feel?
"Do you feel like you have a legacy?"
And I did answer this already, but I
think it's been amazing and strange,
and even looking at how many people
have shown up for this thread
is strange for me because I am a guy
sitting literally in a $6 T-shirt
in a room someplace, wearing sneakers,
not expecting many people to care much,
but they're here.
I try ...
I think I look at a lot of
other examples of things

English: 
that had these meteoric rises
and then crashed and burned.
My biggest fear is I do not
want Khan Academy to be that,
and so for myself and the entire
team here and all of our supporters,
I think the main thing
is we put our head down,
continue to execute, continue to iterate,
continue to make what we
have better and better,
that we use the traction that we
have and the reach that we have
as really a huge responsibility
to be as good as possible.
Hopefully, if we keep doing that,
we'll be able to be relevant
not just next year but 10 years from
now or maybe even 100 years from now.
That's what we're trying to do.
I try not to think about
things like legacies too much.
It's not helpful for actually
maybe getting the work done.
All right, OK.
These are actually the original questions
from the Ask Me Anything Request,
and I did answer all of them, but
I'll answer them now verbally,
just because it seems a little
bit more natural for me.
"When you're recording
your first lectures,
"do you have any particular
student you've made in your mind
"that you are talking to?"

English: 
"Does that student change depending
on the video's difficulty or message?"
Frankly, I imagine how I was when
I first tried to address the topic,
the questions that jumped in my head,
the type of things that
I would have liked to see
that would have interested
me in the topic.
So it's kind of me,
and I don't think that there is ...
I don't have a lot of data to
go one way or another on this,
but my sense, and I guess,
to some degree, the popularity
of the videos speak to this,
is that 5th graders want to be spoken
to the same way that a 9th grader,
or that a 30-year-old
wants to be spoken to.
They want to be spoken to with respect.
They want a conversational tone.
They don't want to be talked down to.
They like things that are interesting.
The things that are
interesting to a 50-year-old
are interesting,
oftentimes, to a 5th grader.
I think you'll see a very similar tone
if you go from the basic arithmetic video

English: 
on Khan Academy all the way to videos on
the financial crisis or vector calculus
or differential equations
or linear algebra,
they all essentially have the same tone,
which is the tone that I'm
speaking with right now.
Number 2, "How much preparation goes
into the lecture in terms of research?
"Do you have notes with
you as you lecture?
"Do you consult people
for certain subjects?"
Once again, completely
depending on the lecture,
if I'm just doing a work
example in, say, algebra,
I literally just do it in real time.
For 95, 99% of the lectures
or videos, I don't have notes.
Sometimes, especially in
history I've done this,
I have a little Word document.
I'll have two monitors and have a
little Word document on one monitor
that I retype all of the names
so that I don't misspell them
because that is my Achilles' heel.
I have trouble with spelling,
and it's embarrassing if
you're trying to look smart
when you're speaking about
the French Revolution
then you forgot how to spell "Napoleon."
So I definitely do try to do that.
OK.
"Do you consult people
on certain subjects?"

English: 
It's not happened a lot.
I think every now and then, I've tried.
It has helped a few times, especially
in some of the immunology videos.
I had a friend, Micah Luftig,
who is a professor at Duke,
that I clarified some things with.
But it comes up sometimes in
conversation at parties and things,
but for the most part, I'm able to
clarify my thinking fairly independently.
Three, "If you had the opportunity
"to talk to the president
about the education system,
"what would be the one thing you
wish you would understand most?"
And I did answer this, and
in my answer, I said that
making sure that people are
clear on what we're trying to do,
that I feel so many times,
the conversation is on high
school graduation rates
or college graduation
rates or college degrees
that people are losing
sight of what's important,
which is everyone should be a
happy and productive individual.
The reason why I think those
are sometimes a disconnect
because people are saying, "Oh, let's get
people college degrees no matter what,"
without a lot of scrutiny of,
well, are they getting things
through that college experience
that is likely to make
them happy and productive?

