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  • I am thrilled to see so many people here on a Thursday evening.

  • And I actually, just so that we can understand our marketing efforts a little

  • bit better, I would love to know, just a show of hands, Stanford GSB students.

  • If I could see where the GSB students are?

  • Excellent, excellent.

  • Greetings in the balcony.

  • Stanford undergrad students, welcome.

  • We love having you here.

  • Members of the rest of the Stanford

  • community, faculty, staff, alumni, that sort of thing.

  • And from the Harvard community, who has joined us besides our speaker?

  • Welcome.

  • We are delighted that you are here.

  • Tonight is a chance for two great schools to come together.

  • And, we are delighted for the evening, that we are going to spend with you.

  • My name is J.D. Schraum.

  • I'm a faculty member here at the GSB.

  • I teach courses in Communication, and I also

  • have the privilege of leading the Mastering Communication Initiative.

  • Which is is a series of non-credit offerings to help

  • students build their abilities to speak, write, and participate more effectively.

  • Behind me you will see some of the events

  • that are coming up through the rest of quarter.

  • If you don't have the moment to write them down quickly, you can go to our

  • website, which is simply gsb.stanford.edu\mastery, and that will

  • open up the world of mastering communication to you.

  • When we were looking for a speaker for this evening, we really wanted to

  • find somebody who had made their success

  • because of their ability to communicate effectively.

  • And, last year I had the privilege of seeing Salcon at the TED Conference.

  • Saw him speak at a company here in the Bay

  • area, and we began our dialog to have him come in.

  • Before I introduce the student who will introduce Sal to you, there's one

  • event in particular that I wanna be sure that I mention to you.

  • And that is, that we have a viewing of the TED Conference this year.

  • It will happen from February 28th to March 2nd, and we have

  • a site license, to broadcast the full TED Conference, here to the GSB.

  • To our GSB students, I encourage you to sign up by going to our website.

  • You'll also see information about it, in the

  • distributions that come out to you, through email.

  • But that is, we're excited about having that event here.

  • You did not come here tonight to hear from a professor.

  • You came to hear from an entrepreneur.

  • And so to introduce him, I'm delighted to welcome to the stage Luke Pena.

  • Luke is a second year MBA student in the joint degree

  • program, between the School of Ed and the School of Business.

  • And Luke, if you could come forward.

  • >> [SOUND].

  • >> From age eight to age 13, my home was my classroom.

  • And I was my own teacher.

  • Now I have the privilege of standing before

  • you as Luke Pena, joint MBA MA Education degree

  • student, Co-President of the Stanford Education Club, and proof

  • that non-traditional students can find the path to success.

  • It's my great honor and privilege to welcome you all here tonight.

  • And my responsibility to remind you to please not

  • use your cell phones and computers during tonight's event.

  • Back to the classroom of my youth.

  • I was a hyperactive child with a hyperactive mind.

  • Traditional schools evaluated me and determined that I

  • would require either medication, or special education courses.

  • My mother disagreed.

  • So my mother decided to homeschool me, and

  • serving as my teacher through the fifth grade.

  • I took tests every year to make sure that I was performing

  • at or above the level of my peer group in traditional schools.

  • When my mother decided to return to undergraduate school

  • to pursue her degree, I became my own teacher.

  • And for the next five years I relied on

  • a variety of non-traditional education resources to guide my learning.

  • Without access to these resources, I would

  • never have found my own passion for education.

  • I would have never survived grade school, and I

  • would never have found my way here to Stanford.

  • I know that there are countless

  • other students, traditional and non-traditional, who require

  • and desire and desperately need these innovative

  • resources to create their own education opportunities.

  • Khan Academy is creating these very

  • opportunities for students around the globe.

  • Along the way, Khan Academy is redefining the very

  • way we think about teaching, about learning, and about education.

  • The organization is committed to changing education for the

  • better by providing a free, world-class education anywhere, anytime.

  • The Khan Academy website now provides self-pacing

  • software and includes over 3,000 instructional videos

  • on its YouTube channel, covering everything from

  • basic arithmetic to college-level science and economics.

  • It's the most used library of educational videos on the web with 3.7 million

  • unique students per month, over 88 million

  • lessons delivered, and over 260 million exercises completed.

  • A growing number of classrooms around the world are relying on Khan Academy to

  • build student mastery of topics, and to

  • create space in class for dynamic, project-based learning.

  • Khan Academy owes its success to its founder Salman Khan.

  • Khan was helping a young cousin with math in

  • 2004, communicating by phone and using an interactive notepad.

  • When others expressed interest, he began posting his

  • hand-scribbled tutorials on YouTube, and demand took off.

  • Before founding Khan Academy, he was the portfolio manager at

  • Khan Capital Management, and the Senior Analyst at Wall Capital Management.

  • Sal received his MBA from Harvard Business School,

  • where he was president of the student body.

  • He also holds a Masters in electrical engineering

  • and computer science, a BS in electrical engineering and

  • computer science, and a BS in mathematics from MIT,

  • where he was president of the class of 1998.

  • While at MIT, Sal was the recipient of the [UNKNOWN] Fellowship,

  • which he used to develop web-based math software for children with ADHD.

  • Children not unlike myself.

  • Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming Sal Khan.

  • >> [SOUND].

  • >> Thank you much.

  • This is very exciting.

  • So, so how many of ya'll have been to the site, or used the site and, in some way?

  • Oh good.

  • So this is a good, good, good audience.

  • So I guess, how many of you have not been to the site?

  • Oh good, so, so I have something to show you.

  • So for those of you that have not been to the site,

  • I have a little montage that shows what, what the videos look like.

  • But what we'll see over the course of this, and I

  • actually do wanna make it as much of a conversation as possible.

  • There's microphones and all the rest.

  • I'm gonna talk for, I don't know, ten or 15 minutes.

  • And then I just wanna have questions, comments, anything else.

  • But we'll see, Khan Academy is much more than just a library of videos that

  • initially I started creating, and now we have

  • a few other people working on as well.

  • But let me just show, oh yes.

  • >> One moment to handle a technical issue.

  • >> Alright that wasn't too bad.

  • >> That was the pre-show music.

  • >> Oh, oh, okay, there's other things happening in the background.

  • Okay, alright, very good.

  • So here we go.

  • >> We can integrate over the surface and the notation usually is a capital sigma.

  • All these interactions are just due to gravity

  • over interstellar, or almost you could call it intergalactic.

  • So the right slot is i plus 1.

  • This animal's fossils are only found in this area of South America.

  • Nice clean band here.

  • They create the Committee of Public Safety,

  • which sounds like a very nice committee.

  • Notice, this is an aldehyde, and it's an alcohol.

  • >> It's some type of infectious disease.

  • >> Exactly so the key is, when you start to look

  • at data, you have to look at all aspects of it.

  • >> [UNKNOWN] is their $30 million, plus

  • the $20 million from the American manufacturer.

  • If this does not blow your mind, then you have no emotion.

  • >> [LAUGH].

  • >> Well-educated audience.

