Friday, March 23, 2012

Free education

This is another of those amazing benefits of the Internet I hadn't seen coming: free education, and in quality too! Here's a new example. It's a wondrous world.

The linked article is about the iPad app Khan Academy. Lots of free educational videos on many levels and subjects.  So far what I've viewed in it was very nice, interesting and seemed knowledgable. And probably the number of videos and subjects will expand rapidly. I don't know who pays for it, but it's very kewl. Just found their web site.

2 comments:

Stephen A said...

Khan Academy is really amazing. The lectures are good but what is really interesting is the testing system. The aim is to make sure that the student "gets it". Since there is no time limit students can take their time and really understand every step. In order to measure this the testing system uses some very sophisticated machine learning to determine mastery.

The basic principle is to bring every student to full mastery taking as much time as possible, as opposed to the fixed lectures time followed by a make or break test which tries to gauge how much you "got".

Where's the money coming from? Bill Gates in large part.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Good on Bill. He's putting his best foot forward these days.