It might take decades but I predict this will revolutionize and transform education in our country...
Think about it for a minute. If education moves to a teaching model in which students learn through online tutorials, exercises and evaluations created by a handful of the best educators in the world, then how many teachers will we need preparing lesson plans and delivering lectures and grading quizzes and tests? Surely we’ll need some for one-on-one tutoring, or to run small group discussions, or teach things that can’t or shouldn’t be taught online. Despite assurances to the contrary, however, there’s likely to be fewer than we have now — fewer but better-paid with more interesting jobs — just as has happened in nearly every other industry that has gone through a similar transformation.
The disruption doesn’t stop there. If students are allowed to progress through each subject at their own pace, they won’t be second-graders or sixth-graders any longer, since at any time they are likely to be at different grades in different subjects. Indeed, the whole notion of a 45-minute “class,” or the six-hour “school day,” or even the August through June school “calendar” — the entire framework of the educational experience — will become somewhat irrelevant. And as Khan loves to point out, grading will suddenly become simple: Everyone gets an A in every course, with the only question being how long it takes each student to earn it.
Over the next decade, look for teaching to be transformed from an art into something much closer to a science, look for learning to become highly individualized, and look for education to go from being a cottage industry to one that takes full advantage of the economies of scale and scope. And as in every other industry, look for quality to go up and cost to go down.
http://goo.gl/EGQbW Los Gatos California public school system utilizing Khan Academy with 5th and 7th grade math classes...
The Khan Academy's big idea is that all education should be self-driven. Rather than penalizing failure and rewarding test-taking ability (like our current paradigm), education should encourage failure and experimentation but demand mastery. In the last year, Khan Academy has been testing out a total education system. In a classroom in Los Gatos, California, there is an experiment underway in which every student uses class time to do digital lessons at their own pace. Students perform learning problems for as long as it takes to master the concept, and when they get hung up, digital analytics help teachers give them precise, tailored help.
Among other lessons learned so far, the Los Gatos experiment is showing how students previously thought to be slower or less gifted, in many cases, are simply hung up on core concepts, and once they plow through they can accelerate past other students.
The implications of Khan's work are nothing short of a total reevaluation of education. In a world in which the only constant is the increase in the pace of change, we simply can't afford to give our kids anything less than an education system that actually gives them what they need to be successful.
http://www.good.is/post/big-ideas-from-ted-2011-letting-students-drive-their-education/ http://www.khanacademy.org/