Khan Academy

MISSION

The mission of Khan Academy is to provide a library of content that students can have an interactive challenges, assessment, and videos that they can access to the web from anywhere and anytime.

Furthermore, Khan Academy also provides the coach, parents and teachers the information about what students learn and do in Khan Academy.

Khan Academy is a world of practicing. Students can learn a lot and never run out of practice materials. When students need a hint, they can break down the problems step-by-step to solve it. In addition, if they need any help, they can search and watch any related videos.

Khan Academy brings a lot lectures from many various subjects. The library of content includes finance, history, math, science, chemistry, and many other subjects. Khan wants to bring as much lectures to students as he can. Sal Khan says, “I teach the way that I wish I was taught. The lectures are coming from me, an actual human being who is fascinated by the world around him." (Khanacademy.org)

Another mission of Khan Academy is providing the statistic of students’ learning. With that statistic, students can know what they learned and how they improved their knowledge. Base on that statistic, students will know what they should improve or how to do better in their classes. Moreover, students will receive a certain badge which encourages them when they finish any courses on the website.

Finally, Khan Academy creates a global classroom. Students come from a lot of country and they can discuss about the lecture and also share the common problems so that they can avoid in the future

HISTORY

Khan Academy was found in September 2006 by Salman Khan. The idea of Khan Academy came from the tutoring of Khan to his cousin in math using the Yahoo!’s Doodle notepad. He draw the function, explained the problem through the doodle on screen. Khan received a lot of good feedbacks from his friends when he uploaded those tutoring video on YouTube. This idea prompted Khan to quit his job and focus a hundred percent on making tutoring video in full-time.

Khan said that his project is a non-profit organization and his project named Khan Academy. Khan Academy began attracting a lot of Foundation from all over the world such as Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Lemann Foundation or Google. He used money from foundation to run his organization. Its YouTube Channel achieved 458 million total views compared to MIT’s 67 million views and more than two million subscribers.

Nowadays, Khan Academy provides most video beyond mathematics such as finance, physics, chemistry, computer science, biology, and more. Khan Academy also translates their sources into more than 23 languages and count on.

RECOGNITION

Khan Academy has gained recognition both nationally and internationally:

• In 2009, the Khan Academy received the Microsoft Tech Award for education.
• In 2010 at the Aspen Ideas Festival, Bill Gatesendorsed the learning resource saying he has used it with his children.
• In 2010, Google’s Project 10 provided $2 million to support the creation of more courses, to allow for translation of the Khan Academy's content, and to allow for the hiring of additional staff.
• An article featuring Khan Academy and Salman Khan appeared in the August 2011 issue of Wired Magazine.
• In November 2011, the Khan Academy received a $5 million grant from the Ireland-based O'Sullivan Foundation.
• In March 2012, Khan Academy was featured on CBS 60 Minutes.
• In April 2012, the founder and executive director of Khan Academy, Salman Khan, was listed among the Time 100 Most Influential People for 2012
• In 2013, the Mexico-based Carlos Slim Foundation made a donation to Khan Academy to expand its Spanish library of videos.
• The Khan Academy app features in many 'best educational apps' lists, including the one from BBC Active.
• Salman Khan was one of five individuals who recently won the prestigious 2014 Heinz Award. His award was in the area of "Human Condition." Mr. Khan was recognized for revolutionizing the way students can learn math, science and other subject areas.
• In July 2014, the U.S Department of Educationlaunched a $3 million randomized-control trial to gauge the effectiveness of Khan Academy.

Source: (Wikipedia)

TEAMS AND CONTENT SPECIALISTS.

The team of Khan Academy included many wonderful people. They are really young and always full of energy. They work together to create a strong structure for Khan Academy. They come from many different areas of knowledge, from art and history to software engineer. The team works base on the Common Core Standard and “hope to provide rich and engaging math content that can help students of all ages learn math thoroughly and joyfully.” (Khanacademy.org)

All the content specialists are from fantastic math teachers, tutors, and professors. They write math questions and check with each other before provide it to their students. Most of them graduate from famous universities in the U.S. with a great knowledge. The content specialists always try their best to create the best lecture for their students.

The team of Khan Academy included:

• Salman Khan: Founder & Executive Director
  • Being founder and faculty means Sal's busy setting the vision for Khan Academy and expanding our library of educational videos.
  • Before quitting his job as manager of a hedge fund to run Khan Academy full time, Sal also found time to get three degrees from MIT and an MBA from Harvard.
• Shantanu: President & COO
  • As President and COO, Shantanu focuses on overall organizational strategy, partnerships, and operations.
  • Before teaming up with Sal (his college classmate and high school math competitor), Shantanu was an Associate Principal in McKinsey & Company's Silicon Valley office, and received four different degrees from MIT.
• Bilal: Computer Science, After-SchoolPrograms
  • Prior to joining Khan Academy, Bilal worked for an international network of private schools, an early stage venture firm and an actuarial consulting company.
  • He has an MBA and MA in education from Stanford University and a BS in Actuarial Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
• Ben: Lead Developer
  • Ben started by volunteering for Khan Academy after watching one of Sal's talks and feeling left with no choice but to help.
  • Ben was previously VP of Engineering at Fog Creek Software, where he spent five and a half years learning how to push bits around with small, fast teams.
• Jason: Lead Designer
  • As Lead Designer for Khan Academy, Jason's responsible for how things on the site look and how users interact with those things.
  • Prior to joining Khan Academy, Jason headed up the design team at Fog Creek Software (and worked with Ben).
• And many other designers and software engineer.

