Far too many bright, motivated kids are being badly served by their educational experiences - ones at elite, wealthy schools as well as underfunded ones.Sal Khan
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The reason the gifted students of the world like Khan Academy is because we don't say, 'Memorize this formula,' but say, 'Let's try to derive it from core principles,' or, 'I forgot my trig identity, so I'm going to just try to prove this to you.'Sal Khan
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Some of the beauty of a university is that every professor is given a lot of autonomy over what he or she does. That's also what makes it very hard for even a very forward-thinking president to change courses.Sal Khan
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Free educational materials will, at minimum, prepare more people for college and allow them to be more successful once they get there. Most students want credentials that employers respect, and free educational materials alone will not do this.Sal Khan
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Creating a clear and engaging video explanation of a complex concept is a great way to demonstrate mastery and to help others understand and love the subject, too.Sal Khan
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Suffice it to say that our over-reliance on testing is based largely on habit, wishful thinking, and leaps of faith.Sal Khan
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One's perception of themselves has a much bigger role than has been acknowledged to determine who succeeds and who does not.Sal Khan
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A good traditional conceptual instruction is what I got from my better professors at MIT. They would be at a chalkboard, and they would literally be explaining something and working through a problem, but it wasn't rote. They were explaining the underlying theory and processes and intuition behind it.Sal Khan
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You only have so much time in the day, and you only have so many working years. Where do you want to invest that life?Sal Khan
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I'm actually a bit of a technophobe, which surprises people. I like to stay unplugged as much as possible.Sal Khan
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One of the biggest ways to level the playing field is to give all young people the same context on what opportunities are out there. And that means touching on some of the questions that are a little taboo in society: How much money do you make? What are your stresses? What would you do differently if you could?Sal Khan
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My personal narrative - I was lucky early on in my career to have some really strong mentors. I didn't realize it at the time, but that's what really built me up.Sal Khan
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Our mission at Khan Academy is a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere, and college readiness is a crucial part of that. We want to help as many students as possible prepare for college and for life, and since the SAT measures preparedness for college, our partnership with the College Board is a natural fit.Sal Khan
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It's an old idea. It's arguably the first way that people learn, that, hey, if you need to learn something, if you're having trouble with it, keep working on it until you master it and then you go to a more advanced concept. But in the education systems that all of us grew up in, we all learned at a fixed pace.Sal Khan
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I've learned that certain things are much harder than when you write about them in a book.Sal Khan
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We don't believe that you should ever replace physical education. Even in a thousand years, a computer will never be able to do so.Sal Khan
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As my kids grow up, I think a lot about the lessons and values I want to impart to them. More than any particular skill or even financial support, I believe perseverance and resilience will serve them best, regardless of what curveball life inevitably throws them.Sal Khan
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Teachers can use technology-based assessments to inform their instruction. These assessments can quickly produce data and surface patterns that help teachers identify where students are faltering and intervene with targeted coaching immediately, before the student falls too far behind.Sal Khan
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I see no reason why there still are large lectures in universities throughout the world. When people gather, they should be interactive, problem-solving, and experimenting; not passively listening.Sal Khan
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I was always asking people about their work. How do you do a job like that? Do you love it? What does it pay? I was lucky to have access to people who could answer my questions. Otherwise, my life could have turned out very differently.Sal Khan
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It's definitely important to have a vision, to have kind of a sense of what might be possible, but not to be dogmatic about your beliefs about the way something has to be done.Sal Khan
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As technology plays a major role inside and outside the classroom, we want to make sure education innovation is accessible.Sal Khan
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We want to make access to a world-class education like clean drinking water or electricity.Sal Khan
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To be clear, people are the most important part of any classroom. If given the choice between a great teacher and the world's most advanced education technology, I'd pick the teacher any day for my own children.Sal Khan
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I'm not the kind to hang out on Facebook or Twitter or even talk on the cellphone, really.Sal Khan
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The math you need for most of finance is ninth-grade algebra, and most people feel reasonably comfortable with that. But I think the financial world there has been - I don't know if it's by design, or this is how it's evolved - there are bad actors who have wanted to obfuscate because you can benefit from the lack of transparency.Sal Khan
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No one goes on a direct path, even though it sometimes feels like your peers might be racing ahead. Everyone's trying to figure it out. But if you just put yourself out there, step out of your comfort zone, establish yourself in terms of skills, mentorship, but leave space for your passions, then you're going to turn out pretty well.Sal Khan
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What you have in most education software is that they're catering to the decision-maker who makes the budget allocations, and that decision-maker has a lot of check boxes. Does it do this? Check. Does it do that? Check. They could care less about the end user experience.Sal Khan
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A lot of times, when kids have problems with algebra or trigonometry, it has nothing to do with the subject matter, has nothing to do with their innate intelligence. It's just they that they had some gaps in elementary school that they never got to fill in.Sal Khan
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I grew up with plenty of smart people. They would beat me at chess; they could solve brain teasers before I could, but then they would struggle in algebra. These were incredibly smart people who simply did not have the foundation in math that I had.Sal Khan
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By early 2009, tens of thousands of students were watching tutorials on the Khan Academy every day. The software I wrote for my cousins had become so popular, it was making my $50-a-month web host crash. The possibilities surrounding the academy were so exciting that I had trouble doing my day job properly. And soon, I quit.Sal Khan
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When I used to try and describe what the Khan Academy was, I would tell people that if it were a for-profit, I would be on the cover of 'Forbes.'Sal Khan
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Later in life, when my kids struggle to understand a tricky concept or master a new skill, I want them to have the strength and experience to tell themselves, 'I don't know how to do this... yet!' I want them to be confident that, even if something seems challenging today, they have what it takes to figure it out.Sal Khan
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If a student has access to a great school, Khan Academy can supercharge it. It should help a well-resourced school, and if you don't have that, then Khan Academy can have even a bigger impact. But I don't see it as replacing the actual schools... we want to empower teachers and fill in the gaps.Sal Khan
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At the end of the day, what matters is whether your product works and whether people like it.Sal Khan
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If high-quality content can be effectively delivered via technology, teachers can devote more time to creating innovative experiences, leading Socratic dialogs, or coaching students one-on-one in more targeted and focused interventions.Sal Khan
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I'm the 'Dear Abby' of math problems. But if you understand something, shouldn't you be able to explain it? Isn't that the whole point?Sal Khan
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What I did by virtue of skipping a lot of classes was get two undergraduate degrees and a master's in four years. It wasn't slacking. There were much more productive ways of learning everything than sitting in lectures.Sal Khan
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Something happens in school sometimes where you're like, 'Oh, I'm not an expert, and I have to defer to people who are.' And it happens not just in school: it happens in religion, too. Defer to the experts. A printing press is a big deal - they got the Bible, and all of a sudden they could read it for themselves.Sal Khan
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In Idaho, we hope to see educators using Khan Academy to individualize their instruction. Instead of a one-size-fits-all lesson, teachers will be able to focus their attention on specific students who are struggling while the rest of the class engages with material appropriate for them.Sal Khan
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I never viewed technology as a replacement for the human experience. I viewed it as something that could liberate the human experience.Sal Khan
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I realized that there are many people who are very good students, but they think of themselves as bad students. At the end of the day, what they are really missing is way to understand where their gaps are and a way to address those gaps.Sal Khan
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Rather than saying, 'I can't do this,' 'Sesame Street' encourages us to say, 'I can't do this... yet!' That one word changes everything. It emphasizes that your capability isn't fixed. It highlights the reality that our brain is like a muscle.Sal Khan
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