English: 
Sometimes they're getting
into a lot of debt.
Sometimes they're not learning
things or getting credentials
that will help them integrate or get
jobs or whatever the end goals might be.
And so I think the important
thing is to think about
what we're trying to get is
happy and productive people
and then think about how do we get there.
I think, I'll talk about this later
on, is I think the way we get there
is we have credentials
that are independent
of any particular way of learning the
material, and very rigorous credentials.
I think if you do that, it
allows people to prepare for them
in any way that they see fit.
They can get those, I would
call them, "microcredentials"
relative to a college degree.
A college degree, you have
to take all of these courses.
What do you take?
You take 40 courses on average over
the course of your college career,
and you have this GPA that
somehow encapsulates them,
averages how you did on history with how
you did on math and computer science,
and that doesn't give a lot
of information to employers.
They don't even know how ...
And I'm not saying that employers
are the most important thing.
It's also important that
people have satisfying lives.

English: 
But at the end of the day,
if they don't have a job,
it's hard to focus on much else,
and I've been there, so yes.
Number 4, "Could you cite examples
of foreign education systems
"which you think the U.S. should mimic?"
No.
I think, and I answered this in text,
there are education systems where the
kids do better on standardized tests,
on certain standardized tests.
I know from personal experience that
some of those countries aren't as large
and aren't as educating as large of a
population as we are in the United States.
And frankly, at the end of the
day, the United States still is
the engine of innovation for the world.
It is where, I mean if you
look in the last 20 years,
all of the major innovations,
a surprising number of them
show up from the 5% of the
world that is American.
And so I don't think it's about
Americans emulating other people.

English: 
I actually think it's about turning
the American education system
into a more American education system.
Right now, it's essentially
a Prussian education system.
The Prussians invented, and we
wanted a universal education,
so we have to do it
cheaply and efficiently,
so let's have kids in lockstep
in these age-based grades.
They all move together at the same pace.
At 8th grade, we start tracking
students into one track or another.
But it doesn't emphasize creativity.
It doesn't emphasize open-ended thinking.
And so I'd like to see a more American
model where students have independence.
They're learning at their own pace.
They have taken control
of their own learning.
They can decide how to achieve a
very high, a very rigorous credential
in any way that they see fit,
whether it is going to
a formal institution,
whether it's doing an apprenticeship,
whether it's some combination
of all of the above.
So no, I wouldn't copy any other country.
I would make the American
education system more American.
All right.
"Who are a few people you respect greatly
in terms of character achievement?"
I listed them over here.

English: 
Mark Twain, I just think he is hilarious
and brilliant and whatever else.
Muhammad Yunus, he is addressing,
boldly addressing a world problem
that many people, many cynical people
would have thought was hard to address,
and he's done it outside of the
realm of formal institutions,
or he's created his own institution to do
it outside of the realm of governments,
although he does coordinate
with governments.
Bill Cosby, I just love listening
to him, and I think he's brilliant.
Richard Feynman, one of my inspirations,
he made me want to be a
theoretical physicist at one point.
Bill Gates, who I've had the ...
I don't want to sound cheesy listing him
because he is obviously
one of our big supporters,
and he is also a controversial figure.
For better or for worse, some people
love him, some people hate him,
but especially after I've
had a chance to meet him,
I can testify that he is ...
He has redefined philanthropy,

English: 
and he is really, as
rationally as possible,
trying to save as many lives as possible.
And when I say "save lives," it
means 1) keep them from dying,
but assuming that they are living, giving
them as much opportunity as possible.
For him, it's not about his ego.
It's not about putting
his names on things.
It's literally about are we
doing what we need to do?
And so I think it's incredibly powerful.
Having met him a few times now,
I could tell you it's amazing,
considering the level that he is in life,
how deep he's willing to
go into different subjects,
that he is naturally curious,
naturally wants to dig deep into issues
and understand them for himself as
opposed to having other people tell him
necessarily what the answer is.
He wants to make sure that
it feels right to him.
And so I respected him
before but even more so now.
I sometimes find it weird
when people criticize him,
especially for his philanthropic
work, because literally,
hundreds of thousands of people
are alive because of him.