  • You appreciate Euler's identity and The French Revolution, that's very good.

  • So just to get you up to speed, and a

  • little bit of this was covered in the introduction, and this,

  • this slide, and actually some of the data from the

  • introduction was a few months old, and this is old, too.

  • What we're actually now pushing about five million unique students a month.

  • They're doing two million exercises a day, actually, and, and, and growing.

  • And you know, out in Silicon Valley we get used to a million here, million there.

  • Oh, you know, that's not so exciting until you get to ten million or whatever else.

  • But, but in education these really are large numbers.

  • And, you know, I didn't do that to pick on Harvard,

  • but, but that is, and actually since these numbers are older

  • now that, on a monthly basis, we're serving six to seven

  • times the number of students that Harvard has served since 1636.

  • And we're growing 400% a year, so it's, you know, we'll see where that goes.

  • But before we go in kind of the present of what Khan

  • Academy's up to, I wanna talk a little bit about how it happened.

  • Cuz it's, it's, you know, I still kind of wake up in the middle of the night

  • and wonder about this very strange journey that you're

  • kind of catching me hopefully in the middle of.

  • Or maybe very close to the beginning of, hopefully.

  • It's been good so far.

  • As was introduced, 2004 I had just gotten married.

  • I was a newly minted MBA, graduated in 2003.

  • Was working in Boston as an analyst at a hedge

  • fund, and I had family visiting me from New Orleans.

  • Right after my wedding in New Jersey, they came up to Boston.

  • My 12 year old cousin, Nadia, her younger brother,

  • Arman, who's two years younger and then the youngest, Ali.

  • And I showed them all the sights in

  • Boston, and I was very impressed with Nadia.

  • I hadn't seen her since I had left from, you know, I

  • grew up in New Orleans where, since I was in high school.

  • So, she was like two or three years old, and now

  • she's 12 years old, super smart girl, and I kept encouraging her.

  • I was like oh, you know, you should think about some

  • of these fancy schools that are in town, and all the rest.

  • And her mom told me, one morning before Nadia had woken up, that this

  • is very nice, Nadia views you an older brother figure and all the rest.

  • But, she's actually having trouble with mathematics.

  • And, I, I, had trouble believing this.

  • You know this, one I, we were having conversations and she seemed

  • at least you know super, she intimidated me among half the conversations.

  • And on top with that you know, we shared a certain amount of DNA.

  • >> [LAUGH].

  • And so, so I told [UNKNOWN] Nadia's mother,

  • that, you know, I find that hard to believe.

  • And when Nadia woke up, I said, well what's going on?

  • And she said, I took a placement exam, and I, there's unit

  • conversion, ounces to gallons, kilo, you

  • know, kilometers, meters, miles, things like that.

  • And she says, I just don't get that.

  • I, you know, my brain just checks out.

  • And I told her, I was like, look Nadia,

  • I, I've had conversations with you last few days.

  • We even did, I remember these little brain teasers while

  • we were waiting for the fireworks over the Charles River.

  • And I said, all of that stuff that we've been talking

  • about is ten times deeper and more conceptual than, than units.

  • And I, I'm not saying this just as a kind of a pep talk.

  • You, you can do this.

  • And, and, you know, I think like a lot of, not just

  • children frankly, people who've disengaged with

  • some content, they appreciate the pep talk.

  • But they're like oh, okay, you know, that's nice

  • but, you know, it, it probably doesn't apply to me.

  • And so I said, well, let's make this happen.

  • You go back to New Orleans.

  • They, they still lived in New Orleans.

  • And, every day after work, I'll, we'll get on something.

  • We'll get on the conference phone and will use

  • Yahoo Doodle or something, and, and we'll work together.

  • And, and she agreed.

  • I think she was skeptical, but she says, oh, I have this cousin, kind

  • of an older brother figure who wants to spend time with me, worth a try.

  • And long story short, you know, they went back

  • to New Orleans she, she, we started working together.

  • The first month was hard, but she eventually did get past that.

  • And then we started just doing random topics, algebra here

  • and there, and she actually became an advanced math student.

  • And then I, I kind of I, I, I've

  • coined the phrase I became somewhat of a tiger cousin.

  • >> [LAUGH].

  • Perhaps better than a tiger mom.

  • And, and I called her school and I said she should retake the exam.

  • You don't understand what she's accomplished.

  • There was some resistence on that part and, and, and I'm

  • like oh then, you know, her mom isn't telling me this.

  • It's, it's i'm telling and, and but, she was able to take it, and

  • she took the exam and she ended up becoming a very advanced math student.

  • She ended up taking calculus her freshman year in high school.

  • She ended up taking math at University of New Orleans through

  • most of high school, so she became this really advanced math student.

  • That same student who thought she couldn't get units.

  • But I was excited.

  • You know, my day job, I wasn't able to exercise some of these, these same ideas.

  • So I, I I started tutoring her brothers, things started to go well with them.

  • Then I would, you know, would call up random

  • family members, and say, can I tutor your kids?

  • [LAUGH].

  • >> And, there was kind of a tone like, oh,

  • things must not be going so well at the hedge fund.

  • [LAUGH] Sal's, looking for a back up job.

  • Which is kind of true, I guess.

  • But but, but, so that's what happened.

  • And you fast forward to 2006 and I had a cohort of about 15 or 18, yeah,

  • about 15 to 20 family, friends and relatives

  • around the country that I was tutoring after work.

  • And it was interesting, I mean, but it wasn't as good

  • as those interactions with Nadia where it was one on one.

  • I started writing a little bit of

  • kind of fairly primitive software initially, so that

  • I could give them example problems, I could keep track of what they were doing.

  • I mean, it's amazing when you, as soon as you keep track of things and you

  • see the real-time data, you start saying, why

  • is Ali doing problems at three in the morning?

  • This is, you know, irrespective of algebra, this is an issue.

  • >> [LAUGH].

  • >> But, but I started doing that.

  • And in 2006, the firm I was working

  • for, actually I was working at Wohl Capital Management.

  • It was a, a, a two person and a dog firm.

  • the, the dog was our Chief Economist.

  • And and Dan's wife who, Dan was my boss,

  • his, his wife became a professor at Stanford Law School.

  • And so we moved the firm out to Palo Alto, actually it was on Menlo Park.

  • And and I was based out here.

  • And in 2006 I was having dinner in San Mateo with a buddy from,

  • from college and ya know I was showing this software that I was building.

  • And it gave you hints and generated problems, and I was

  • telling him about all these vid, actually I wasn't making videos yet.

  • I was telling him about these tutoring sessions I was doing.

  • And, I told him my, my only frustration is, is that

  • now when I do these sessions, I do a session with Sasha.

  • I'm like, oh, I wish he was there when I covered that

  • same material with Arman or with Nadia last week or last year.

  • A lot of times when I, when I did these video

  • tutorials, you know, I would ask them, whoa, do you get this?

  • Does this make sense to you?

  • And there would be kind of this, pregnant pause and they

  • would say, yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it, I get it.

