Khan Academy - Changing the rules of Education

Change. We need it, right? But where do we start? With entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs are changing the world, one small business at a time.

Let’s start with the Khan Academy and how it changed the rules of education. Khan Academy is an

educational website that, aims to let anyone “LEARN ALMOST ANYTHING—FOR FREE”.

Do you know how much does it take to raise a child?

The cost of raising a child alone (from birth to age 21) is approximately Rs 55 Lakhs.

46% of that is child education = Rs 25 lakhs. If education costs money, it becomes an expense and essentially schools become a business, and a business’ responsibility is to cater to the bottom line – profit.

Education = Expense

Schools = Business

Education = Profit

In today’s consolidating economy, people are getting paid less to do more, yet the cost of education continues to rise at an average rate of 6% annually.

If a parent’s income suffers in any way, they’re forced to make a very tough decision – one that may force them to pull their child out of school.

Which raises a question: Why isn’t education free? Doesn’t everyone have a right to learn?

Let’s imagine for a minute – A world where education is accessible, portable, shareable, trackable and best of all, free.

This is the vision of the Khan Academy.

Introduction:

Students, teachers or anyone interested in understanding the concepts from mathematics, science, history, economics etc can scan through a collection of 3200+ videos on the website. The videos are generally crude and seven to fourteen minutes long, they consist of a voice-over by Khan describing a mathematical concept or explaining how to solve a problem while his hand-scribbled formulas and diagrams appear onscreen. All the videos are uploaded on youtube and are available at free of cost. In addition to these videos, the website offers software that generates practice problems and rewards good performance with videogame-like badges—for answering a “streak” of questions correctly, say, or mastering a series of algebra levels.

The Concept:

In 2004, Khan began tutoring his cousin using Yahoo’s doodle notepad. When other relatives and friends sought similar help, he decided it would be more practical to distribute the tutorials on YouTube. Their popularity there and the testimonials of appreciative students prompted Khan to quit his job in finance as a hedge fund analyst at Connective Capital Management in 2009, and focus on the tutorials full time.

Now the question which arises is that, do really there was a need for him to quit his job and start a non-profit organization?

The answer to this question lies in the vision of Sal Khan. The goal of the Khan Academy is to use technology to provide a free, world-class education to anyone, anywhere. For Sal Khan creating a social impact is much more than making money. Inspired from his vision, the Khan academy is now having a backing from Bill & Melinda Gates foundation and Google. Also several people across the world have donated some amount to the organization.

What’s in there for students?

•  It truly defines the concept of “Education for all”. The reason behind this is wherever and whoever you are the lessons which you will see are all going to be same for everyone. It is extremely difficult to find people in rural villages with the skill set to even teach basic arithmetic, much less higher mathematics and science. Government of developing nations can provide a better education to the students in the villages by just showing the videos in the schools.
• This site is just amazing because it really teaches you everything which you may have not understood in the class. Also, if you’re interested in a certain area, you can go above and beyond to pursue more information and learn more.
• One of the reasons why teaching people through youtube videos is better than at school is that you can choose what speed you want to learn at, and you can choose which topics you might want to put more emphasis on.
• It can be intimidating or just plain confusing when your teacher is going on and on, writing example after example on the whiteboard.
• If you’re in class and you have a question about a pretty basic concept that everyone in the class already knows, you might be embarrassed to ask a question about it and get it clarified. By using Khan Academy you have the anonymity of the internet when you’re watching these videos so you can choose what you want to watch and what you might need to watch 3 or 4 times.

Have a look at Sal’s engaging TED talk, where the professor himself breaks down exactly how the Khan Academy works (If you can’t watch the entire 20 minutes, skip forward to 14:30, where he expands on exactly how they’re hoping to change education on a global scale)

Suggestion:

As someone who struggles with math, the Khan Academy would seem perfect for him. My problem though is I don’t know where to begin. Just jumping at random into a video suddenly makes me aware that I need lots of prior knowledge before I can understand this video, but there’s no help on that. He can add a list of topics which you must know before viewing the video in certain topic.

For eg: If a person is viewing the video on linear equations then it should mention that you need to have an understanding of addition, subtraction and multiplication. In this way a person not satisfying the basic requirement to view linear equation video can go back to these topics.

