Another Super Star Salman Khan Who is Revolutionizing Education

Everybody in India knows about Salman Khan the super star of Bollywood. But there is another Salman Khan who is definitely a super star of his own domain education, he has revolutionized the education system in America  in particular and many other countries across the globe. Big names like Bill Gates of Microsoft and Larry Page of Google are supporting him in his endeavor. 

I came to know about this Salman Khan when I came across his talk on TED show. I was curious to know more about him, then I have gone through  Sanjay Gupta's interview with him  at CNN. I can now say that he has changed the way a student should learn. Now thousands of students, from the schools who follow Khan's Academy way of education across the USA, learn leisurely while sitting at home and  come to school to do their home work, now  role of teachers in such schools is more of a mentor and guide. They are now in a position to monitor individual progress and working on overall growth their student.

How the Journey Started

the journey began from a closet of his house

Salman Khan's parents are having roots in India and Bangladesh.  His father is from Barisal Bangladesh and mother was from Kolkata, India , both migrated to America.  He was raised in New Orleans. He initially attended Grace King School in Metairie, Louisiana then he went to public schools, where, as he recalls that a few classmates were fresh out of jail and others were bound for top universities. He says that he always enjoyed learning new things while in Public School as well as a college student. He always liked to talk to his peers, having direct conversation with peers, but felt frustrated when being lectured to. College at MIT is about as good as it gets but still he felt much of the time he got more out of what he did but of the class that in. He says that not everyone is lucky like  to have motivation and support  that he did receive. The typical educational system presents the subject matter for a certain period of time and then it moves on whether the material is truly understood or not, a one-size-fit approach. After loaded with BS in Maths, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, he had gone to  Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for MS in Computer Science. Thereafter he did MBA from Harvard Business School.

He started his career as a Banker and would probably be continuing to excel in that field. But in 2004 he started tutoring his cousin Nadia mathematics at home in his spare time. At that time he recollected his own frustration while studying and tried to do something different, interesting and simple, used Yahoo’s Doodle notepad. The way he tutored

Nadia, friends and relatives were impressed and asked him to help their children. It was somewhere around 2006, when he decided to prepare videos of his lessons, created his account on You Tube and loaded on it.

He soon realized that children do not have sufficient interest in classroom study, and there is an urgent need to do something about it. He started using internet and Yahoo's Doodle Pad.

Gradually demand as well as popularity of his videos grew up. He was compelled to resign from  his secured job to take this initiative as his full time work. He formed Khan Academy, a free online education platform and nonprofit organization . From a small office in his home, Khan has produced more than 4,300 video lessons teaching a wide spectrum of academic  subjects, mainly focusing on mathematics and sciences. His good work was noticed world over, Google and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation contributed  US$3.5 Million to the Academy. As of May 2013, the Khan Academy  channel on YouTube attracted 1,233,000 subscribers and the Khan Academy videos have been viewed over 283 million times. In 2012,Time magazine named Salman Khan in its annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world. Forbes  magazine put Salman Khan on its cover with the story "$1 Trillion Opportunity".

How It Works

Flipping the classroom is a basic Khan philosophy. It essentially inverts traditional teaching methods, delivering instructions online outside the classroom and moving the homework into the classroom. His primary tenet is that students work at their own pace through technology while the concept engagement happens with the teacher in the classroom.

Not surprising this model is being adopted in many countries and younger generation is getting entirely different experience to study and without doubt Khan is their mentor.