  • And you know they didn't, but you didn't want to push the

  • issue and make them feel weird about it and all the rest.

  • They just didn't wanna waste my time.

  • And you, you would have these things happening.

  • There was a sense that they, they had

  • basic questions, but they were afraid to ask.

  • You know, they forgot how to divide

  • decimals even though they're in ninth grade.

  • And they didn't want to embarrass themselves, because I've been telling

  • them that you're smart, and you can do all of these things.

  • And my buddy, he told me, well, you know, there's this thing called YouTube.

  • Why don't you make some tutorials on YouTube and, and put 'em up there?

  • And, you know, my, my initial reaction I, no, no, that doesn't make any sense.

  • YouTube is for cats playing piano.

  • >> [LAUGH].

  • It's not for, for, for serious mathematics.

  • But then I went home that weekend and I, and I, and I got over

  • the idea that, that it wasn't my idea, which is hard for an MBA, sometimes.

  • >> [LAUGH].

  • [UNKNOWN] and, and, and, and I gave it a shot and and it was funny.

  • You can, yeah you can look at those first videos there that, that are

  • I mean literally November 2006, least common

  • multiples, some basic algebra, things like that.

  • And interesting things started to happen.

  • I, I, one, I pointed my cousins and

  • family friends these, these people I was tutoring.

  • I pointed them to the videos, I said what do you think of them?

  • And you know, I joke a lot about this if any of ya'll

  • saw the TED Talk, I talk about this too, but it was absolutely true.

  • The first feedback they gave me was that

  • they preferred me on YouTube than in person.

  • [LAUGH] And I still haven't clarified how broad of a statement that is.

  • If it's just math, math videos or, or not.

  • but, but, but that, that meant a lot and, and, and all of these ideas of, when the

  • live session, being afraid to ask questions, being afraid

  • to admit that you might have forgotten something before.

  • Being afraid to ask this person you respect or

  • this person who respects you, asking them to repeat something.

  • You're afraid you're wasting them time.

  • Now, all of sudden, they had it all on demand.

  • They can pause and repeat as much as they want.

  • And they can watch it.

  • They can watch it when they're ready for it.

  • And when, when we're doing the live sessions, there's a

  • huge value there, and we'll talk about that in the future.

  • We think that a lot of what were doing is only going to enhance the live session.

  • I was taking interest, there was this bond that was forming, but the

  • hard parts were, after work, some days I wasn't on my A game.

  • I had a hard day at work or whatever.

  • And, and many times I could imagine Nadia the girl, the guy

  • that she had a crush on asked some other girl to the prom.

  • And she was just depressed, and she's not that

  • interested in the least common multiple or whatever, whatever else.

  • And so, that was a pretty interesting thing,

  • so I just kept making more and more videos.

  • my, my wife at this point was a medical resident,

  • so I had a lot of time on my hands.

  • And, and the videos were out there.

  • I kept doing more and more videos.

  • And then, like, I guess a lot of stories like this, I started

  • to realize that people that I was not related to were watching the videos.

  • And you know, the initial comments were things

  • like, thank you, or, or this really helped.

  • And I don't know how much time you all have spent on YouTube, but

  • most of the comments aren't quite positive,

  • if you're, or G-rated for that matter.

  • But, but so just that, thank you this helped.

  • But then started to get comments coming in and, and, and as the traffic grew the

  • comments got more and more, we get higher

  • volume and we started getting really touching comments.

  • My children have dyslexia, my children have ADHD and this

  • is the only thing that is getting through to them.

  • I got a letter early on from a, from a kid who was about to drop out of high school

  • and he said, this was, these YouTube videos were the

  • only thing that got him to re-engage with the content.

  • Early on I got a, a letter from a parent, saying that they're praying for me.

  • And, and, and, you know, I, I was an analyst at a hedge fund.

  • >> [LAUGH].

  • This was a this was other than my investors,

  • I don't think there was much prayer going on.

  • so, so, so, so I just kept going.

  • And, and that was the other discovery that started

  • to happen, is that, this wasn't, you know, when

  • you look at an algebra textbook, and a calculus

  • textbook, there are these thousands pages and all that.

  • You immediately assume oh, there's, you know, I can just make a dent in that.

  • There's no active cover.

  • But, you have like 70 or 80 videos, hey, that's a pretty good scaffold of algebra.

  • There's now like 600 or something on the site.

  • But that was a pretty good scaffold of algebra.

  • Do a few more, that's a pretty good scaffold of, of calculus.

  • And you start realizing that, in a lot of the

  • world, people say, oh, you should focus on platform, not content.

  • Content doesn't scale.

  • But education content really does scale.

  • If it's done once, it can be used forever.

  • Calculus isn't changing every, every three years, as the textbook

  • publishers would have you believe.

  • >> [LAUGH].

  • >> so, just kept going, and by 2009,

  • frankly I had trouble focusing on my day job.

  • And I was working at another fund out here in Palo Alto, Connective Capital.

  • And so I you know that introduction, there was

  • a brief moment of Khan Capital, but it never got

  • beyond Khan's capital, so I kind of just, which

  • wasn't significant, by the way I'm dressed, you can tell.

  • But the, the so, so, I had trouble focusing on

  • my day job, and so I, I kinda had a sit

  • down with my wife and we figured out, well, someone's gotta

  • realize this is like the highest possible social return on investment.

  • That just for one guy's salary or whatever,

  • you can educate, at that point I think

  • we were getting, already we have on the

  • order of about a million students per month.

  • Actually, no, we have several hundred thousand students

  • per month, but that can only grow over time.

  • And even if I got hit by a bus these videos, in theory, could keep teaching.

  • And if we could build out a platform and a virtual school, we

  • could reach an infinite number of students and translate and all the rest.

  • And so, somewhat naively, I had already set up Khan Academy as a not for profit

  • and I, I'm happy to answer any questions about why, why we decided to do that.

  • But so I take the leap of faith.

  • I, I had no experience really starting an not for profit,

  • even how do you raise money for, or any of that.

  • But, it was just this idea that someone

  • should hopefully realize that this is worth doing.

  • And so like a lot of I think entrepreneurial

  • stories for profit or not for profit, you quit.

  • There's always a few leads that you think, oh

  • those are gonna happen next week, and then they don't.

  • And, and, and, about eight months into it, you

  • start getting really stressed, and, and, I started updating my

  • resume and, you know, seeing if the hedge fund

  • world would have me back after I completely flaked out.

  • God forbid starting a not-for-profit.

  • And but then something interesting happened.

  • I had this little link on the site, a PayPal link.

  • College students around the world were, you know,

  • they were giving $10, $5, which meant a lot.

  • But all of a sudden a $10,000 donation came in, over PayPal.

  • And so, I, I checked who it was and, and it

  • was a, it was a woman by the name of Ann Doerr.

  • And so I immediately emailed her back.

  • And she was actually, I saw the address, she was in Palo Alto.

  • And I said, well, you know, thank you?

  • If if, if we were a physical school, you would now have a building named after you.

