[music playing] [applause] - so welcometo the 75th anniversary of nasa ames research center and to the director's colloquiumsummer series. knowledge is power. knowledge is freedom. the only thingsthat you truly own is what you learn
and your relationshipswith the world. so knowledge isthe greatest gift you can give and receive. the khan academymakes knowledge accessible to everyone, knowledge that will changetheir lives and the world. today's talk is entitled "khan academy:education reimagined"
and will be presentedby salman khan. mr. khan is the founderof the khan academy, a nonprofit organizationwith a mission of providing free,high-quality education for anyoneanywhere in the world. he graduated from mit with twobachelor of science degrees-- one in mathematics and onein electrical engineering and computer science
and a master's of science degreein electrical engineering. he also holds a master'sof business administration from harvard business school. for his work, salman hasreceived many prestigious awards and honors. please join mein welcoming salman khan. - thanks so much. so very excitingto be here. i always like to startthese conversations
really just getting a senseof who's in the room. how many of y'all are-- are users of khan academyin some-- oh, good. yes.how many of y'all-- how many of thoseare existing students? okay, how many of y'allare in high school? okay.oh, there's a good crowd here. how many of y'allare in college? oh, wow.grad school?
a few. okay, very--this is-- middle or elementary, any?[laughter] oh, very good. oh, yeah.oh, look. oh, there. very good, and how manyof y'all are parents who-- okay. and how many of you have no ideawhat khan academy is? good. i'm gonna betalking to you today. [laughter] so as--
it sounds like most of y'allare probably familiar. khan academyis often associated with a collection of videosthat i started making, now, you know,a decent number of years ago. but as we're gonna talk aboutover the course of this conversation is it's now much, much, much morethan just videos. in fact, in my mind,the videos are a small part of what khan academy isand what it's going to be.
but to get everyoneon the same page, and especially for the gentlemanwho doesn't--isn't familiar with khan academy,i will show a quick montage of videos. all these interactionsare just due to the gravity. - this is an ageright after isaac newton-- - i'm told the humiditymakes it feel hotter. why is this? - excellent question, lebron.
- and you can just seethe pleasure he had. - can you determine whichlight bulb is being switched? - things actually caninterbreed, although for these twoin particular, it seems like the mechanicswould get kind of-- - keep playing aroundwith these numbers and see what kind of colorsi can come up with. - if this does notblow your mind, then you have no emotion.
- had a feeling this crowd wouldappreciate euler's identity. but as i mentioned,it's not just videos. this right over here, this isour computer science platform. it's a place where you can go,you can code. and our whole goal here is,you know, for all of uswho have ever programmed, we always got into it saying,"hey, i want to create a game. i want to create a screensaver.i want to create an animation." and then we just learnedwhat it'd take to build
that animation, which isn'thow it's traditionally taught. traditionally, it's like, "hey, this is a for loop.this is a variable." and so we really wanted to givethat creative spirit that i think all programmersoriginally got into it for to the learner,and they can have profiles, and they can build,and they can get peer feedback based onwhat they're doing. this is what most of our teamis focused on.
i guess you could call thisthe meat of khan academy. it's our interactivemath experience. and the idea here isa student can go, log on, they'll take a diagnostic,and all this is free. it's all available. and based on howthe student's performing, it'll build a statistical modelof what they know and don't know,and then based on that, guide them through exercises,give them feedback.
if they have a teacheror a parent, it can give the teacheror the parent reports on how they're doing, and obviously, a whole seriesof game mechanics to hopefully keep the studentsas motivated as possible. so this is where we areright now. khan academy is being usedin some way, shape, or form in almost every countryon the planet. over 300,000 educators
have registeredand are using it in some way. 10 million unique studentsevery month are using the site. and they've doneover 2 billion exercises, and you saw a little sample ofwhat those exercises look like. but before kind of going moreinto where were going, i will take a step back,and i can sense that many of you allare familiar with this. but i'll givea little bit of texture
of how all of thisgot started. and it's excitingto speak here, because it all got started,frankly, not too far from here. if you rewindto summer of 2004, so almost exactlyten years ago, i was a yearout of business school. i had just gotten married, and i was based in bostonat the time. and i had a bunch of familyvisiting me from new orleans.
that's where i wasborn and raised, as well. and it just cameout of conversation that one of my cousins,nadia-- her mom told me that nadiawas having trouble with math. and so when nadiacame into the room, i asked her,"what's going on?" she said, "well, i took a-- you know, i've beena decent student. i've been gettingb-pluses, a-minuses."
but there was a placement examat the end of sixth grade, and it had unit conversionon it-- you know, ounces to gallons,miles to kilometers-- and according to nadia,she just, you know, couldn't process it. she's just not goodat unit conversion. and so i told her, "look, i think you could easilyovercome that." i think she thought it waskind of an empty pep talk.
so i said, "no, no, seriously.well, if you're up for it, how about when you go backto new orleans, we'll get on the phoneand whatever else we can use and i'll tutor you?"and she was up for it. so she went back,and so starting august of 2004, every day after schoolfor her, every day after work for me,got on the phone. we eventually figured out a wayto see each other's scrawls on-- yahoo! instant messenger hada little doodle functionality
at the time. and so we juststarted working, and, you know,the first month was tough. she essentiallyhad psyched herself out. she had convinced herself thatshe's just not good at math. but slowly but surely,she started to engage, she started to really kind ofown and tackle the problems. and then something clicked, and she not only gotunit conversion,
she started to actually geta little bit ahead of the curve of where you would expecta seventh grade student to be. and at that point,i became what i call a tiger cousin.[laughter] so i called up her school,and i said, "you know, i really thinknadia rahman should retake thatplacement exam from last year." they said, "who are you?"[laughter] i pointed out thati'm her cousin.
and somewhat surprising, they did allow her to retakethe placement exam, and she went from being trackedin the remedial class to not just the average class,but into the advanced class. and, you know, and i couldgo on and on about nadia. i mean, that same nadia, justto fast-forward a little bit, who, you know,at age 12, thought she couldn't getunit conversion, by age 14,was taking calculus
at the universityof new orleans. and that's somethingthat we just-- you know, and i've seenmore and more the more that khan academyhas grown. but as--rewind backto fall of 2004, i was excited. it was this kind of very smallthing that i did with my cousin. it seemed to reallyhelp her out, so i started workingwith her younger brothers.
