The founder of Khan Academy

Salman khan, the 36-year-old core figure and founder of the college, told a joke about sports, including lebron james (who is a supporter of Khan), three-pointers and complicated Monte Carlo simulation. I'm afraid only people who have obtained multiple degrees from MIT and Harvard University can appreciate the humor.

In August 2004, salman khan promised to help his niece nadia with her math homework. Nadia is in the seventh grade in New Orleans. She can't keep up with math classes in private schools. Her main problem is unit conversion, such as gallon to liter and ounce to gram.

For Khan, who was 28 years old at that time, mathematics was his strong point. One of his majors at MIT was mathematics, and he also took courses in computer science and electronic engineering, and got a master's degree. Later, he got an MBA from Harvard University. After graduation, he worked as a fund analyst for Daniel Wall Hedge Fund Company in Boston, and was the only employee of the company.

Nadia technical geek, Khan used Yahoo! Graffiti function to illustrate mathematical concepts. Then, he will write code, give Nadia some exercises, let her practice online, and check the learning effect. With Khan's help, Nadia made rapid progress in mathematics. Her younger brothers arman and Ali also asked Khan to be their tutor. Later, they brought some friends, and Khan's website continued to expand. He made many concepts into "modules", established a database, and tracked the learning progress of each child.

Because of Yahoo! Unable to be watched by many viewers at the same time, Khan began to make teaching videos and upload them to YouTube. This requires the use of Wacom digital whiteboard with electronic pen, which costs about $80. Each video is about 10 minutes, and consists of two parts: sketching on the blackboard and voice-over explaining some concepts.

In June 2006 165438+ 10/6, Khan released the first video to explain the basic concept of the least common multiple. Soon, other students, including some adults, began to search and watch his videos and left him messages thanking him for saving his math study.

In less than five years, making teaching videos has changed from Khan's sideline to his career. Today, he has become the godfather of online mathematics, and his free website may be the most popular educational website in the world. On April 20 1 1, about 2 million students clicked to visit. In contrast, the MIT OCW website launched on 200 1 has only 1 10,000 monthly visits.

So far, the number of videos in Khan Academy has exceeded 2,300, ranging from simple addition in primary schools to Green's Theorem in college calculus courses. He is adding teaching videos in more fields, such as accounting, credit crisis, French Revolution, SAT and GMAT. He mastered this knowledge himself before passing it on to others. He said that by the end of April this year, 20 1 1, more than 54 million people had studied through his website.

Dan Meyer, a doctoral student in education at Stanford University and a high school math teacher, said, "If you teach math in the United States, you can't have never heard of salman khan."