  • >> [LAUGH].

  • >> If it's which is, and, and talking to

  • the folks here, I hear that's a very good deal.

  • I don't think $10,000 quite, quite cuts it.

  • >> A water fountain.

  • >> Maybe the podium, not even, yeah, the water fountain.

  • But, so, so Ann, Ann immediately emails back and

  • says, whoa, I'd, I'd be interested in talking to you.

  • So we literally, we met at one of the Indian buffets on University Ave.

  • And, she says, well, where are you going with this, what do you wanna do?

  • And, and, and her first question actually was, how are you supporting yourself?

  • And, you know, in as proud a way as possible, I said, I'm not.

  • [LAUGH] And she kind of nodded and she

  • said, well where are you hoping to take this?

  • And I had these, I had these slides, and I said, well, we could build out

  • the software that I started with my cousins,

  • and we could, we could reach more students.

  • We could translate it, we could have interactivity on the site.

  • We could do as much as possible

  • of creating a real virtual interactive experience.

  • And, she kind of nodded.

  • And then, you know, I got back in my car and, and Ann actually got on her bike.

  • She rode her bike to, to the buffet, which I was very impressed.

  • And, and, when I was driving it to my driveway,

  • I got a, I got a text message from Ann.

  • And, and it said, you should be supporting yourself.

  • I just wired you $100,000.

  • so, so, so it was a good day.

  • >> [LAUGH].

  • It was, it was almost, almost, crashed into the garage.

  • And as we will see in this story, Ann's text messages are always good things.

  • >> [LAUGH].

  • >> So this wasn't, this wasn't that long ago.

  • This was literally about, not even two years ago.

  • This was May of 2010, and, right around that same time, actually a few weeks

  • later, but these were all kind of unrelated

  • events some folks at Google brought me in.

  • You know, I, I say, you know, there's two

  • major institutions in Mountain View, Google and the Khan Academy.

  • >> [LAUGH].

  • It's they don't laugh as much.

  • But the, the and, they brought me in and it was kind of mysterious meeting.

  • They said you know a lot of our children are using your stuff.

  • We even use some of your finance stuff.

  • It's interesting for us.

  • What would you do if you had more resources?

  • And I, I kinda made the same pitch.

  • And they all nodded and and then you know, I kind of assumed and by

  • this point I had spoken to many

  • foundations and I'd become fairly cynical about things.

  • I was like, okay, this isn't gonna work out.

  • But at least Ann, I can continue to

  • do this and pay my mortgage and whatever else.

  • And then in July of that, so this is July of 2010, I

  • was running a little summer camp for, it was actually in Portola Valley.

  • And I had this, you know, little game, it was mainly for middle school students.

  • Six of the students were playing a game of Risk, and then the other

  • 20 students were trading securities based on the outcome of the game of Risk.

  • And, and, and while that was happening, literally a trading floor, it's

  • a very good game, actually, maybe the business school should look into it.

  • But, but the, while, while that was happening,

  • I, I got a text message from Ann.

  • And, and the text, you know, text messages are kind of

  • hard to figure out which one came first, and all the rest.

  • But it was like, Bill Gates, 600 people, Aspen, talking about you.

  • And I was like, Ann knows people that Bill

  • Gates would talk about, so maybe this was, you

  • know, some type of, you know, she wouldn't have

  • a, she didn't seem like much of a prankster here.

  • But I was like, is, you know, what's going on here?

  • So I immediately, I went on to, and I

  • booted the nearest 7th grader off of a computer [LAUGH].

  • >> [LAUGH].

  • >> And I said, what's going on here?

  • And people are already commenting, and blogging and putting it on Twitter.

  • Bill Gates, in front of, using the, you know, Aspen Ideas Festival,

  • and the stage, the main, whatever, pavilion, he just started talking for ten

  • minutes about how he and his children were using the Khan Academy,

  • and it was like the one thing that he was most excited about.

  • And my brain immediately said, those videos were

  • for Nadia, not for, not for Bill Gates.

  • >> [LAUGH].

  • >> This is, you know, I, I have to really re, rethink some of those.

  • But, but then, and, and it was, and, and, and,

  • I mean the video's actually up on our site now.

  • It was very surreal, and I didn't see it that first day.

  • I saw it a few days later after the video actually got posted.

  • And, then I was in this very strange, surreal

  • world, because this event happened some place in reality.

  • But, I was like you know, what do I do now?

  • Do I call him [LAUGH], you know?

  • >> [LAUGH].

  • >> Can I find his number?

  • I don't think so.

  • And, and, and, but luckily, that kind of tension got alleviated.

  • About two weeks later, I got a call from, I guess, Larry

  • Cohen, who was able to find my number, Bill Gates' Chief of Staff.

  • And he says, you know, Bill, you probably heard, is a big fan.

  • He uses your stuff.

  • He actually told me that Bill has three monitors, and I've seen

  • it, and apparently, Khan Academy is like, he's regularly watching videos on there.

  • And, and, and he's like, you know, if, if

  • you have time to, Bill would like to meet you.

  • and, and I was looking at my, you know, I have

  • my calendar open for the whole month, right, right at that moment.

  • >> [LAUGH].

  • And it was completely blank.

  • >> [LAUGH].

  • And so, [LAUGH] so, I was like yeah, you know,

  • maybe like next Wednesday, 2:45, I could fly right into Seattle.

  • And, you know, right in between a bath and,

  • you know, laundry, I can squeeze, squeeze Bill Gates in.

  • And, and so, I, I flew up to Seattle, met

  • with Bill Gates, which was a surreal meeting, you know?

  • 20% of my brain was in the meeting, the other 80% was, this is Bill Gates!

  • That's Bill Gates!

  • What would happen if I hit him?

  • >> [LAUGH].

  • What would happen if I [LAUGH] I didn't want to but you, you can imagine.

  • So, so, but, but you know, I presented, and you know, there was an awkward moment

  • where I had, I had these, I called them my slide placemats, and I walked around.

  • And I was like, oh, you know, I use these cause I don't trust PowerPoint.

  • These things are always [INAUDIBLE].

  • [LAUGH].

  • >> I think he found me charming [UNKNOWN].

  • But, you know, long story short he, he said, oh wow, this makes sense.

  • I'm a big fan, what would you do, I, I

  • give, we make a virtual school, and all the rest.

  • And he's like no, this, this is great and he nodded.

  • And when he nodded five people in the back of the room took notes.

  • >> [LAUGH].

  • >> And I was like, make sure you got that.

  • And, and so it looked like things were going good

  • and, and right around that same time another meeting with Google.

  • Google said, well what would you do with $2 million.

  • And I said, you know, is this an open question,

  • because, you know, I've got needs, you know, I could [LAUGH].

  • There's not a, they clarified it.

  • [LAUGH].

  • And, and, and, and, and so, I kind of, I,

  • I, I, I kind of made the same, the same idea.

  • And so, October 2010 all of these things converged.

  • The Gates Foundation funded us to really get office space, hire up our core team.