then a few things happenedover the next two years. the first is i was an analyst at a small investment firm,and-- very small, it was me,my boss, and his dog, and-- [laughter]the dog was the chief economist. and we--[laughter] we actually had cards printed. and his wife-- my boss' wife, not the--
became a professorat stanford law school. so we moved the firmout here. and so i was now basedout here in palo altoand then moved to mountain view. and the other thingthat happened is word got around in the familythat free tutoring was going on. so i was workingevery day after work with about 10 or 15 cousins,family friends all over the country.
and to help scale that upa little bit, you know,i was working with-- even when i was workingwith nadia, but then especially as i started workingwith more and more cousins, i saw that even the onesthat were pretty good students, they all had gapsin their knowledge. and i wanted themto be able to practice more, and for me, as their tutor,to see what they knew and what they didn't know,
so i started writing a little--a quizzing piece of software, a web-based thing that wouldgenerate problems for them. as they masteredone concept, it would move them onto the next one. and that was actuallythe genesis of khan academy. it was literally--i remember the day, i was like, "oh,what do i call this thing?" and i looked for, like,five or six domain names. couldn't--and all of themwere taken.
i'm like,"what about khan academy?" and it was available. and--but at that time, it hadnothing to do with videos. but then you fast-forwardto fall of 2006, i was at a dinner partyright here in san mateo, and, you know, i wasshowing this software off to a bunchof my friends. and they all knewi had this crazy project with my cousins.
and the host,i give him full credit, zuli ramzan, he says, "well, you know, sal,this is cool and everything, but how are you actually scalingup your actual tutorials?" and i said, "you know, i'm actually having troublewith that." when, you know--what i was ableto do one-on-one with nadia, i can't do when there'sfive people on the phone. or sometimes i'd cover somethingwith one cousin,
and then the next weeki'm covering it again with another cousin,and i wish somehow that they were therefor it the first time. and so zuli says, "well, look,you know, i've got an idea. why don't you make someof your tutorials as videos and upload 'em on to youtubefor your cousins?" and i immediately said,"no, that's a horrible idea. youtube is for catsplaying piano." "it is notfor serious mathematics."
but i went homethat weekend, got over the ideathat it wasn't my idea. and i--[laughter] and i decidedto give it a shot. and so i made those first fewvideos on least common multiple, adding fractionswith unlike denomin-- just topics that i sawa lot of my cousins were having questions about. and i--you know, after i madeabout 20 or 30 of 'em
over the next month,i started telling my cousins, "well, you know, why don't youwatch these for review, and then when we get onthe phone, you can dig deeper? and then based on that,i can even make more videos based on what questionsi'm getting." and after about a month of them,i asked for their feedback, and they somewhat famouslyand backhandedly told me that they liked me betteron youtube than in person. and, you know,i think that--
and that is true, but i think it bears--it's worth parsing what they were sayingand what they weren't saying. they weren't sayingthat they didn't appreciate having me in their life,taking interest, being there to answertheir questions, to mentor them,to coach them. they, i believe,did appreciate that. but what they were saying is,
is that the first timeyou're learning something-- and we've all experienced this--it's actually really stressful. and the last thing you needis even a well-wisher waiting for youto understand it. "do you get this yet?" you're afraid thatyou're gonna waste their time. if you're in ninth grade and you forgot a little bitof your fifth grade decimals, you're embarrassed.
you don't want to admit it,even to a well-wisher. but now, with the videos,no one's going to judge them. they can access itwhenever, wherever, repeat as much as necessary,so i just kept going. i made more and moreand more videos. and then it soonbecame clear that people who are notmy cousins were watching. [laughter]and maybe even a few-- actually,who here was--
watched as earlyas, like, 2007? anybody?okay, there's a few. so y'allare not my cousins. that's--so y'all were someof the early adopters of it. but--and, you know,it was neat for me to just seethe viewership grow, but then people started writingcomments below the videos. and some of the comments werejust a simple "thank you," and even thatwas a big deal.
i don't know how much timey'all spend on youtube. most of the commentsare not "thank you." [laughter]they are-- they are somewhat edgierthan-- but then--but then, you know, people-- i started to get,"hey, i passed my algebra exam because of this video,"or, "this is a video after retiringfrom the military, i'm able to go back to collegeand reengage in mathematics."
i remember, this was either 2--i think it was mid-2007, i got an e--kind ofa youtube message from a mother, and i broughtmy wife over to read it. it was really incredible. she said her sonshad a learning disability. they were falling behind, and these videos were the onlythings that were allowing them to keep upwith their class, and because of that,her and her entire family
were praying for me andmy entire family every night. and you got to imaginewhat a strange feeling that was. i was an analystat a hedge fund. i wasn't used to peoplepraying for me. it was very-- so--at least in that way. and so i just kept going. and then you fast-forwardto 2009, you know, the viewership keptgrowing and growing and growing.
by fall of 2009,i frankly had trouble focusing on my day job,and, you know, we-- my wife and i, we hada little bit of savings, essentiallyfor a down payment on a house. and--but, you know, she sawthat this is where my mind was, this is wheremy passion was. i start--you know, we gota little bit of press. and i said,"well, you know, it feels likethere's something real here."
i set it upas a not-for-profit. and, you know,i think whenever-- when you do anythingentrepreneurial, whether it's for profitor not for profit, you almost have to start from a somewhat delusionallyoptimistic point of view. and for me, it was like,you know, look, the social return on investmenthere is off the charts. you know, just me,i can do this,
but if i could havesome more people to help me, we could build outthe software, we could reach moreand more people in the world, and so i was like,"surely someone will fund this." and, you know,so i quit my job. this was august of 2009, and likemost entrepreneurial stories, it doesn't necessarily work outthe way you planned. and so those first few months,i probably--
you know, i probablyhad conversations with on the orderof 20, 30 foundations and different groups, and there was a lot of, "hey,this is really interesting, but it's not quitewhat we do." it's kind ofa strange not-for-profit, where it's, you know, one guyessentially making videos, at that point in time. and you fast-forwardto may of 2010,
now nine months have passed. i'm starting to getpretty paranoid about this. my son had been born,our expenses had grown, we had just started rentinga house here in mountain view. and i was questioning, you know,what have i done? i gave upa really good career. i even, in some weak points,started updating my resume. and i was gettingsome donations. i was getting--you know,there were $5, $10 donations.
they were amounting to, youknow, about $100, $200 a month. if it was any of you,thank you. but it--obviously, we werestill digging into savings, but then may of 2010, all of a sudden,a $10,000 donation comes in. so i see who it is.her name's ann doerr. she's based in palo alto. so i immediatelyemail her back. and i said,"thank you so much
for this incredibly generousdonation. this isthe largest donation that khan academyhas ever received. if we werea physical school, you would now have a buildingnamed after you"... which is, i think,quite inexpensive. and ann immediatelyemails back. she's like,"well, i'm local. i've been usingyour site myself.
