>>Minli Virdone: It feels great
to get students engaged.
Innately, I believe that
they're already engaged.
And what we're trying
to do is just inspire
and really make the
topics really interesting
so students get excited
about learning more.
>>Karl Wendt: We've got robotics.
And there's going to be
trading games and stock market--
it's going to be amazing.
Today it starts off fun
and it gets even better.
>>Minli: Welcome, welcome,
to the Discovery Lab.
>>Karl: You guys excited to be here?
>>Students: Yeah!
>>Karl: All right!
>>Minli: Well done, well done.
So we're really excited
to have you here.
>>Minli: At Khan Academy,
we felt that we needed
to have our own version of the summer
camp, because we had so many ideas
that we wanted to test out.
What we're really driving
towards is individualized
and mastery-based learning.
One would think that a Khan Academy
Summer Camp could be be just kids
sitting in front of their
computers watching videos.
There are videos, and videos are
extremely important to help students
with self-paced learning.
But that goes hand-in-hand with
hands-on projects and activities
that really drive the intuition,
and really get people excited.
The Discovery Lab will include
robotics, computer science,
mathematical geometry,
probability and economics.
And even more things
that we'll add in.
>>Student: I'll give you a dice.
>>Sal Khan: Based on this, do you
think countries should trade
with each other?
>>Students: Yes.
>>Sal: So why should they
trade with each other?
>>Student: Well, maybe we
could trade to prevent wars.
>>Sal: Well, you brought out
an interesting point that a lot
of people do bring up
between trading countries,
that it often makes the
countries more stable.
If we're reliant on your country for
our food, and you're reliant on us
for your oil, we're not likely
to go to war with each other,
because we need each other.
You know, it's fascinating,
people do PhDs on this.
>>Sal: You can't learn
these things with lectures.
You have to learn -- pretty much
almost everything you have to learn
by doing it, by struggling
with it, I mean,
because that's what
the real world is.
The real world, you just engage,
you jump into an experience.
And your brain starts to draw
connections, your brain starts
to struggle with it and says,
"Well, hey, how does this work?
Can I see any patterns here?
Can I make any reason out of it?"
>>Minli: And the other thing
that's really important that's not
content-based, is resilience.
These topics are complex topics.
And students are going to have to
work really hard to be successful,
and they just have
to try and try again.
The summer camp is one of those
places where we can allow them to try
and try again, because we're
not set by a particular date
where you have to have
an examination.
We'll say, "We'll give
you tools to guide you,
but you have to learn
how to figure this out."
>>Karl: Right now we're going to
assemble a three-dimensional version
of Sierpinski's triangle,
which is a fractal.
>>Karl: It's a chance to take a
two-dimensional construct and go
into three dimensions and give
the students a chance to sort
of experience it in a way
that they probably wouldn't
if they were just learning
about it in a textbook.
>>Mohan: In school, I've
heard about this stuff,
I've read about it,
but I never did it.
But today, I've been doing it, and
now I can honestly see what it is.
>>Julia: It's more interactive,
and you're doing more stuff.
You're not sitting down
with a piece of paper
and a textbook doing math problems.
It's more fun here.
>>Karl: As we get further along,
they'll get a chance to see math
in a different way, because it's
more applied and more hands-on.
>> I call them quadripoints.
>> I'm going to look cool...
>>Minli: There's something to be said
about just doing it with your hands,
and taking out the conceptual world,
even though it doesn't necessarily
translate into an immediate increase
in test scores or anything like that.
It does translate into some level 
of excitement in the student.
And that is something that
you don't measure very often,
but it's still really important.
>>Students: Good!
Woo!
>>Minli: Discovery Lab, it's a
laboratory not only for the kids,
but it's also for us at Khan
Academy, because what's important
for us is not to just
run a summer camp.
What's important is to
understand what it is that works,
and if we find activities that work
really well, we can try it again
in a different summer camp
or in a different setting.
We believe that we can
package this together simply,
so that there's a curated set of
projects that are high quality,
highly interactive for teachers
to immediately be able
to use in the classroom.
>>Sal: This is all
a work in progress.
Khan Academy is a work in progress,
the summer camp's a work in progress
over the course of this year,
but definitely by next summer.
We're going to have summer
camps that go much deeper.
Summer camp in writing, summer camp
in filmmaking, summer camp in music.
We really want to explore the
experiential side of things --
not just in traditional STEM
subjects -- really across the board.
>>Minli: Great!
Thank you everybody!
Onward!
