Truly FREE education?

Last week, I wrote about the article I happened to find about India and how potentially they will put a mobile computing device in the hands of every Indian student.  What would that mean for us?

This week, I had the occasion to see and hear Sal Kahn discuss the generation and vision of his Kahn Academy.  What is so striking to me is that he believes that he can offer learning and ultimately high quality education for FREE.  Further, he is getting lots of support from foundations, etc.

When Kahn talked to us he appears to be making a very different set of assumptions than we normally hold in American public schools.  As an example, he stated his propositions as:

• School no longer needs to be age-based as learning is not a respecter of age per se.
• The assignment of grades in a classroom for student performance begin to lose relevance as the issue is not the grade but the learning that makes the next learning possible.
• Ultimately this Kahn application and other applications will “crumble the textbook industry overnight”
• Learning should be based on achievement not the amount of time students spend in a chair or desk.
• As stated by Kahn, “For the ever decreasing cost of education you can get a pretty good education ...you can have the same educational option as Bill Gates kids” [BTW – Gates children utilize the Kahn Academy resources].

All of this would suggest a truly different paradigm for our schools and students.

I suppose that while his ideas are rather outlandish, his data would support that he is actually accomplishing his goal to some degree.  He reports that currently:

• The availability of 3,000 videos now – and found at Kahn Academy
• A use rate of these videos (primarily math …but growing including art history) is at 3.5 million separate users per month
• Each day students complete 2 million exercises on this website

Sal Kahn via a Google grant and others is expanding his program and videos to include 10 languages other than English.  He is currently prepping for deploying this opportunity to India in the very near future

So what do you think?