As of last week, two new players: Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker, joined the Khan Academy team. These folks are the creators of the multimedia web-book, SmartHistory. With over 300 videos on the subjects of: Art, History, and Architecture, this collection contains digital lessons ranging from: Leonardo's Last Supper, the Rosetta Stone, to the designs of Frank Lloyd Wright.
For those of you unfamiliar with the Khan Academy, it's an awesome website housing 2,600 YouTube videos, primarily in the subjects of Math and Science. Content level ranges from elementary to high school/college level. Each "no frills" video lesson is relatively short (approximately 5-15 minutes long). It doesn't take long to grow accustomed to Sal Khan's soothing voice and his magical blackboard.
The mission of the Khan Academy has always been quite simple - change education for the better by providing a free world-class education to anyone anywhere. As such, all of the resources on their website are available to anyone and are completely free of charge. Yes, there is nothing to purchase and nothing to download. All you need to do is pop some popcorn and get ready to learn.
Last year, as my son was struggling with the concept of parabolas in Algebra. Yikes! Missing the "rocket science gene", I knew that I needed to find my son a good math mentor. Luckily, a quick visit to the Khan Academy brought clarity to the situation in less than 5 minutes. I was thrilled.
Of course, you shouldn't think that you need to be struggling with advanced mathematics to warrant a trip tot he site. On the contrary, there is wealth of information to be found at the Khan Academy. Here are just a few of the lessons we've enjoyed:
- Black Holes
- Electoral College
- Health Care Costs in US vs Europe
- Liar Truthteller Brain Teaser
- Newton's First Law of Motion
- Renting vs. Buying a home
- Vietnam War
Here is a really good overview of the Khan Academy, as presented by it's creator - Salman Khan:
Have you seen this?! http://www.periodicvideos.com/index.htm It's the Periodic Table of Videos! So cool. They (University of Nottingham) do video clips of each element on the periodic table.
ReplyDeleteWow. That is awesome. Thanks so much for sharing that.
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