  • Google funded us, translated into ten languages, build out the

  • core software, and, this is what we started to build.

  • And actually some of this was already you

  • know, the primitive version was there before the funding

  • happened, but now we got essentially competent people to

  • work on, to work on some of this stuff.

  • And this is what we call a knowledge map.

  • And it's constantly changing.

  • There's like sixty nodes right here.

  • It's now 300 and we're, we're exploring

  • different ways to visualize this right now.

  • But the, but the idea is very simple.

  • That top, that top star there is the most basic mathematics, level one addition.

  • And once you get, once you've shown proficiency

  • in that, it moves you down this knowledge map.

  • And right now, the bottom end of it,

  • you have things like calculus and, and whatever else.

  • And, and actually, we can see it.

  • So this is one for getting the intuition of a derivative.

  • Where you're trying to, do, where you take the slope of a tangent line at any

  • point and you're essentially plotting out the derivative

  • by picking out the slope of the tangent line.

  • And so we're trying to make that knowledge

  • of math goes as broad and deep as possible.

  • Our videos you saw, they go into things like finance and macro and micro economics

  • and things, you know, [UNKNOWN] there's a

  • little bit of medicine and things like that.

  • But right now our exercises are mostly math, but we're hoping

  • to get that as, as broad and as deep as possible.

  • And this right over here, is a more basic one,

  • and if you ever need help, the videos are there.

  • This is basic subtraction, literally and, and, you know,

  • the one thing I always emphasize, I talked a

  • lot about this in the TED Talk is, we

  • did this kinda the way is common sense, you know?

  • If you learned, if you went to music class, you won't

  • [UNKNOWN] a harder piece until you do, master an easier piece.

  • If you're in Tae Kwon Do, you don't take the black belt test until you're already

  • at a, I don't know, what is it, brown belt, or a green belt, or whatever.

  • You only progress once you're ready for it.

  • And that's how it works in video games and everything else.

  • But that's not how it works in the traditional academic model.

  • In a traditional academic model, what is fixed is, how long

  • you have to learn something, and when you have to learn something.

  • And what's variable is, how well you actually learn that topic.

  • And in everything else, and I would say, natural learning.

  • And in this, we just said, well let's do the opposite.

  • Let's make variable when you learn it, and how long you have to learn it.

  • And what's fixed is a high level of mastery.

  • So that you can build on that foundation.

  • I mean, the analogy I say in, in the

  • traditional academic model, and it's not picking on anyone.

  • It's the model that we've all been, frankly, indoctrinated into.

  • Is, I'm building a house, I lay the foundation.

  • I go get the inspector to come by.

  • And the, the, the inspector says, okay.

  • Yeah, this foundation's about 80% structurally sound and I say, great.

  • That's passing.

  • Let's build the first floor.

  • And then they do the first floor, oh 70%.

  • Oh that's passing, let's build a second floor.

  • And then when the fourth floor collapses and takes the

  • whole thing down with it, I blame the fourth floor contractor.

  • Instead of saying what what, I had these

  • gaps this whole time, that were just making

  • my whole building less and less structurally sound,

  • and that's exactly happening frankly, with math education.

  • But I think probably with most forms of education, especially

  • things that assume some level of mastery of more basic ideas.

  • So we,we, we started up.

  • We got our office space, and, and interesting, you know, and as

  • you can see, a lot of this stuff was unplanned serendipitous events.

  • Right when we got our office space, actually

  • right before we got our office space, the

  • Los Altos school board, right here, Los Altos

  • said, hey we heard your are doing some stuff.

  • Why don't you come meet us.

  • So we met them and they's like what would you do.

  • If you could do anything you wanted with a fifth grade class room?

  • And we said well we would have every student learning at their own pace.

  • They would master concepts before moving on.

  • And, the role of the teacher instead of giving

  • this one size, one pace fits all lecture, the

  • teacher would get da, data, would get analytics so

  • that they can do focused one on one interventions.

  • Or even better they can pair up students with each

  • other so that they can teach each other and get.

  • Get even deeper learning.

  • And kind of surprising, they two days later said, sounds good.

  • Well, let's start after Thanksgiving.

  • And so we had to hire up a little bit.

  • And so, this right here is a dashboard from that Los Altos pilot.

  • And we're constantly iterating and trying to improve these things.

  • But the general model is, each column here

  • is one of those concepts on that knowledge map.

  • Each row here is one of the students in the class.

  • Green means, and, and actually there's a, a fancier

  • version of this now, this is a few months ago.

  • Green means a student's proficient in it, blue means they're working

  • on it, but no need to worry, and red means they're stuck.

  • So the model is, hey, instead of one size fits all

  • lecture, why don't I get that, why don't I get one

  • of those students who've already mastered Exponents level 3 to tutor

  • this student right over here who is having trouble with it.

  • And if they, if that doesn't work, then I as a teacher can go do a.

  • A focused one on one intervention.

  • And, what's neat about it is, and

  • we've, we're actually seeing this in the classroom.

  • Is it's optimizing the, the, the most scarce resource in the classroom.

  • Which is actually the time with other human beings.

  • And so now, you know, people talk about teachers, teacher, student ratio.

  • What we think we're optimizing is.

  • The, the, the student to valuable time with the teacher ratio.

  • Or even better, the student to valuable time with

  • other human beings rate, ratio, because you also have

  • the other, the other peers that you're learning from

  • and actually, one of the pilots, it was interesting.

  • The teacher spent a significant amount of time

  • mentoring a, a subset of the fifth graders STAs.

  • Fifth graders.

  • STAs.

  • And we wanted to arm them with as much data as possible.

  • And so, it should not freeze like this.

  • Let me see.

  • Well, there's a very nice chart that shows up.

  • All right let's try this again.

  • Oh there you go.

  • So this tells us, a teacher what the student's been working

  • on, and actually students have access to all of these things.

  • And we found that the best way to teach elementary school sti,

  • students to read bar graphs, is to make the bar graphs about them.

  • [LAUGH].

  • >> We are, we are all narcissist inside, it's the

  • This tells a, a student a, parent, a teacher and all of this is free.

  • It's all available right now.

  • You can go be, and come your cousins, or your nephews or, or coaches right now.

  • This tells the teacher what a student's been focused on, videos and exercises.

  • You can drill down as much as you want.

  • This gives granular data on exactly what problem the student did when.

  • Now we have features you can click on.

  • You can actually see the narrative of that problem, what the

  • students, what choices they got wrong, what did they get right.

  • What hints did they use?

  • And this right here is just another dashboard for teachers, but for us, it

  • tells us kind of the most powerful

  • narrative here, and something frankly we didn't expect.

  • Is that the horizontal access here is just days working on the site.

  • Vertical axis is just a count of the number

  • of those modules that a student shows proficiency in.

  • So each of those lines is essentially the progression of a student in the class.

  • And what we're seeing in every class we're working with.

  • We have Los Altos and Los Altos regular class and Los

  • Altos remedial class and San Jose and e, and east Palo Alto.

  • When you start a class.