English: 
Number 3, "If you had the opportunity ...
OK, no, I already read that.
Let's see, "Cite examples."
Let's see.
"Would you ever seek a government
position involved in education?"
"Secretary of Education?"
As I said, no.
No disrespect to that
position, but I just,
I think I'm better off being close to the
road or where the rubber hits the road
and working on the content,
and that's where I feel best.
7) "In the future, would
you like video lectures
"to be the primary source
of receiving information?
"Who would you like to see
making certain videos?"
When I say "primary,"
well, when it's the primary
source of receiving information,
I don't know if I'd
necessarily agree with that.
I view videos as one source of
receiving information when you need it.
I'd actually prefer a lot
of the learning to happen
as people experiment and work on things.
What I think the videos do is they take,
they really throw into question
the idea of passive lectures
because you can ...

English: 
I had argued that on-demand video
is better in almost every way
than the traditional passive lecture,
and it frees up time to do
more of that hands-on learning.
But in terms of people
making certain videos,
we're looking for them.
There are a few celebrities
actually we started talking to,
and we might be able to convince them,
and I think they'll be quite good.
But we're open to anyone who
shows a passion for the subject,
a deep understanding, and
they're fun to listen to.
When I saw Beth and Steven
do those art history videos,
I immediately said, wow.
This is how I wish I
had learned art history.
I keep wanting to watch more
and more of these videos.
They were funny.
They were smart.
They were conversational.
They were focused on the content
as opposed to the teacher,
so that's ... we kind of
brought them on board.
We're very open to more of that,
and we'll be announcing
another individual very soon,
who, she's done some amazing things,
and we look forward to
announce that as well.
OK.
"You've shown the world how
the teaching of math, science,
"and a little bit of history
can be changed for the better.
"Do you have ideas for
the teaching of English

English: 
"or the native tongue of wherever
these videos are watched?"
We have some ideas.
We're not implementing them right now.
I think things like grammar and
vocabulary are a natural fit
for some of the exercises we have now.
I think videos could
obviously be powerful as well.
And I think things like writing,
there could be some element
of peer-to-peer interaction,
peer-to-peer assessment.
And I think for things like language, in
particular, especially spoken language,
I think there could be an element of
things like Skype or Google Hangouts
for people to actually interact with
people who speak that other language
and get, have a version of
immersion that does not require you
to get on a plane.
But we're not able to tackle
them in the very short term,
but hopefully, eventually, we will
be able to get to those things.
That's a summary of all those.
OK.
"Accounting videos saved my grades."
We actually do hope to do
a much deeper accounting.
I eventually want it so that
you can get most of the skills
or all of the skills that an MBA
would learn from Khan Academy.
OK.

English: 
"How do I get my kids to enjoy
learning about math and science?
"My husband and I always
struggled with these subjects,
"so we have no interest in them and
are not proficient in them at all.
"We don't want our kids
to have the same struggle.
"Advice?"
And I wrote this down,
and the best advice I could give is these
two parents should immerse themselves
in math and science and
realize that it is fascinating,
and now, there are things like
the Khan Academy that can get them
up to speed in a
non-stressful environment.
I think if they did that, they would
discover that they do have an interest
in math and science,
and as soon as they do that, it will
change the culture in their home,
and their kids will see that,
"Wow, Mom and Dad are doing it
"even though no one is forcing them to.
"I want to do that too."
And they'll have wonderful
conversations about galactic collisions
and acids and bases and
who knows what else?
OK.
Let's go on.
I'm already at 26 minutes.
Maybe I'll go for another 10 minutes.
All right.
All right.
"My name is Abhinav, and I am 8 years old.
"I am doing this with
permission of my Dad.
"I like Khan Academy and use it a lot.

English: 
"My question is why do you have
questions and tests for only math
"and not other subjects?"
Brilliant question, Abhinav, and
that is on our plate, and we are ...
Our goal is ... Math is a core subject
that gives a lot of people trouble,
even though we think most people
are capable of doing it very well
if they're given the opportunity,
and so that's what we're tackling first,
although the videos go well beyond that.
But do expect to see much
more than just mathematics
in the not too far off future.
I would say in the next year,
by the time you're 9 years old,
hopefully that won't be too late for you,
you will have things like finance and
physics and chemistry and accounting
and logic and computer science
and many, many other things.
Hopefully, you won't find
it boring as a 9-year old.
OK.
Let's see.
"How would you compare the
value of in-person lectures
"to that of online learning?"
Like many things, it depends.
I think in-person lectures, even
large ones, can be very powerful
when there is a shared experience,
when it's an inspiration,