i've been using itwith my daughters. i'd love to meet and find outmore about what you're doing." and so i think it wastwo or three days later, we met in downtown palo altoon university avenue at an indian buffet restaurant, and over lunch, ann asks me,"so what's your goal here?" and i told her, you know,when you fill out the paperwork to be a not-for-profitwith the irs, there's a part of the formthat says "mission:"
and there's, like,a line and a half. and i filled out"a free world-class education for anyone anywhere." and ann said,"that's ambitious." "how do you see yourselfdoing that?" and i told her, "i don't know.this is a mission statement. i don't expect to justcheck it off tomorrow and then move on to health careor something." "but i think we can makea lot of progress here."
and so i showed her--i hada big stack of these letters and testimonialsthat people were sending. i showed her the viewershipfrom the videos. i had all these screenshotsfrom the software that i had been--and i was stillworking on for my cousins, the teacher tool kitthat had been used at a couple of summer campsin this area. and so ann says, "you know,you've been able to do a surprising amount
with, it seems like,very little resources. i have one question. how are yousupporting yourself?" and in as proud of a wayas possible, i said, "i'm not."[laughter] and so ann kind ofprocesses that, and we part ways. and ten minutes later,i'm driving into my driveway here in mountain view,
and i get a text message,and it's from ann. and it says, "you really needto be supporting yourself. i've just wired you$100,000." so that was a good day. that was--[laughter] and frankly,it just got-- you know, the--crazierand crazier series of events. about a month later,this is summer of 2010, i was running a littlesummer camp in portola valley
at a middle school,a very small-- it was me and a friend.we were-- and it was reallyaround this idea of, "hey, i'm this virtual guy. you can get lectureson demand now. what could you now dowith a physical classroom?" i never viewedthis virtual stuff as somehow beinga replacement. i always viewed it as liberatingthe physical classroom.
and so the summer camp wasa way to experiment with that. and we had kids doing dialogueand simulations and making projects, and we werein the middle of one-- it was a bunchof middle school students-- it was a simulationthat i came up with. we had six kidsplaying a game of risk, while the other 20traded securities based on the outcomeof the game of risk. [laughter]it's a good game.
and whilethat was happening, all of a sudden, i start gettingtext messages from ann, which you could imaginei now take very seriously. and so--and it was actuallyhard to read, 'cause they were disjointed, and it wasn't clearwhich came before which, but they readalong the lines of, "i'm at the aspen ideas festivalin aspen, colorado. i'm in the main pavilion.bill gates is onstage.
last five minutestalking about khan academy." so i didn't knowwhat to make of this. so i immediatelyboot the nearest seventh grader off of a computer.[laughter] and i start lookingfor some evidence of this event that annis talking about. and it tookabout 20 minutes, and i did eventually findthe footage. it was literallywalter isaacson,
head of the aspen institute,onstage with bill gates. and he asks bill--i call him bill now-- he asks bill,"what are you excited about?" and he just randomly startsgoing, "well, there's this site, khan academy.i use it with my kids. i use it myself," and he wenton and on and on about it. i mean, he clearly spenta significant amount of time with the site. and you could imaginehow i felt.
you know, at first,this just felt like a dream. this was surreal. but then the very next impulse, i actually becamereally nervous. i was like,those videos were for nadia... [laughter]not bill gates. and frankly,i didn't-- you know, i went homethat evening. i told my wife about it.
a couple of my friendsheard about it as, you know,they emailed me or called me. and then i--it--i was confused. you know,what do i do now? what's the protocol?do i call him? [laughter]i'm guessing he's not listed. and they left me in that limbofor about two weeks. two weeks later,i'm in my walk-in closet, about to record a video.
and--[laughter] and cell phone rings,and it's a seattle number. i answer it."hello." "hi, this is larry cohen.i'm bill gates' chief of staff. you might have heardthat bill's a fan." "yeah, i've heard that."[laughter] "and if you're freein the next few days or weeks, we'd love to fly youup to seattle and find out more about how wemight be able to work together
or potentially supportwhat you're doing." and i was lookingat my calendar for the month-- completely blank.[laughter] i said, yeah,maybe next wednesday after cutting my nails,maybe do some laundry, but i think i can--i think i can meet bill gates. and so we hadthe meeting. and it was actually very similarto the meeting with ann.
and rightaround the same time, some folks from googlereached out. and i've tried to seeif there was any connection, but these were allindependent events. some folks from googlereached out, and they said, "hey,i don't know if you know, but a lot of the team herehas been using khan academy with our children.we love the site. we'd love to think about,you know, what you could do
if you had more resources. so, you know, what would you doif you had-- what would you doif you had $2 million?" and i said, you know,"is this an open question?" buy new pants or something.no. but i--very, very similarto that conversation, so all of a sudden, 2010, it all--you know,all the stars aligned. and the gates foundationand google were the first
to kind of really allowkhan academy to becomea real organization so that we could start hiringour first-- the beginnings of our team and then get office space,et cetera, et cetera. and what we immediately started,i guess you could say, investing in or working on was the interactive math partof khan academy. and what you see here, this iswhat we call our knowledge map,
and it's no longerour primary navigation interface on khan academy. it was back when itwas being used for my cousins. but it's still there. but we--i like to show thisbecause it shows how we thinkabout mathematics. so each of those circles thereare a concept in math, and the ones at the topare basic mathematics. they're things likebasic arithmetic--
one plus one equals two. and as you go furtherand further down, it goes all the way to collegelevel statistics and calculus, and our goal is to just keepgoing on and on and on and eventually intoother subjects, as well. you saw, the videos are muchbroader than just math. and the idea is,once a student shows mastery in a basic concept, it then moves them onto a more advanced concept.
and those lines showthat dependency. and at some level,that's common sense. that's the way you would playa video game. you beat--you keep trying on level one until you beat the level oneboss, and you go to level two. it's the way you would learna martial art. you keep practicingthe white belt skills, and only once you've masteredwhite belt and you pass the test,then you become a yellow belt.
but what we always point out--this is not the way that a traditional school modelis architected. a traditional school model-- you group students together,usually by age, and then later by ageand perceived ability, but usually by age, and then you move them togetherat a set pace. and what happens is, normally in class, most of itis the teacher lecturing.
