Book 19: The One World Schoolhouse

I'd heard of Khan Academy on a homeschooling board I hang out on, but I didn't exactly know what it was all about until I heard an interview of Sal Khan on NPR. His intention is to provide a world-class education to everyone, for free or very little cost.



Khan talks about how mastery of foundational concepts, especially in math and science, is essential to understanding more complex ideas, and we should not force (or allow) students to move on until they have shown mastery. Hmm, sounds a lot like some language learning software I've worked with before. It also fundamentally turns the time-based school year on its ear.

Khan proposes providing his videos and problem-generating software to students in developing countries so that they have access to quality education, too. This now seems like real possibility, with the development of inexpensive tablet computers.

I registered for an account at KhanAcademy.org and started at the beginning with math (studies show that the best predictor of a good math teacher is a solid understanding of math concepts). I'm happy to say that so far, I have achieved mastery of addition of one-digit numbers.