  • Right at the beginning there's some kids that race ahead,

  • some kids in the middle, and some kids that are behind.

  • In a traditional model like, okay, these are the kids

  • that are gonna be, you know, doctors, engineers, lawyers, they're

  • gonna, you know, apply to Stanford and all the rest,

  • these are average kids, these kids are the remedial kids.

  • What we're seeing is if you allow students to

  • work at their own pace, at their own time.

  • And you don't know who these students are.

  • It's really unpredictable.

  • We're, we're gonna try to fine tune the

  • analytics so we can predict this even better.

  • If you give them a chance to, to build their foundation.

  • Start from one plus one.

  • All of a sudden that student, and that blue student is one of them.

  • Ten days into it slightly below average, actually right out the gate rea,

  • reasonable bit below average, after 70 something days best student in the class.

  • And we're seeing it over and over again, in every context.

  • That, after two, three, four months, the best dude in the class is

  • often a kid that you thought was a remedial student, two, three months ago.

  • And we're seeing it over and over and over again.

  • And just to give you an ener-, a sense of the energy of these classrooms.

  • Cuz sometimes, when you say, oh, computer learning, blended learning.

  • People imagine kind of a Vulcan borg reality of kind of, things plugged in.

  • Like, you know?

  • And kids just doing this all day.

  • And and, and and I, I, I wanna show you this classroom,

  • and actually even this classroom, the, the visuals aren't exactly, cuz whenever

  • the press tries to take it, they're like, oh, this is what

  • the program is, so I wanna, we wanna film kids doing the program.

  • We're like no, no.

  • What's cool about this, is, because this is ten, 20, 30% of class time, it frees

  • up all this other time for peer to

  • peer tutoring, for project based learning, whatever else.

  • But the media always wants to get the kids actually on the computer.

  • So that will, there is that in this footage,

  • but it does capture the energy level in these classrooms.

  • >> From Mountain View California NBC's Kristen Welker has our story tonight.

  • >> [SOUND] What makes fifth graders cheer?

  • Would you believe math?

  • >> I'm starting to really like math now.

  • >> These kids are learning with the help of Kahn Academy, an online school.

  • >> You got it right.

  • Good job.

  • >> Videos.

  • That are interactive and fun, explaining

  • difficult concepts in a conversational way.

  • >> And there's a fun story that came out

  • of that actual, when that reporter visited that classroom.

  • She saw a little fifth grader working

  • on, on trigonometry, you know, normally 11th grade,

  • 12th grade type material but she was

  • you know, she was [INAUDIBLE] sine, cosine, tangent.

  • She understood the ratios of the triangle.

  • The reporter sits down next to her and says so,

  • so, so do you thing this is fifth grade math?

  • And the girl got a very mischievous grin on her

  • face and she goes no, I think it's sixth grade.

  • [LAUGH].

  • >> So you know the anecdotal stuff was great, the teachers were happy, the

  • students were happy but, but there, you know, we still have to measure it.

  • At least measure like you know like, make sure harm isn't

  • being done here because you know there are these state tests.

  • This is a public school.

  • We're not teaching to the test in the videos.

  • I don't use necessarily the same words that are gonna show up on the assessment.

  • There are kids in those classrooms that are doing fourth grade

  • math, there's kids in those classrooms doing tenth, 11th grade math

  • and how are they gonna perform on a fifth grade assessment,

  • or in, in one of the [INAUDIBLE] a seventh grade assessment?

  • And we were particularly worried about the seventh graders.

  • The fifth graders was standard Los

  • Altos demographic, high performing school district.

  • The seventh, the two seventh grade classes that piloted it, these

  • were, it wasn't Los Altos, which is a,a affluent school district.

  • But this was a remedial math class in Los Altos.

  • And most of these students in this class, were students who

  • were either diagnosed with learning disabilities you know, a, dyslexia, ADHD.

  • And many of them were essentially from the other side of El Camino.

  • They were par-, essentially part of the, the parts of

  • Mountain View that were thrown into the Los Altos School District.

  • So these, these were actually traditionally.

  • Underperforming students.

  • And what was neat, is we saw that narrative again.

  • And, and we were worried about this, cuz we are like,

  • our product is new, we don't wanna be, you know, blamed too.

  • You know, maybe they won't work with, with this group of students.

  • But what was amazing for us, and frankly for Los Altos the

  • district, is that this is where we saw of the most profound gains.

  • So what we saw, 2010 were, was the

  • distribution of scores for this, for this cohort.

  • Entering in, 23% were proficient.

  • And they were the low end of proficient.

  • That's why they were in this class.

  • 47% were basic, 23% below basic, 6% far below basic.

  • And then after six months, and this is exciting,

  • the 6 plus 35, 41% were now proficient or better.

  • And the whole curve it shift.

  • There were no longer any far below basic.

  • The whole distribution shifted in the right direction.

  • But what was really neat and what we had never

  • expected with, with [INAUDIBLE] is, this was a remedial math class.

  • Some of these kids, diagnosed with learning disabilities.

  • 6% of these kids were now advanced.

  • 6% of these kids had leapfrogged ahead of

  • students who were not placed in remedial math class.

  • And there was no way, frankly, of predicting who

  • they were until we frankly, we saw the data.

  • And, you know, normally these classes are kind of the, the graveyard

  • of your academic career, but it actually was able to accelerate these students.

  • So the last thing I, I wanna share with you

  • and, and I have a couple other slides if you

  • all ask a question about them is, is is a

  • story we got this past summer which is pretty exciting.

  • We get a lot of testimonials and letters and if any of you

  • all have any, feel free to share it with us it's, it's good for

  • company morale but, but I wanna show you something because for us it

  • highlights how much potential there is out

  • in the world, human potential, intellectual potential.

  • And, and how it can just be tapped into, if you

  • just give people, just, just a little bit of the right tools.

  • >> My name is Mark Halverstad.

  • Growing up I was really always a C student.

  • I think I was really pretty much always pretty pitiful in school.

  • I don't think I've ever gotten higher than a B+ in any math class ever particularly.

  • I pretty much thought that the only thing I was

  • good enough to do, in college, was major in music.

  • And I went off and I got a music degree in Saxophone.

  • But I, I sort of almost felt that it was more,

  • I was getting it because I was terrible at everything else.

  • And I worked as a saxophone player for a few years.

  • Really what I wanted to do was.

  • Do electrical engineering.

  • And the last thing that I

  • remember completely not getting was trig identities.

  • So, I went to YouTube and I did a search for

  • trig identities, and Khan Academy was the first thing that popped up.

  • Watched a bunch of videos in the trig playlist to kinda get caught up to speed.

  • I watched all the videos in the calculus playlist.

  • I watched all the videos in the physics playlist.

  • I watched a bunch of videos on dividing

  • decimals and even on a, subtraction by borrowing.

  • I watched a lot of videos on, on arithmetic.

  • That was in 2007 I did that Until the fall of 2010 and in the fall of 2010 I

  • I took a leap and I decided to go go back to school and went to Temple University.

  • Majored in electrical engineering getting a second bachelors.