Source: (Khanacademy.org)

CAREER AND INTERNSHIP

Career

Khan Academy is a non-profit organization but they always open their arms for people who are interested in tutoring and sharing studying experiences. They always recruit new team members because they believe “a few great people can make a big difference” (Khanacademy.org). Khan Academy also has a great benefit for their “talented team”:

• Competitive salaries
• Flexible schedules and required time off toensure you are well-rested
• 401(k) + matching
• Comprehensive insurance (medical, dental, vision, life)
• Delicious catered lunches daily
• Fun team events and board game nights!

Internship

Khan Academy also offers the internship for student. They treat the internship as their most important source of full-time recruiting. Working as an intern at Khan Academy will provide a lot of things not just only experiences. Team members at Khan Academy are always willing to help people who do internship. The members may show their tricks or share their stories in the past to the new comers.

Khan treats everyone equally. They work as a team to perfect their project. “Unlike other internships, you won't be tossed a list of edge-case bugs that nobody else wants to solve. You'll be expected to maturely own a project that may affect millions of students.” (Khanacademy.org). People who have a good result at the end of their internship always have chance to become a full-timer after all. If they are not qualified to become a full-timer, they also have a lot of experiences for their jobs in the future.

Besides the experiences interns can get at Khan, they will have a bunch of benefits from Khan because Khan is “Anon-profitwith the benefits of afor-profit”

• Highly competitive salary.
• Delicious catered lunches daily.
• Any equipment or tools you need.
• Housing stipend.
• Free snacks and drinks.
• All travel covered.
• Delicious fresh bread every Thursday.
• Fun team events and board game nights!

CONTRIBUTE

Supporters

From the beginning when the organization was found, Khan Academy received a lot of support from many organizations in the world because of the meaning of Khan Academy. Many major supporters who have provided generous donations are:

Organizations:

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

Fundacao Lemann

The O’Sullivan Foundation

The Broad Foundation

Carlos Slim Foundation

Google

Bank of America

Comcast

Valhalla

The Leona M. and Harry B. HELMSLEY Charitable Trust

Craig & Susan McCaw Foundation

Skoll Foundation

J.A and Kathryn Albertson Foundation

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

MyScript

WSGR

Morgridge Family Foundation

Oracle

Individuals:

Ann & John Doerr

Dan Benton

Reed Hastings

Eric & Wendy Schmidt

Diane Greene

Jeff & Laura Sandefer

Daniel & Jane Och

Source: (Khanacademy.org)

Donate

Khan is a non-profit organization with 60 employees but Khan reaches more than 10 million students each month. Khan Academy is a tax-exempt 501 nonprofit organization. Your gift is tax-deductible as allowed by law. (Khanacademy.org)

The website to donate for Khan Academy: www.khanacademy.org/donate

KHAN ACADEMY REVIEW

Khan Academy received a lot of comments from many experts, newspapers, and magazine.

• Eric Schmidt, the chairman of Google, said about Khan Academy on CBS News, “Sal is that person in education in my view. He built a platform. If that platform works, that platform could completely change education in America.” (CBS)
• Reed Hastings, Netflix founder said, “It worked in Sal’s case because he inherently managed the brand well.” (New York Post)

Those are comments of experts about Khan Academy. In my opinion, I think Khan Academy is the best library of content that I can find. I love how this Academy works. I can learn many new things on the website. I often watch videos on Khan Academy whenever I have troubles with my homework.

COMMUNICATION

Social communication plays an important role in business. It is always the first key to reach to the customers. Khan Academy is not only popular in their website and their YouTube Channel. People can also access Khan Academy to get information and to learn by many ways:

• Website: www.khanacademy.org
• YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/khanacademy
• Twitter: twitter.com/khanacademy
• Facebook:www.facebook.com/khanacademy

With the improvement of mobility, people can access Khan Academy by their cell phone and tablet anywhere and anytime, not only by computer. Khan Academy application can be found on App Store and Google Play.

All of downloads can be found here: www.khanacademy.org/downloads

Works Cited

CBS. CBS News. 8 3 2012. Website. 19 10 2014.

Kelly, Keith J. New York Post. 9 10 2014. Website. 19 10 2014.

Khanacademy.org. Khan Academy. Ed. Khanacademy.org. 8 5 2014. 19 10 2014. <www.khanacademy.org>.

Wikipedia. Wikipedia. 17 10 2014. 19 10 2014. <en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khan_Academy>.