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
- Sal Khan will bring the transformative potential of the "flipped classroom"
- Sal Khan has rapidly become the face of the revolution in digital learning
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









