In this episode of School’s In, the founder of the Khan Academy talks about his journey from family tutor to educational entrepreneur.
Sal Khan founded the Khan Academy, an online platform offering free courses in everything from algebra to world history.
When Sal Khan started uploading videos to YouTube in 2006, he wasn’t trying to become famous. He just wanted to help his cousins with their schoolwork.
But the videos attracted a following well beyond what Khan ever imagined.
“I wasn’t the first person to put math or science videos on YouTube,” he says, “but since I was making them for my cousins, they felt intimate and very personal. People started to connect with them. The viewership kept growing. People started saying ‘I passed my class because of this,’ or ‘I want to become a physicist because of this.’ So I just kept going.”
Last year more than 150 million people worldwide downloaded free instructional videos from the Khan Academy, the nonprofit he established in 2008. The Khan Academy now offers tutorials in a multitude of subjects including trigonometry, engineering, economics and history.
In this episode of School’s In, Khan joined Stanford Graduate School of Education Dean Dan Schwartz and Senior Lecturer Denise Pope to talk about the origin of the Khan Academy, its impact around the world and how he plans to expand it going forward.
Listen from the link below, and find more episodes of School's In at the Stanford Radio main page. The show airs Saturdays on SiriusXM Insight Channel 121.