and then students go home,they do homework, then the next dayyou review homework a little bit and maybe geta little bit more lecture. then you go back,do a little more homework, and then that cycle--homework,lecture, homework, lecture, homework, lecture--continuesfor about two or three weeks, and then you have an exam. and let's say that exam--let's say the unit that we were working onwas basic exponents,
and on that exam, let's sayi get a 75%, you get a 90%, you get a 60%, and even though the examidentified those gaps-- clear, the personwho got the 60% didn't know 40%of the material-- even though it identified it--even the "a" student who didn't know 5%or 10% of the material-- even though the assessmentidentified those gaps, the whole class then moves onto the next concept,
something that probably buildson those gaps, say, negative exponentsor logarithms. and to put itin perspective, on some level,how absurd this is, imagine if we did other thingsin our life that way, say, home building. so you bringthe contractor in, and you say, "well, we've beentold we have three weeks to build a foundation.do what you can."
so the contractor doeswhat they can-- maybe it rains, maybethe supplies don't show up, maybe some of the workersfall sick. and after three weeks,you get the inspector. the inspector comes and says,"well, you know, the concrete's still wet around there. that part'snot quite up to code. i'll give it an 80%." so great,that's a b-minus or c-plus.
let's build the first floor.[laughter] same process, "contractor,we have another three weeks. do what you can." after three weeks, inspectorcomes, "hey, that's a 90%." "okay, great.let's build the second floor." and you keep doing that--third floor, fourth floor. and then all of a sudden,while you're building the fourth floor,the whole thing collapses. and the reaction that peopletend to have,
or if we have the same reactionthat people often have in education, they say, "oh,maybe it was a bad contractor," or, "maybe we neededbetter inspection or more inspection,"and who knows? maybe that had some partto do with it. but the real thingthat is going on is that the processwas absurd. you wereartificially constraining how long you hadto work on something
pretty much ensuringa variable outcome, pretty much ensuringyou were going to have gaps. then you take the troubleof identifying those gaps, but once you've identified them,you just completely ignore them, and then you move on. and so what we say,instead of holding fixed how longand when you learn something and pretty much ensuringa variable outcome-- "a," "b," "c," "d," "f"--do it the other way around.
hold fixed that every studentshould master basic exponents, should getto that "a" level, and then the constraintthat gets loosened, the variable constraint, is when and how longthey get to learn the material. right when we started, some local school districts,los altos, especially, but then shortly after,mountain view and other local school districts
and then many around the countryand world, actually, started saying, "well,how could we use khan academy in a classroom?" and you know,our point of view is, well, this could free upthis whole "one pace fits all." you could have every studentlearning at their own pace, mastering concepts. you know, we had already hadsome dashboards for teachers, and we wereworking on more.
and the idea--and this is--this is kind of-- we started seeing this behaviorby observing these classrooms-- is that, you know, even thoughevery student is learning at their own pace, it wasn't an isolated kind oflearning experience. in fact, it becamemore interactive where, you know, this dashboardthat we have for teachers kind of encapsulateshow a classroom could run, where each of these columnsare one of those concepts
that you sawon the knowledge map. each of these rowsare a student in the class. and then the depth of blue is the system's sense of howwell the student understands it. and the red students are flaggedthat this student seems stuck. and so as a teacher,i could walk in, i could say, "oh, look,a lot of the students seem fine with square rootsof perfect squares, but there's a couple ofstudents who are having trouble
with solid geometry." either i could do a very focusedintervention with those students while letting every otherstudent learn at their own pace, or even better, i can get someof the peers to help each other. maybe some of the studentswho have mastered it already. look at the added benefitof you learn it even deeper when you explain it. this is some datafrom a local charter school up in oakland, california.
and you know, this is,you know-- and i'll caveat this. i don't want to give anyonethe sense that you can just dropkhan academy into a classroom, and all of a sudden,the butterflies will fly and the flowers will bloom. it's a tool,and like all tools, it's going to be as goodas how it's being used. and, you know, the creditto what i'm about to talk to you
is really--the bulk of itgoes to the teaching staff, especially their head teacher,peter mcintosh. but what was exciting--you know, this was a-- this is a ninth gradealgebra classroom. it's a charter schoolin oakland, california. they're getting studentsfrom the local school district. many of these students, two, three, four yearsbehind grade level. some of these studentsdidn't know
their multiplication tables,didn't know basic arithmetic. and what happened here is-- you know, this is something thatpeter mcintosh always believed, is that the way to address thatis to let these students, even if they're in algebra, make sure that they havethat strong foundation and try to get themto own their own learning, set their own goals,learn at their own pace. and he was just looking fora tool to allow him to do that.
and so this classroomand actually even the year before, even,this slide, in 2010, this classroomwas in the 22nd percentile in the state of california amongst ninth gradealgebra classrooms. and then this past year, they were justin the 99th percentile i think there's onlynine classrooms in the state that outperform them.
and what's been neatabout this-- i mean, obviously, you know,everyone always talks about test scores, and clearlythe test scores were good. but what peter mentions is,"look, the test scores-- that's all nice,and math learning is nice," but he views thatas really a pretext, that the more powerful thingthat happened is these were studentswho came in disengaged thinking that they weren't goodin math, like my cousin,
like nadia,and they were very passive. "hey, teacher,tell me how to do it. what do i have to do? do i haveto memorize that for the exam?" they would look at a problemfor five seconds and say, "oh, i don't know how todo that. i'm not good in math." but by allowing themto move at their own pace and by allowing themto set their own goals and reallykind of showing them that mastery is important,it's not enough
to just superficiallyunderstand something, it gave them ownershipover their own learning. and when you gave them ownershipover their own learning, it changed their mind-setsfor the rest of their life. and that ownership isprobably a more important skill than any of the algebra,and that pays dividends, not justin the other classes, but obviously as you gointo careers and whatever else. now, everythingthat i've talked about so far
has been kind of a-- well, this has beenthe classroom environment, but obviously,out of the 10 million students, not all of themare in classrooms. like, 9 million are justindependent learners. and this next videois a good example of just how much potentialthere is out there if we just let peopletap into it. - so i actually dropped outof high school twice,
both duringmy freshman year. and when i eventuallycame back, i was put in, sort of, lowerlevel math and science classes because i was so behind. then i discoveredkhan academy, and i was able to skiptwo years' worth of math just throughusing the site. and i came into school,i took the exam with students who had beenenrolled in the class all year,
and i was actually able to getthe highest or the second highest scoresin the class. so for me, khan academyreally changed the trajectory of my entire life, because without it, i don't think i ever reallywould have been inspired to learn and to love mathand to love science. i ended up graduatingas the valedictorian and going on to princeton,
where i'm nowa computer science major. and i'm absolutely passionateabout learning, about computers,about math, about science. and without khan academy, i don't think that these thingswould really matter to me the way that they do today. so i'd just like to saya massive thank-you to everyone at khan academy,sal and the team. please keep doing the good workthat you're doing
because you're reallychanging lives. - so--[applause] so this actually goteven more interesting. so when we found out that charlie isa computer science major, we said, "you know,we have internships." [laughter]and so he interviewed for the internships, and he didvery well in the interview, actually, so well that a coupleof people who interviewed him
said, like, "who is this guy?you know, he's really just rocking all the roundsof the interviews." and i said, you know,"why are you surprised? we educated him." but he actually got offered,accepted the interview, and now he's interningwith us this summer. and he's actually here, so--yeah. you want to stand up? actually, charlie, you want to--yeah, yeah, yeah. this is actually the first timethat i'm like,
"wait, charlie's in the room.i should, like"-- i'm always--actually,all the people at khan academy, why don't you stand up,just so everyone-- we have a bunch of interns andnew folks that we all invited. so as you can--[applause] as you can tell, i always liketo pack the audience with friendly peopleso that i can maximize the-- so this is somethingthat some of you all
might have heard about. college board,makers of the s.a.t., about two months ago announcedthat they're gonna create a new s.a.t. in 2016that's more aligned with what studentsactually learn in school and is more correlatedwith being prepared for college. but as part of that,they finally recognized what everyone has alwaysrecognized for many decades now, is that there's beenthis perceived
and maybe actual inequityin preparing for these typesof high-stakes tests. you have this wholemultibillion-dollar industry around test prepthat the middle class and upper-middle classcan afford, but the people who need itthe most can't. and so they decided-- they've never done anythinglike this--to partner with us to create free test prep.
