Sunday 20 March 2011

Forget about Kumon!

The Kahn academy (Khan Academy) is an educational video website. It is a free online collection of around 2200 microlectures of approximately 10 mn each on Youtube. The subjects range from mathematics to history, finance, physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy, and economics. It also contains about 100 web-based-exercises based on skill level and performance.

Kahn's idea started when he was tutoring his cousin Nadia in mathematics using Yahoo!'s Doodle notepad . One day, he had to tutor his cousin remotely, so he decided to post a video on You-tube. Her response was very positive. She actually preferred the YouTube version than being tutored in person. Five years later, the YouTube-hosted tutorials were scoring a total of more than 35,000 viewers per day.

Kahn is an excellent teacher and his videos are a fantastic collection of clear and concise lessons on a large variety of subjects. They are presented in a way as if you are sitting next to someone taking you through a problem on a sheet of paper.

This is a fantastic example of using IT to aid education. And best of all, it's free and readily available.

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