Sunday, April 24, 2011

How Video Can Improve Education

I'm a terrible cook. If I have a recipe I can wade through it, but I'm someone who simply cannot improvise in the kitchen. My mother says I never learned to cook because I preferred watching re-runs of Bewitched to hanging around the stove like my sister (who's a great cook, naturally). Mom hoped I was learning something else, and I guess I did. I became a TV producer. But this generation of parents may likely shoo their kids out of the kitchen and in front of the boob tube (or computer screen), specifically to watch videos by a former hedge fund analyst turned video producer named Salman Khan. And with good reason. These videos have been designed as homework. Videos as homework?? Yeah, and guess what. It's working. The kids who watch are learning and school districts around the country are starting to take note.



If this is the first time you hear of Khan, great. It was mine. But I think it clearly it won't be the last time. Goes to show how video is just another tool in the learning arsenal. But in the right hands, this method might give our kids a fighting chance at learning to learn, and this country a fighting chance to get back into the global game and compete with American brains.