When a person with 3 degrees from MIT and an MBA from Harvard, working in a hedge fund company decides to open a not for profit organisation you know something is different. And there is nothing similar to what Mr. Salman Khan has done.
Initial phases were not glamorous. A organisation uploading videos to teach children was not popular among cooperates. The only source of income being the donations made by the parents of the children helped by him,it was getting difficult for Mr. Khan to keep afloat. But this all changed when Mr. Bill Gates in one of his addresses mentioned Khan Academy, where he mentioned that he and his children have learnt a lot from it and that he is very excited about it. Few days later, Mr. Khan got an invitation to meet Bill Gates regarding Khan Academy, during which Mr. Khan was able to convince him and hence got financial backing from Bill And Melinda Gates Foundation. Later Google gave 2 Million Dollars to the Khan Academy to convert the videos into different languages.
Now Khan Academy is regarded as a virtual school with over 3200 videos, more than 320,000 subscribers and with over 165 millions views. Mr. Khan is on a mission to make the Khan Academy "a not-for-profit with the goal of changing education for the better by providing a free world-class education to anyone anywhere."
Mr. Khan is a visionary who wants to turn the academy into a charter school. He said "This could be the DNA for a physical school where students spend 20 percent of their day watching videos and doing self-paced exercises and the rest of the day building robots or painting pictures or composing music or whatever."
He brought innovation in the classroom by providing more time for peer-to-peer-learning rather than the traditional way of teacher to student learning. Students can see the video and learn at home and then can teach fellow students in the class. Thus modernising the education system as a whole.
Stick with your principals. Although Mr Khan could have made millions (or maybe even billions) by selling Khan Academy, or he could have generated a continuous stream of revenues but he stuck with his notion of keeping the site free for everyone and even stopped advertising on the site. Making money was never his objective, his objective was reinventing education and he never swayed away from it.
THE STORY
In late 2004, Khan began tutoring his cousin using Yahoo's Doodle Note Pad but later he decided it would be more practical to distribute the tutorials on You Tube as other friends and relatives could also use them. The popularity of these videos and the comments put up by kids, parents and teachers prompted Khan to quit his job in finance as a hedge fund analyst at Connective Capital Management in 2009, and focus on the tutorials then released under the name "Khan Academy" full-time.
Initial phases were not glamorous. A organisation uploading videos to teach children was not popular among cooperates. The only source of income being the donations made by the parents of the children helped by him,it was getting difficult for Mr. Khan to keep afloat. But this all changed when Mr. Bill Gates in one of his addresses mentioned Khan Academy, where he mentioned that he and his children have learnt a lot from it and that he is very excited about it. Few days later, Mr. Khan got an invitation to meet Bill Gates regarding Khan Academy, during which Mr. Khan was able to convince him and hence got financial backing from Bill And Melinda Gates Foundation. Later Google gave 2 Million Dollars to the Khan Academy to convert the videos into different languages.
Now Khan Academy is regarded as a virtual school with over 3200 videos, more than 320,000 subscribers and with over 165 millions views. Mr. Khan is on a mission to make the Khan Academy "a not-for-profit with the goal of changing education for the better by providing a free world-class education to anyone anywhere."
Mr. Khan is a visionary who wants to turn the academy into a charter school. He said "This could be the DNA for a physical school where students spend 20 percent of their day watching videos and doing self-paced exercises and the rest of the day building robots or painting pictures or composing music or whatever."
Learning for Entrepreneurs
Although calling Mr. Khan an entrepreneur will be not exactly right but there are many things an upcoming entrepreneur can learn from him. You don't need to have a idea or some innovation to start an enterprise; a combination of two or more simple ideas can be a good platform too. That's what Mr. Khan did by combining education with uploading of videos.
He faced a problem that his cousin being a genius was not able to follow lessons in class. So he came up with video learning process where she can learn at her speed and without feeling ashamed of asking doubts playing and pausing videos, thus showing a problem solving aptitude. he was not hesitant to take a risk by quiting his job and concentrating on making videos, thus displaying his risk taking ability and a commitment towards society.
He employed Theory Y approach assuming that every child wants to learn and study but they all learn at different speed. He believed that children need to be 100% proficient in a topic/subject before moving on to next one.
He brought innovation in the classroom by providing more time for peer-to-peer-learning rather than the traditional way of teacher to student learning. Students can see the video and learn at home and then can teach fellow students in the class. Thus modernising the education system as a whole.
Stick with your principals. Although Mr Khan could have made millions (or maybe even billions) by selling Khan Academy, or he could have generated a continuous stream of revenues but he stuck with his notion of keeping the site free for everyone and even stopped advertising on the site. Making money was never his objective, his objective was reinventing education and he never swayed away from it.
Enlightening, and inspiring indeed.....:)
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