and what's excitingabout this on both sidesof the relationship is, you know, the reason whythey partnered with us is because they didn't--they wanted to do test prep on a much deeper level. it's historically beenassociated with familiarity with exams, here aresome test-taking strategies, here's how you guess,here's how you cram. but they recognizethat we're not about that.
you know, we're literallyabout building your foundations, mastering concepts,not somehow covering your superficial weaknesses. and so what we'regonna be building together-- and it's a very,very close relationship-- is, you know,not just free test prep, but literally the best test prepthat happens to be free, and not justabout familiarity with exams or what you do in the weekor two before the exam.
but wherever you are,however you start, whatever age you are,we can get you to whatever knowledge statethat you want to get to. we also have a partnershipwith nasa, which i thought would be funto mention here. [applause]this is-- so there's a whole seriesof content on khan academy now, simulations and videos on,you know--
and i had done a whole serieson cosmology even before, but now, we havesome real nasa content on, you know, how to--you know, mission to mars, how do you figure out how fara star away-- a star isand things like that. so there's a, you know,very, very exciting partnership. obviously,to some degree-- i mean, i was just speakingto the folks here, you know, nasa's mission is--you know,
it's obviouslyabout exploring space, but it's also about educating,especially in stem, to make sure that we havethe talent so that we canexplore space. so everythingi've talked about so far has been the worldthat most of us live in, the english-speaking world,the developed world. many of you allmight be thinking, well, you know, whatabout the rest of the planet?
maybe they could even benefitmore from something like this. and, you know,as early as 2007, there were folkstaking khan academy on, you know, the videosor sometimes even the software, and taking themall over the world on thumb drivesand sometimes on computers and maybe sometimessetting up broadband, and all of these arepictures of those other groups, other not-for-profits,other ngos,
sometimes governments, takingkhan academy out to the world. so these are all kids usingkhan academy in random places. and they're eachpretty incredible stories, but probablythe most incredible one is the oneon the top right. you know, i used to give talkslike this and joke that, you know, "maybe one daythis will be used in mongolia," just imagining the furthestplace on the planet, and then a few months later,i get a letter from mongolia.
and it's the young womanon the top right. her name's zaya, and, you know,she had a-- an emailand then a link to a video, and her video is very similarto charlie's, saying how she likedkhan academy. it really helped her in math. and it was--it was a cool video, but i immediately assumedthat she must be middle class or upper-middle class.her english was quite good.
she had accessto the internet and a computer. but then i read the textof the email more carefully, and it turned out that there wasa group of engineers from cisco systems that were usingtheir vacation time to go to mongoliaand set up computer labs with broadband in orphanages. and so what you seein the top right there, those are the actualorphan girls using khan academy,
and zaya was--is--wasone of those orphan girls. and that, by itself,was, like, you know, somethingout of a science fiction book, but it got even more incredible,because zaya then went on to become one ofthe top contributors of content in the mongolian language. and so it's, you know--i guess it's very similar to charlie's story that, youknow, hopefully, she benefitted. then she's able to contributeto help the next generation
of learners here. we're, actively, to be ableto reach more and more people around the world,translating the whole platform, not just the videos,but the exercises, the dashboards, everythingto the world's major languages. this is the spanish versionof khan academy, which we launchedin this past fall. we've recently launchedbrazilian portuguese. we're launching soonturkish and french,
and our goal over time is to do all of the world'smajor languages. and to get a feelingfor what some of this-- at least the video contentfeels like in other languages, i'll show youthis next video. [woman speaking spanish] [woman speaking french] [woman speaking mandarin] [man speaking hindi-urdu]
[man speaking arabic] [man speaking farsi] [man speaking hebrew] [woman speaking swahili] [woman speaking xhosa] [man speaking turkish] [man speaking portuguese] - i watch thatwhenever i get lazy. so these are just more picturesof khan academy.
i mean, we get sent thesealmost every day of pictures all over the worldof people using khan academy. and, you know,what i always tell folks-- i tell this to the teamalmost on a weekly basis. i tell it to our supporters. i tell itto all our stakeholders, and once again, you know,you saw some of our team. we're now--you know, even in the summer,we're 60 full-time people
and 20-something interns.we've had hundreds, actually thousands of peoplehelp volunteer in terms of help subtitleand go out into the field. obviously, there's hundredsof thousands of teachers part of this,and what i tell everyone who's kind of involved or not involved even,is that, you know, you hear the term once-in-a-lifetime opportunity a lot, but in my mind,it's much more than that.
it's actually much closer to a once-in-a-millenniumopportunity where, you know, we're clearly at thisinflection point in history, probably one that's biggerthan the printing press, bigger thanthe industrial revolution, and probably would rivalthe advent of writing or the adventof agriculture. and whenever you havethese new inflection points, it raises new problemsbut also new opportunities.