Our responsibility:

Once you, your children or students have managed to learn something from the Khan Academy, why not contribute a little something to this amazing nonprofit, as a “Thank You” to Sal and his team, who are simply trying to make a world-class education available to anyone, anywhere.

After all, as Bill Gates said (about the Khan Academy), “I think you’ve just got a glimpse at the future of education.”

Visit: www.khanacademy.org/

Goal Setting

Importance of Goal setting

In the first class of POM, I was expecting it to be more formal and less interactive; however Dr. Mandi had something different in his mind. He is one professor who is enthusiastic, energetic and intends to do things differently. He introduced few concepts like “AAJ KI ROTI AAJ KAMANA HAI” and “SOCHO BECHO,BECHO SEKHO, SEEKHO SOCHO” , though the slogans seems to be simple but they have a psychological effect on the individual.

It has helped me to answer the question: What after MBA?

An individual having a MBA degree has mainly two options in front of him namely:

1.       Entrepreneur

2.       Manager

An entrepreneur is a person who is motivated to satisfy a high need for achievement in innovative and creative activities. He is a great motivator to start his new business and manage it successively. He is the investor and takes risk in the enterprise. He perceives and exploits opportunity and works for his satisfaction to get positive results, whereas a manager (Professional Manager) takes care of the general functions of running an organisation such as strategic planning, operation planning, organising the resources, staffing, coordination, motivation and controlling work of the organisation.

Normally a professional manager acquires such knowledge through formal education and training. He has to work within the policy framework set by the entrepreneurs (owners) of the organisation.

The answer to this question depends on the mindset of each individual. He can choose any one of the above mentioned options.

Now if a person selects option 1, another question which comes to my mind is why not to start your company while studying management?

I feel it is a good time to start your company while studying as you can transform your knowledge into practical implementation. Management course is of no use until you apply it in real life situations.The risk factor is also less as you have a big bunch of students and faculty members who can help you in different aspects of entrepreneurship.

My understanding is:

Start following your dreams, before someone hires you to fulfill his dreams.

 

How to set Effective Goals?

 

Tower Building Exercise:

In this task the students were asked to set the goal for tower height which we feel we can build of multiple small cubes.

The intricate part was that there will be a team of 3, out of them 1 will build the tower using his odd hand and also blind folded, and the other two will help him to build the tower.

This activity allowed us to set SMART goals and most of the people set the target in between 12-20 cubes.

Hence the final target set by the 3 students was 15.

From the activity points worth mentioning are:

1.      The goal set by them was based on SMART goals concept as Dr. Mandi stated the last year’s tower height which was 17.

2.      The role of employee or the student who was building the tower was to stay focused and concentrate on his activities, on the other hand the role of the managers or the student guiding was to keep motivating him.

3.      The strategies to build the tower were decided by the managers and employee was asked to follow it.

For eg: As the manager found out that his hand starts paining while it is in the air, so he asked the employee to drag the cube along the table.

4.      Finally the task in hand was completed successfully and they were able to achieve more than the target set by them. It shows that impossible is nothing if your goals are well defined.

What is the importance of goal setting?

1.      First, imagine that you live your life without purposes. How will you live your life? You will be ordinary, thus, you will live a mediocre life. If you don’t have a goal today, you’re just like a lost sheep and you are dangling in nowhere. You wake up every day without purposes or reasons. You live your life meaningless and you will waste your life. However, with a clear and specific goal, it will serve as a clear destination for where you are heading, giving your purpose to live on.

2.      The second importance of goal setting is that it will help you to stay focused in getting what you want in your life. Many people know what they want to achieve but they just don’t do something to make their dreams come true. However, with a clear goal in your mind, you will remind yourself of what you want to achieve in your life and hence, it will direct you in the right direction. This is why successful people are able to achieve what they want lightning fast, because they are focused.

3.      The third importance of goal setting is that; it will help you to overcome procrastination. By writing down what you want to achieve, you are actually putting commitment into making it comes true. The real key in doing this is to keep reminding yourself about what you want in your life. You want to sink the idea of achieving your goals into your subconscious mind so that you will motivate yourself into taking massive amount of action all the time.

4.      The fourth importance is that you can have a self-evaluation at the end of your task. Many companies have made it a mandate for the employees to have goal setting at the start of the year and based on that the companies will be able to evaluate the performance of the employee.