Learning

Khan Academy

The above screen shot is from the intro to what the Khan Academy has available. I learned quite a bit just by watching this intro video.

• I had a suspension that everything in math started with 2+2=4. =]
• The gateway to higher math is Algebra.
• Physics is kind of sort of on the same level as precalculus.
• I always thought diferental equasions was calcula III.

so, I've learned something and have not even watched any of the videos yet. That is a good sign. I've done gometry and trig. I wander if I have what it takes to to physics at a high school level?

Like so many entrepreneurial epiphanies, Khan's came by accident. Born and raised in New Orleans -- the son of immigrants from India and what's now Bangladesh -- Khan was long an academic star. With his MBA from Harvard, he has three degrees from MIT: a BS in math and a BS and a master's in electrical engineering and computer science. He also was the president of his MIT class and did volunteer teaching in nearby Brookline for talented children, as well as developed software to teach children with ADHD. What he doesn't know he picks up from endless reading and cogitation: His gift, like that of many teachers, is being able to reduce the complex. "Part of the beauty of what he does is his consistency," says Gates. Of Khan's capacity to teach, Gates, who says he spends considerable time trying to help his three kids learn the basics of math and science, tells Fortune, "I kind of envy him."
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Distance learning and correspondence courses have been around since the invention of mail. And private, for-profit schools flourish; the University of Phoenix has half a million students enrolled, most of them online. Other private operations, like the Teaching Co., specialize in amalgamating "great courses" from nationally known teachers: the 12-hour Game Theory in Life, Business, and Beyond, from one academic star, costs $254.95 on DVD.
What's remarkable about Khan Academy, aside from its nonpareil word of mouth and burgeoning growth, is that it's free and prizes brevity. Remember your mumbling macroeconomics teacher whose 50-minute monologue in a large auditorium could bore the dead? That isn't Khan. He rarely cracks wise -- if you want shtick, check out Darth Vader trying to teach Euclidean geometry on YouTube ("The Pythagorean theorem is your destiny!") -- but in less than 15 minutes Khan gets to the essence of the topics he's carved out.

CNN Money

Bill Gates is on board.

The article goes on to talk about people who criticize Khan. The best they can do is say that the academy is more like a reference library than a teaching tool. There is no interaction. I hate to tell them, but that is better than I got out of most of my teachers and professors.