  • And keep in mind I, I, I don't think I've ever

  • gotten about a B+ in math classes and I was really.

  • A straight C student growing up.

  • And I just finished this year.

  • First year back in college.

  • I got a 4.0 GPA for the entire year.

  • I got perfect scores on both of my calculus

  • final exams and also on my chemistry final exams.

  • I ended.

  • calculus, Chemistry, both [UNKNOWN] and chemistry

  • with an average higher than a 100%.

  • I, there are some kind of canny videos that I probably listen to the same

  • concept over 20 or 30 times and there is no tutor.

  • In the world I could have paid to have sat next

  • to me and repeated the same thing over 20 or 30 times.

  • Without at least them getting a little bit

  • judgemental or at least them get, thinking, oh

  • well, this guy really never is going to

  • get this concept and he should just give up.

  • Where the understanding really happened was.

  • Watching those videos.

  • And, and also working through the Khan Academy software and everything.

  • The impact for me in my life, I, I really

  • see it, growing exponentially over the next 20 or 30 years.

  • So from the bottom of my heart, thank you.

  • [BLANK_AUDIO]

  • [SOUND] Makes you feel good.

  • So I'd love I'd love to take I'd love to take questions now.

  • I know there are some people who have to

  • leave at six o'clock, so feel free to leave if

  • you have to leave, at six o'clock, but I'd love

  • to take as, as many questions until they get boring.

  • >> Thank you so much for, for joining us.

  • I'm Greg [UNKNOWN], an MBA and Masters of Education dual degree student.

  • ACtually, taking a class on non-profits and writing about Khan Academy.

  • We had to look at the mission statement.

  • And it's incredibly inspirational to educate, you

  • know, free, world-class education to anyone anywhere.

  • But when thinking about it and watching the videos

  • and playing with it in the TED talk, a

  • lot of what gets me excited and has got

  • the media excited is the idea of blended learning.

  • And so I was wondering, do you

  • see your mission pivoting at all?

  • Are you still focused on global education?

  • Cuz I think, sort of rural kids in Africa.

  • So, what, if you had another $2 million, wh, what's next for you?

  • Where, where would you go with that mission?

  • >> Yeah, no, so, so, I mean, this is, our, our,

  • the most difficult thing right now as an organization is that

  • we have an abundance of opportunity, because there's like, okay, there's

  • the, you know, just the standard student who just needs help.

  • Right, like this student right here.

  • You have the blended learning

  • opportunities, what's happening in Los Altos.

  • And not just Los Altos we're seeing it at Eastside Prep in Palo Alto.

  • At some of the charter schools [UNKNOWN].

  • There's the possibilities if you go into rural Africa, or

  • rural India, go places where they don't have teachers right now.

  • And all of sudden you can give them something better

  • than maybe even, wha, what they would otherwise have access to.

  • ou-, our, what, what.

  • The way we were thinking about it right now,

  • is in the near term, let's continue to focus

  • on these students, cuz out of the four point

  • whatever million they're using their, this is 95% of them.

  • And this is, we can reach it.

  • And we think that, that problem is 95% the same problem as.

  • How do we, what can we do in a classroom?

  • If we can get someone, you know, education is the spectrum of things.

  • I mean and we can debate for hours about what it means.

  • But there's a general sense that at this end, there's kind

  • of your core academic skills,

  • understanding what a derivative is, learning

  • to apply algebra, understanding the conceptual physics, and as you get

  • further and further here it becomes more open ended and more broad.

  • You know, this is starting a company, composing a sonata, painting a picture.

  • Something very open ended, and right now

  • most schools are very focused right over here.

  • And what we're saying is we think this, we can do this stuff pretty well with

  • the data and analytics and iterate over the

  • content but, that doesn't mean we're replacing schools.

  • That means it's an opportunity for schools to move up this

  • progression, and as we get better and better we're just gonna push

  • the envelope here and that the physical environments can get better

  • and better, and our, the way we're thinking of it strategically is.

  • We don't wanna try to do everything at once, and just be a flash in the pan and.

  • We wanna prove that this is real, espe.

  • You know, we're gonna start in U.S., primarily

  • English, although we are transitioning into ten other languages

  • right now, and then we'll explore, we're, and,

  • and there are already, frankly, NGOs, I mean we

  • heard there's people using it in rural Mongo,

  • I think all of Mongolia is rural but, you

  • know, they're using this, they're, they're, you know,

  • we heard some Burmese refugee camps were using it.

  • So I mean, so it's, this stuff is already happening.

  • We're putting it out there.

  • If someone wants a DVD.

  • Here's the DVD.

  • You wanna thumb drive with all the videos?

  • Here you go.

  • You want an offline copy?

  • Someone's Jerry-rigged, it to do that.

  • We're open in that way, but our

  • organizational focus right now is just to really

  • make sure that it's a, it's a

  • substantive contribution to what happens first, around us.

  • >> Thank you [INAUDIBLE] >> Okay, yeah, yeah, right here.

  • >> I had two questions, actually.

  • One was you talk about capturing the potential

  • of film and, you know talent out there.

  • So the obvious question is, there are a lot more

  • students in the class than, than teachers in, in that class.

  • So, how do you capture the peer-to-peer learning?

  • because, you know, kids learn better from other kids [CROSSTALK].

  • >> Yep, yep.

  • >> Than from adults.

  • >> Yeah.

  • >> The second question is Do you have any plans in terms of

  • your strategy to break the, enmity of Of this, these content you know?

  • The [UNKNOWN] textbooks.

  • [CROSSTALK].

  • >> Yeah.

  • >> Pythorgas's theory never change.

  • >> Yes.

  • >> And yet, there's copyrights on that.

  • >> Yeah.

  • And, there's really a copyright on Happy Birthday.

  • [INAUDIBLE].

  • >> So, how do, how do you plan to address that?

  • Because that is really what, what's holding

  • education back, in my, in my humble opinion.

  • >> Yeah.

  • So, the peer-to-peer, which I'm a.

  • Just, I mean, just my own personal experience in

  • high school and whatever, I'm a big believer in peer-to-peer.

  • I mean, I, I, I think you all are probably experiencing a

  • lot of the learning is happening, the two nights before an exam,

  • where there's significant peer-to-peer activity mostly

  • academic go, going on And so,

  • what we're, I mean that's what's

  • interesting about us working with physical classrooms.

  • You know, there's 10,000 classrooms based on data

  • they're doing it in some shape or form.

  • We're directly working with 50 of them, and, we have these notions

  • and we're, you know, but the, the teachers have some pretty good ideas.

  • The students have some pretty neat ideas, and

  • we're seeing what kind of things naturally emerge.

  • And the neat thing is, is that, if you kind of allow students to get self

  • directed, and they're all learning at their own

  • pace, a lot of this stuff just organically emerges.

  • If you don't tell, as long as you don't tell

  • students, be quiet, put a finger on your lip, listen.

  • If you just say, learn at your own pace, and do what

  • you need to do to learn, a lot of this peer-to-peer starts emerging.