English: 
when it's kind of an idea.
I think it's worse when
you're covering dense material
that different people will
internalize at different rates,
and different people have
different levels of preparation.
Then when you do this
one-pace-fits-all lecture,
I think it's not the most
productive use of having 300-person,
300 people or even 50
people on the same room.
I think that is better served by having
on-demand video and self-paced exercises
and then using the physical time to
actually interact with each other
or actually build things or
actually mentor each other.
And then, "How was presenting at TED?
"Who was the most
interesting person you met?"
TED was surreal.
There were a lot of interesting
people there, as you can imagine.
I guess maybe one of the
most interesting moments,
I got out of my hotel room one
morning, and I was on the 14th floor,

English: 
and I got into the elevator, and then
I saw this fairly tall individual say,
"Hello, Salman," and he
just read my name tag.
He didn't know who I was.
I looked up, and ...
and I looked up because he's very
tall, and it was Ashton Kutcher.
And then I looked to my side,
and right on the other
side of me was Demi Moore,
and then we just went
down the next 14 floors,
and I didn't really know what
to say, so I just looked down,
but that was probably, that was
an interesting moment for me,
but there were other crazy things at TED.
OK.
Let's see.
And as I said in the thing, I was actually
running 104 fever that night before,
and I was going to ... I was actually
thinking about even calling 911
because I was really just delusional
and going nuts that night.
But my wife showed up the next morning.
She is a doctor, gave me a
ton of acetaminophen, and
I was good to go on stage.
And so, "How was it when Bill Gates says,
"You're taking a peek into
the future of education?"
"I would have been
peeing in my pants, man."
And as I said, that wasn't
the first time we had met,
so I'd gotten somewhat used to
him, although it's still surreal,

English: 
and it was very surreal
to be on stage with him.
I think the first time I met him,
it was closer to that scenario,
but yes, it was pretty amazing.
OK.
Let's see.
Let's see.
There are some amazing things here.
"What do you think of MIT's
new online course system,
"especially given that you're
the commencement speaker?"
which I find once again surreal.
A lot of this is just surreal to me.
But I think the poster
is referring to MITx,
where they're going to start doing
online classes, not just videos,
allowing MIT students to work at their
own pace so that they can use class time
for more interactivity,
more project-based things,
and then they'll let
the whole world benefit
from those virtual self-paced lessons.
I'm a big fan of that.
I think that, by itself,
is a game changer.
But the real big game changer
is that they're going to allow,
they're going to have proctored
examinations that people could take,
it sounds like, for very little money
to show that they really
understood the concepts.
They're going to call
them "MITx credentials."

English: 
I think that could be a super huge game
changer and really spread shock waves
through higher education because
if someone takes the MITx
credential in computer science
or the MITx credential in
algorithms and they do well on it,
and that credential really
is at a very rigorous level,
I would interview those people.
I would value them as much
as someone with a high GPA
from a computer science program.
Yeah, I think it could be pretty powerful.
You could start seeing people
who maybe don't go to college,
and I'm not going to
advocate one or the other.
I love my college experience,
although I don't think it should
be a mandatory experience.
But you could imagine a high
school student who shows
that they mastered all that stuff, and
if they choose that they want to work
before going to college, they could
probably get a job at a very good company,
if they showed that they knew some
of that material at an earlier stage
and they didn't need to
go to college for it.
In fact, you'd probably
give them bonus points
that they were capable of learning
the material somewhat independently,
that it didn't have to be ... they didn't
have to learn it in a formal structure
because frankly, at the end of
the day, you want the people that,

English: 
when they are 30 years old
or they're 40 years old
and they don't have a
formal academic structure,
they can still learn new
things because we know
that in the next 10 years or 20 years,
there's going to be tons
of new things to learn.
OK.
All right.
Let's see.
There's a lot of stuff.
"If you could reform public
education, what would you do?"
As I mentioned, I think the key here is
to provide really powerful test cases
and really powerful tools that allow
the test cases to be replicable.
There are amazing cases of
charter schools and public schools
doing amazing things, but
it's hard to replicate them.
I think the combination of doing
things like the Khan Academy virtually,
when people can use it
however they see fit,
and you put that in combination with
creating examples of how it's best used,
and you show that the students in those
examples are not just 5% or 10% better,
that they are, by any way you
measure them, dramatically better,