and to take it--to solve those problems, it also kind of brings aboutnew institutions. and it was kind ofa delusional dream when i was a guy operating ina closet here in mountain view, but now it seemsa little bit less delusional, that our hope is thatkhan academy can be an institution that,over the next decade, 50 years, you know,100 years, 500 years, can take this thingcalled education
and, you know, this thing that'sfundamentally been scarce, that's fundamentally beenthe determinant between those who succeedand those who don't and make itmore ubiquitous, like clean drinking waterand shelter, and really,just a fundamental human right. thank you. - so we have timefor a few questions. if you have a question,please raise your hand.
wait for the microphone,and when you get it, stand up. - i have a question back here,sal. hello. hi, sal.- oh, yes. - so i have a questionabout the disconnect between whatwe're teaching people... - mm-hmm.- and what we-- what people actually doin the real world. - yeah.- and so one of the restrictions is, i'm sure you well know,is that we have to have things
that we can measurewhen we're in school. so we havethis sort of monitory, how do you decideif you've succeeded or failed? but when you gointo the real world, it's quite a different story,and you well know that, right? - yeah.- and depending on your profession, you have to havesome very different tools. and many times,it's social tools,
rather thanthe kind of educational tools that we learnin our schools. i'm sure you're well awareof this, and i just wanted to hear youspeak about it. - yeah.no, you're absolutely right. you're absolutely right,and, you know, the way i think about it-- and i've written a little bitabout this in my book-- is, you know, education isthis huge spectrum of things.
that, you know, at this endright over here, i guess you could thinkof your most rote things-- this isyour multiplication tables and your grammarand your vocabulary-- and then as you go furtherand further in this direction, it becomesmore and more open-ended. this is creativity.this is communication skills. this isdealing with complexity. and, you know,for better or for worse,
probably because of exactlythe reason you point out, because of its measurability, the traditional systemhas been focused right here. it's--you know,not just on rote things. it's donesome more open-ended things, but it's, for the most part,this spectrum right over here, kind of squeezing out timefor some of the stuff that might beeven more important, but it's very hardto measure.
and so, you know,when we envision what the schoolof the future should look like, is you tackle a lotof what i would call your foundational,your core learning-- and even there, i agree,it's completely up for debate. should you be learning calculusinstead of statistics? should you be learning,you know, civics and law? it's not partof the traditional curriculum. but that core foundationyou can get more efficiently
through something like-- through something likea khan academy-- learning at your own pace,learning at your own time. but what the goal is,is it really should free up most of the class day, mostof your learning experience, to be focused on being able to,you know, deal-- you know, work on a project,do socratic dialogue, dealing with complexity,whatever it might be. and frankly,those are the things
that i think peopleshould be evaluated on. you know, where are you? and if, in my mind,the credential of the future is going to look like--and i mean, the reality is, it's alreadythe credential of today, it's justnever been recognized. yes, your test scores and stuff,they're, you know-- they're a measureof your critical thinking skills and your reading comprehensionskills and whatever else,
but that's only one partof who you are. the more important parts areyour portfolio of work that you've created. so you know, right now, ifyou're an architect or designer, they walk aroundwith a portfolio. i think--in fact, i thinkthat it is already true of almost any career. i've told, you know,some of my cousins who are now,you know, in college,
i said, "look, you know,get good grades, have a--get a good degree,but the work you create, document it, because that'sgoing to impress people more." even when we're hiringat khan academy, we're more impressedif we can see people's work. and then the other aspect ispeer feedback. what did your peersthink of you, what did your leadersthink of you, what did your subordinatesthink of you
when they worked with you? so i completely agree that the hope is not to just kind ofget into this reductionist, you know,core skills world, but to let--but if we can tacklethat more efficiently to broadenhow we evaluate people. - i have a follow-on questionthat directly relates to what you just said. you're going international,
which means totallycross-cultural. - yeah.- and you're creating an international,a global perspective on what constitutesan educated person. have you been lookinginto the cultures of mongolia and all of asia, which arelong-established cultures... - yeah.- and considering the implications culturally? and i don't meanon a religious sense.
- yeah, yeah.no, absolutely. so, you know,i think the general idea is, you know, the good thingis, math is not that, you know, different from-- you know, obviously, they mightuse different notation, different words for things,but there's a lot of agreement. that's not a lot--it doesbecome more of an issue as we go into subjectivesubjects, especially history. and we even--you know, i did a--
a few years ago,there was an article that came out about--you know, the cia literally published documentsabout their intervention in chile to kind of-- with the allende regime, and ithought this was fascinating. i thought, well,this would make a good video. so i literally wentto the primary documents, talked about it,uploaded it, trying to be as objectiveas possible,
telling people, "look, you know,everyone's got a bias, so be skeptical."and immediately, a lot of americans would say,"hey, this was a good video." some said, "oh, you could havebeen a little bit-- you know, it was the cold war.you could have been-- give a little bit more creditto the context." but then some chilean studentscame on and said, "you are an imperialist pig.you have whitewashed history. my uncle diedin that intervention.
this iswhat actually happened." and my initial reaction waslike, "wow, you know, this didn't happenon the algebra videos." and it also didn't happenin the history classes that i was a part of,growing up. but then the question is,well, why didn't it happen in the history classes?'cause in a traditional-- you know,in a traditional history class, you know, room like this, theprofessor says what they say,
and people take notes,and they kind of feed it back to the professoron the exam. and so i thinkone of the beauty-- one of the beautiful thingsabout the internet is how transparent it is. and you can't get awaywith extreme bias, because someone's goingto call you on that. with that said, i think it'sgoing to be, especially history, you know, there's a whole setof kind of hot-button issues
throughout the worldthat we're-- you know, we don't want to--over the long-term, we definitely don't wantto shy away from them because we think people--youknow, this will help the world if more peopleare just aware of-- but we want to do itin an objective and as kind ofa respectful way as possible. - i'm a fairly new parent. i havea 2 1/2-year-old daughter,
and she loves youtubeon the ipad, and we have to dole it outas a reward for certain things to herto get her to eat and to do other things.[laughter] so screen time's a big issuefor parents. and then it dawned on me, whyam i hooking her into youtube? i should be, now, hooking herinto khan academy. - you're a tiger dad.- [laughs] so i wanted to hear any storiesof the youngest kids
who are using khan academyand what age they start off. and then also,if you yourself have kids and if you just tell 'em,hey, go and-- - yes.- go get help from the internet with your homework.- yes. so i do have kids.i have a five-year-old, a three-year-old,and a negative three-month-old. a few people will--[applause] it's not hard to do.anyway...
