The faces of 2012: Who will define the year to come

Steve Jurvetson

Salman Khan, famous for the Khan Academy, speaking at TED 2011.

Article Highlights

  • You’re going to be hearing a lot about Sal Khan next year, especially when June 8 rolls around

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  • Sal Khan will bring the transformative potential of the "flipped classroom"

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  • Sal Khan has rapidly become the face of the revolution in digital learning

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The following piece is a portion of the larger discussion with authors such as Kate Bolick, Joshua Freeman, Hary Siegel and others. Follow this link for the entire article.

You’re going to be hearing a lot about Sal Khan next year, especially when June 8 rolls around. That’s the day that the 30-something founder of the Khan Academy will be delivering MIT’s commencement address. Since leaving his job as a hedge fund analyst in 2009, Khan has rapidly become the face of the revolution in digital learning. His online library of nearly 3,000 homemade videos providing mathematics and science lessons has been celebrated for making it possible to “flip” the classroom, allowing students to study lectures at home so that teachers can devote class to smarter, more effective learning. More than 200,000 now follow Khan Academy’s YouTube channel.

With school districts clamoring to partner with Khan, in 2012 we’re going to hear a lot about the transformative potential of the “flipped classroom.” We’re also likely to start hearing a lot about the challenges of instruction which requires kids to attentively view math and science lectures during their weekends and evenings. If the same kids who don’t read or do their homework today don’t start watching the YouTube lectures tomorrow, big problems loom.

Frederick Hess is a resident scholar and director of education policy studies at AEI

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About the Author

 

Frederick M.
Hess
  • An educator, political scientist and author, Frederick M. Hess studies K-12 and higher education issues. His books include "Cage-Busting Leadership," "The Same Thing Over and Over," "Education Unbound," "Common Sense School Reform," "Revolution at the Margins," and "Spinning Wheels." He is also the author of the popular Education Week blog, "Rick Hess Straight Up." Hess's work has appeared in scholarly and popular outlets such as Teachers College Record, Harvard Education Review, Social Science Quarterly, Urban Affairs Review, American Politics Quarterly, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Phi Delta Kappan, Educational Leadership, U.S. News & World Report, National Affairs, the Washington Post, the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic and National Review. He has edited widely cited volumes on education philanthropy, school costs and productivity, the impact of education research, and No Child Left Behind.  Hess serves as executive editor of Education Next, as lead faculty member for the Rice Education Entrepreneurship Program, and on the review boards for the Broad Prize in Urban Education and the Broad Prize for Public Charter Schools. He also serves on the boards of directors of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers, 4.0 SCHOOLS and the American Board for the Certification of Teaching Excellence. A former high school social studies teacher, he has taught at the University of Virginia, the University of Pennsylvania, Georgetown University, Rice University and Harvard University. He holds an M.A. and Ph.D. in Government, as well as an M.Ed. in Teaching and Curriculum, from Harvard University.


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