English: 
I think that example setting can
create a groundswell of change,
but I don't know.
We'll see what actually happens.
"What's made you study
for so many degrees?"
As I said, I am, I continue
to be very naturally curious,
and when I was at MIT, it was almost
hard not to register for more classes,
and so I did.
I registered for as many as I could,
and I guess you end up getting
a lot of degrees that way.
Let's see.
"What were your grades
like in high school?"
As I mentioned, they were good.
OK.
Let's see.
Let's see.
"How would you respond to the idea
that some people believe your videos
"are a replacement or an improvement
on traditional education?
"I've heard critics caution that people
relying on the Academy to teach them
"are doing 20th century learning,
"memorization and drilling with formulas
and ideas without real-world application
"instead of 21st century learning,
"application of concepts
to solve new problems.
"I could see both things
as being valuable,
"but I've always wanted to ask you
where do you see the Khan Academy

English: 
"fitting in the context of a
person's complete education?"
I think the people who believe
that we are trying to do ...
we're backwards-looking
in how we're learning,
I think they believe that we think
that the videos are the complete thing,
and what we're saying is that
the videos are an enabler
to make the complete thing
happen in the classroom.
And so to some degree,
the fact that we can do,
the fact that we can
automate some of the stuff
that traditionally was done in a lecture,
that what we're doing is
we're making hopefully the
traditional passive lecture obsolete.
I think there is still some value in
getting information in that way sometimes,
when you can pause it and repeat,
it becomes that much better,
but what it does is it frees
up time to do other things.
My vision of the school of the future
is kids spending most of their time
doing actual exploring things,
doing open-ended things,
doing creative things.

English: 
I think you'll find that not just
us and the people in our team
but most of our supporters are
actually the people who are defining
what a 21st century job actually is.
And we talk a lot about what
are we looking for in people?
How do we find those people who
can write creative programs,
who can design things, who can define
new things that never existed before?
And that's what we think about
when we try to figure out what
the Khan Academy should become.
In terms of memorizing
and drilling, the videos,
I try, to great pains actually, to
minimize any form of memorization.
I actually even ...
and I hope far less than even what
goes on in most traditional classrooms.
I think most of the people
who've liked the Khan Academy
I think like it because it
is so focused on intuition.
It is so focused on understanding
things at a deeper level
so that the formulas just
become almost common sense.

English: 
So yeah, so I don't necessarily ...
Maybe I'm wrong here, but I don't
think they're necessarily perceiving us
the way that we perceive ourselves.
In terms of a replacement or an
improvement on traditional education,
I do believe that the traditional
model, as I said, the Prussian model,
everyone moving together lockstep
in these age-based cohorts,
is not helpful.
And so I would like to see a more, as
I said before, American model emerge,
and we'll see what happens.
"Who were your favorite teachers?"
I wrote that here.
I'll do one more question.
I'll do one more question
that might be interesting.
I'm starting to lose my throat.
OK.
Let's see.
"How much time do you spend
working on videos a day?
"How taxing is it?"
I'm in the 36th minute
of this video right now,
and you hear that I'm
about to lose my voice.
But I do try to spend about half
the day at least making videos,
and on a good day, the
whole day making videos.
But it is, it's incredibly rewarding.

English: 
That's why I like doing it.
But it is taxing.
Once you do four or five
videos, your brain is tired,
and you want to go do
something, like take a walk.
Anyway, hopefully, you all enjoyed that.
Maybe if I have time maybe tomorrow
morning, I might do another.

English: 
Maybe I'll start answering
questions below this.

Italian: 
Domanda 11: Pensi mai a quello che sei riuscito a fare con Khan Academy da quando è online. Senti di lasciare un'eredità?

Czech: 
Otázka 11: Přemýšlel jste někdy o tom, co jste v krátkém čase okolo Khan Academy dosáhl? Máte pocit, že za Vámi zůstane odkaz?