the--so, i mean, so my view on screen time, i mean, a lot of people ask meabout this, and it actually--it was funny. i was once in a meetingof kind of these ed leaders, and bill gates was there. and you know, a bunch of peoplestarted going on the whole screen time issueand they're like, "is it healthy for kidsto just stare at something?
you know, even ifthey're learning a lot, is it just healthy for themto stare at it for, you know, an hour at a time,even if they're"-- and then bill gates-- i mean, i don't know if he meantto be funny, but he says,"you mean like a book?" and they're like,"oh, that's a good point." you know, but i thinkthere's a real thing there. like, i mean, i--and for me,i don't think of it from,
like, what is the limit? you know, what'sthe maximum time or minimum time or anything like that. i think of it much more of,like, if it's-- as long as the kid is gettingthe other important aspects of their life,then things are good. if they're spendinga couple of hours a day outside getting to run around, if theyare getting a couple hours a day interacting with peers, youknow, or maybe their same age
or aboveand below a little bit, if they're gettingseveral hours a day where they're havingquality time with a parent just playing and imaginingand doing things, then, you know--then i think it's fine. it's--but if they haveno screen time, but they also don't getto go outside and they don't get quality time,then i think it's-- you know, that's the worstof all the worlds.
so i think that's the--you know,as long as they get a broad mix,and once again, you know, when we imagine what the schoolsof the future look like, when we seethe best implementations, the kids are outsidemore than they were in kind ofa non-technology enabled world. they're interactingwith each other more than they didin a traditional classroom where they were kind of just,you know, listening
and taking notes. in terms of youngest, i mean, you know, i would say,right now, khan academy, definitelywe've seen it resonate well with kind of mid to lateelementary school. we have just launchedsome early learning content. i will say that, you know, it'sstill leveraging the interface of the stuff that's being usedby middle school students and high school students,so it's not perfect.
and we are--you know, we just brought on some incredible peopleto really think about it in kind of a mobile environment,'cause obviously, especially for, you know,folks your daughter's age, you know,but every now and then, i've encountered, you know,a parent who's-- you know, has a five-year-oldor something who uses it. but i mean,that makes me insecure, 'cause my son wasn't on it,and you know--
and anyway, i'm trying notto project too much. we were at--actually,at whole foods the other day, and someone recognized me--me and my son-- he likes taking ridesin elevators, so we were, like,on our fifth ride. and someone said,"oh, khan academy." he's like,"is this your son?" i was like,"yeah, this is my son." - he was like, "oh, you must beso good at math."
[laughter]"what's four plus three?" and he's like, "six." i'm going,"no. oh, no." so, yeah.so i don't know. i think i'm gonna have my ownset of issues to deal with. - hi.- oh. oh, yes. - yeah, all the way back.- yes. - i was wondering if there wereany plans for khan academy to be adding curriculumto learn new languages.
- hmm. yeah. no, i mean,the simple answer is no. i mean, it's interesting.we were just chatting with someof the duolingo folks. i don't knowif you all are familiar. i mean, they're a great appfor learning languages. but no, we don't.i mean, i-- you know, i've got ideasfor language learning, and, i mean, i'll tell yousome of my crazy ideas. you know, setting upskype buddies
with, you know,kids of different ages-- i might try to set it upfor my kids in the near future-- where, you know, a kid in indiaor a kid in mexico, where they spend some timein english, some timein the other language and try to solve problemstogether. i've even thought that,you know, the best foreign languageinstruction--and it actually-- in fact, it definitelywould be more economical--
would, you know, just send themto a country for a month, and they will come backhaving known the language. so yes--but no, we aren't probably gonna doforeign language anytime soon. yes.- hi, so i spend a lot of time, like you, with mit engineersand nasa engineers, and there's a large percentageof people in that population who fit the followingdescription, which is, they're really good in math,and things like writing essays
and writing stories,they're, you know, not so great. so i actually signed upon khan academy a few months ago and i was lookingfor a writing course. - mm.- didn't find one, so i thought--well,i had a range of responses. at one end, i'm thinking,maybe that's too challenging or there's something uniqueabout it and they just haven't gottento it yet. at the other endof the spectrum, i'm thinking,
well, maybe for some careers,you know, writing isn't that important. - oh, no.well, i mean, i-- i put up--i put writing upthere, i mean, if, you know-- like, that's the enablerof, you know, almost everything. and, i mean, i thinkthere's a tragedy out there too. i mean, i agree, a lot of peoplewho are strong in math and science kind of thinkwriting isn't for them, and then you have peopleon the other side
who are strong writers,who think math and science isn't for them,and it's a tragedy, because if anything,i've seen-- it's the same exact musclesyou use. it's the abilityto think clearly, to structure your thought,to be logical. so, i mean, i actually thinkif people allow themselves to think this way,the people-- the very same peoplewho are excellent writers
can be amazing mathematiciansand vice versa. and, you know, i see kind of a--there's a corollary there where i see peoplewho it's like, "oh, i'm notinto math and science. i consider myselfa creative person." and that kills me too,because as we all know, math and science is, you know,especially in engineering, it's all about creating thingsthat never existed before. and i thinksome of this dichotomy happens
because, you know,early on in our education, we evaluate students, you know,with these tests, you know. at third grade, how well can youmultiply these two numbers? have you memorizedyour multiplication tables well? and we evaluate,and we give them-- you know,we give them a grade. and that grade isn't like,oh, you knew 80%. let's keep working on it,so you get 100%. that grade is, you knew 80%.you are a "c" student.
you are mediocre. just remember that,you're mediocre. and what that does is-- oh, i mean, well, i just lost mytrain of thought with all the-- what were we talking about?- writing. - oh, writing.yeah, we were talking-- [muttering][laughter] it was really good too,what i was about to say. anyway, i'm gonna remember itin, like, 30 seconds.
but i just had a complete--yes.but anyway, the-- oh, now i remember.we-- that--what that is,is that's like-- that's likeevaluating artists based on how wellthey mix paint. or it's like evaluating a dancer based on how flexible they areat age eight. and so i thinkthere could be a lot that could be doneon the writing side.
i think a lot of peoplehave a fear of writing. they had a teacher at some pointthat was very, "hey, you misspelledthat word." and they lostthe creative side. hey, just write,write what you're thinking. write freely, write whatyou're--your argument. and likewise, a lot of peopleget turned off of math and science. they got dinged, hey,you're not good at this or that.
even though they would love tobuild things and create things. in terms of kind of the writing,i mean, it is something that one daywe will want to do i thinkit's actually going to be something closer toour computer science platform, where you have these projects,you can create them. you can publish them,they're in your profile, and they're essentiallyyour portfolio. and then the restof the community
can give you feedbackon how you did, and so you can keep iteratingand making them better. - okay, thanks.- yeah. - i mentor mountain viewhigh school robotics team. and oneof the biggest challenges i have as a mentor for these kids,these high school kids-- i'm an engineer here at nasa-- is getting them to committo doing it, to, you know, go read stuff outsideof someone handing it to 'em
and all that, and you showingthe young fellow here's video, i was thinking,he was one of those kids-- maybe worse sothan the ones i'm with-- and then he engaged,and he committed to learn, and he followed through, andhe's done exceptionally well. the ones that i mentorthat do that, commit and go on,do really well. the biggest challenge i haveis to getting them to commit.
