Alexandra Carmichael

March 11, 2011

If you haven’t checked out Khan Academy yet, now is the time. Bill Gates calls it “the future of education,” and Salman Khan himself has a very inspiring perspective. Khan spoke at the most recent TED conference about his project to create a series of free online videos and detailed self-assessments to educate anyone in the world. The audience gave him a long standing ovation, and I got chills watching it at home. Here’s the video, and my own Khan Academy experience below it.

Yes, I’ll admit it, I do math exercises for fun – sometimes hours a day. And now that Khan Academy is our family’s school, we all learn, practice, and check our progress there. Here are my charts from this week, for time spent/points earned and subjects practiced:

I can also track my daughter’s progress as she covers different math topics:

It looks like she’s been spending a lot of time on subtracting decimals, and hasn’t mastered it yet. Maybe I’ll check in with her today to see if I can help. In addition to facilitating self-education in a fun way, Khan Academy makes this kind of granular insight into student understanding beautifully clear.