- yeah.- what do you have on that? - yeah, i mean, you know,there's no simple answer there. i mean, i--there's-- you know, i will cite,there's all this-- you know, this is somethingwe talk a lot about in our own--at khan academy. there's all this researcharound mind-sets, around, you know,the growth mind-set-- how many of you are familiar
with this ideaof a growth mind-set? any--okay, a few folks.there's a researcher, carol dweck at stanford,her whole research for the last several decadesis growth mind-set. and it's this idea that you caneither have a growth mind-set or a fixed mind-set. and unfortunately, most ofthe world has a fixed mind-set. they just think that they'reeither good or bad at something. i'm a good writer.i'm bad at math.
or i'm--you know,so they think innate, it was kind of god-given. while a growth mind-set personsays, "well, if i keep working on something enoughand if i really own it, i can eventually getto whatever i need to get to." and her research has shownthat, like, if you do growth mind-setinterventions-- there's another researcher,angela duckworth at university of pennsylvania,on grit and perseverance--
and they do these, you know,you would think, almost superficialinterventions, where they will just tellthe student that, you know, when you make a mistake,that's when your brain grows. or they would doa little intervention about-- and it has all sortsof implications for the rest of their-- so it's--i think it's part of owning-- part of the reasonwhy people don't own things
is because they're afraidof struggling and failing, and then they kind ofjudge themselves. so i thinkthat's probably one aspect. i think the other aspectof it, that's happening for a lotof high school students, is that we kind ofoverschedule their time, so they have--there's no breathing room. and that time is literally,you know, like, they have six different teacherssaying,
do this tonight.do that tonight. do that tonight. they're just so tiredjust doing busywork all night that they don't have time,they don't have space to kind of start to own things. but i think this--you know,this growth mind-set stuff, i was--when i first heard of it,i was like, that's interesting. we've even run some experimentson khan academy. we're always running experimentsto see what works,
and we've done some growthmind-set experiments, and they did work. and you know, very recently,while i was working with my son to teach him how to read, and hewas struggling with words, and i could see that he wasgetting a little discouraged, i, literally--i told him, "you know, right when you're strugglingis when your brain grows." and actually, i wenta little further than that. i was like, "and i think i sawyour brain grow."
and now, i mean, it's-- i mean, i don't knowif i should share the secret 'cause it's a competitive world,but this-- but just last night,he, like, you know, struggled througha couple of words in the book, and he's like, "i struggledthrough seven words. did my brain grow?" and iwas like, "i think it did." he's like, "oh, good."and then-- and so i think it's--you know, anyway, it's--
i think there's something there,but, you know, there's obviouslynot a silver bullet. - so first, i would liketo make a comment and thank youfor what you're doing. you made a comment about your cousinhaving common questions... - mm-hmm.- and how just working over those common questionswill bridge the gap. and i realized the power ofhaving someone who's educated,
in the life of a young student,to be able to help them navigate that. for many students, fromcommunities that i come from, don't have that.- no. - and so one of the things,when i listen to your talk, and when i listenedto your ted talk, it helps me to realizehow transformative and revolutionarywhat you're creating here is in order to democratizeeducation and increase access
to quality education, so i'mreally excited about that. i was just talking toa couple of my colleagues today about how i want to workand do research on equity issues in education,you know, especially in under-resourced,underserved areas. so i really appreciate the toolsthat you're presenting here. so i want to thank you.that's one thing. and then the second thingis my question. you mentioned somethingabout the charter school
in oaklandand how that's a tool and how it improvedstudent performance in that charter school. is there anythingin your business plan or in your future plansfor expanding or reaching out to underserved,under-resourced communities or school districts? because i believe that educationshouldn't depend on your zip code.- yeah.
- and it seems like you havethat same philosophy. shouldn't dependon your zip code, shouldn't dependon your parents' income, but rather,it should be free for all. - yeah.- and so i was wondering if there's anythingwithin your plan or in the scopeof your project to reach those demographics?- yeah. no, absolutely. and those are good points.
i mean, we even see iton the data on our site is if you areon khan academy and you have a coach--so this could be a parent, or it could be a teacher,or it could be just a cousin-- you are 50% more engaged than a studentwithout a coach. so it's very important--and it could be someone who has a backgroundand, you know, who's educated and all that, but sometimes it'sliterally just having an adult,
someone who cares,someone who takes interest-- that's probably 90% of it, someone who takes interestin what you're doing. in terms of reaching--you know,and this is actually something, obviously, very closeto our hearts. this isin our mission statement, to reach anyone anywhere-- i think, you know,the unfortunate-- well, the reality of todayis we are dependent
on someone having accessto broadband or a decent internet connectionand a computer. and right now, 70%of the developed world has it, and 30% doesn't. and in the rest of the world,it's the other way around-- 30% have it, 70% don't. and the unfortunate thing is,even in the u.s., the 30% who don't are the exact people who couldbenefit the most from it.
so we're exploring waysthat we can get more outreach, where--you know, wheneveri meet anyone in government, whatever, i was like--and they say, "what can we do?" i was like,"just help build awareness." this is the easiest thing. youknow, tell your constituents, this thing exists. it is free.you can use it. we're also always eagerto figure out, who can we partner with? if you can't have accessat home,
are there after school programs,boys and girls clubs, libraries where kidscan access it? so it's somethingwe're exploring, and you know, i don't think there'san easy solution to it tomorrow. but i think overthe next five, ten years-- you know, i think in ten years,every tv is essentially going to bea computation device. and so at that point,at least in the u.s., we'll be able to havemuch deeper penetration.
so access is part of it,not gonna get solved overnight. and the other part of it is,yes, how do we build mentorship, kind of a networkof mentors? and i think that's gonna bepartners with, like, boys and girls clubsand the folks like that. - thank you. - so please join mein thanking salman khan. [musical tones][electronic sounds of data]
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