  • Kids start just naturally going to the whiteboard.

  • This is what I can tutor you in.

  • This is what we can help with, and/ or this is what I need help in.

  • And what we should, what we're trying to

  • do, is we're trying to observe the best practices.

  • And seeing if we can put that in the system.

  • So, we saw students setting goals for

  • themselves on notecards, and then seeing how

  • they [INAUDIBLE] so it's almost pulled out as a feature, we saw students printing out

  • their achievements and showing it to other friends, so it's like oh, we should

  • have public profiles, if you wanna share it, you can share it with other people.

  • so, so what we're tying to do is if, if we, we'll eventually hopefully

  • have a place where if you need help, there's other people in the community.

  • Who can help you.

  • You can, you know have cloud, cloud tutors that, at

  • any given point, someone has office hours in that subject.

  • so, so we're going to explore all of that.

  • In terms of the, the textbook industry, and, you know,

  • and I say this somewhat to protect my own safety.

  • I don't think us by ourselves is a catalyst but,

  • I think they're, they're facing a major problem, because whether it's.

  • You look at, you know are there these kind of transitional

  • solutions where people are doing free books, open-source textbooks, you know.

  • I think, actually, they kind of signed their death

  • certificate when they, you know, they did this $15.

  • A textbook cannot cost most than $15 on an iPad.

  • And, and, and there's no barriers to distribution now, with

  • the, so that's gonna bring it's cost down very quickly.

  • But I think it raises an even broader question, what does a textbook do?

  • It does two things.

  • It tries to teach you some new concept.

  • And right now it's done in this very kind of

  • cryptic prose, and then they give you some practice problems.

  • And they give you the answer to every other problem in the back of the book.

  • And so, we think, online video, especially when you can track what's

  • being used, how effective it is, and all the rest with analytics.

  • Is better than that prose, you can pause and

  • repeat, you get human intonation, human emotion, and we think

  • adaptive exercises where you get data and analytics and instant

  • feedback, and hints, is better than the, the stuff at

  • the back of the book, and if that's available for

  • essentially free I guess this is a case study in

  • an industry, soon to be collapsed, I guess is yeah,

  • yeah, yeah, a quick one yeah, yeah I just wanna.

  • Yeah.

  • [INAUDIBLE] Yeah.

  • [INAUDIBLE] Yeah.

  • [INAUDIBLE] Yeah.

  • [INAUDIBLE] Yeah.

  • So, the question is.

  • Again, this is a very good question.

  • YouTube is a [INAUDIBLE] you know what?

  • Video by itself is a one-way stream.

  • And, and, and if someone uses it well, it can be somewhat active.

  • You can pause and repeat, and you can say oh, I need to go watch that now and I.

  • You can be a little self-directed about it.

  • But [UNKNOWN] It is still a passive mode, and so,

  • frankly, most of our resources are more on the interactive side.

  • The videos are there to compliment it, but we are also trying

  • to work on things where, the videos are also, giving you questions.

  • And that, there's questions associated with videos.

  • When you're reviewing, we can give you those conceptual questions, and then

  • we can know, hey, maybe you should go watch this video over there.

  • And the other thing that's happened, we just seen this on YouTube, is.

  • Someone says oh, that was a good video, I don't quite

  • understand what you meant by this, by orthogonal at minute three.

  • And then someone else on YouTube says, hey, you just need to

  • go watch this other video, where it's defined a little bit more.

  • when, when the videos are granular, almost

  • every video is an answer to someone's question.

  • And they somewhat, to some degree, just have to be directed.

  • to, to that answer, and that's where the community,

  • and we're, we're only just starting to, to explore that.

  • Right over here?

  • >> Yeah, hi I'm [UNKNOWN] and I'm at the GSP, and I'm from Bangladesh, and I

  • wanted to tell you that, people are mighty proud of what you've done back home, so-.

  • >> Oh, yeah, no, it's surreal that they, yeah, they.

  • >> So, um-.

  • >> I got a call from Muhammad, you know, I was like Muhammad who?

  • >> [LAUGH] I was like-.

  • >> So so my question is you guys are registered

  • as a non-profit, and a lot of people see your biggest

  • potential as being virtual school or sort of spreading the

  • reach of education to impoverished communities in Africa and Asia, so.

  • But how do you see the fact that

  • you're operating on a non-commercial platform, reducing your scalability?

  • >> Yeah, so that's a very good question and, you know, it's a question you

  • get in Silicon Valley a lot, that you know, a not for profit doesn't scale.

  • That, you know, how are you gonna get the capital, how

  • are you gonna track the talent, you know, all of these questions.

  • And, and, and in, in my end, I think it, it, it's

  • worth kind of clarifying just, you know, what a not for profit is.

  • Not for profit essentially means no one owns it.

  • The capital structure, there's no owner.

  • It's owned by society.

  • It can, in theory, I mean, our mission is to actually give the

  • content away for free, but you know, Stanford is a not for profit.

  • You can [INAUDIBLE] they can generate revenue.

  • What a not for profit says, is all

  • of that revenue, gets re-invested into the business.

  • It gets reinvested in the mission.

  • While in a for profit, some gets reinvested in the mission, and some

  • of it can get dividended out or stock [INAUDIBLE] or, or whatever else.

  • So, it's, it's, it's a fundamental, it's a capital structure thing.

  • In terms of the access to capital I mean, it's a huge space,

  • I mean, just think about public

  • education's like a trillion dollars a year.

  • You think about how much the Gates foundation alone spent

  • almost a billion dollars a year in the U.S., so

  • the, there, there are, there are people, philanthropists, many people

  • in Silicon Valley who got the capital, so I want.

  • This is what they care about.

  • They want to invest in education,

  • especially if there's a high social return.

  • And, any way you're on our spreadsheets, you know, our

  • total invested capital to date, is less than $3 million.

  • And we're reaching four and a half million students per month.

  • This time next year it might be 20

  • million, three years it might be 100 million students.

  • And, the content's not going [INAUDIBLE] we can only improve on it.

  • So it's, it's an infinite, social return.

  • The other question, this was a question that we

  • actually took very seriously is, can we attract the talent?

  • You know, there's no lottery ticket at the Khan Academy.

  • You're, you're working here.

  • There's not a stock option that you can, you can become a billionaire.

  • We, we do try to pay very competitive salaries in Silicon Valley.

  • But it's like.

  • Can we attract the best talent?

  • And it, it was an open question, I would say about six months ago.

  • But what we've seen in the past, actually we saw this before the first, we've

  • seen this throughout, is not only can we

  • attract good talent, we're attracting the best talent.

  • I don't know if you all saw the press release.

  • The number one employer, Google, just joined us.

  • And, I mean, you know, I guess you can afford to do what do what, what he

  • likes [LAUGH] but, but we're getting, we're getting

  • the best talent, even people who aren't independently wealthy.

  • I mean our, our lead engineer, Ben Kamens, who

  • was the head engineer Fog Creek Software, Joel on Software.

  • Our lead designer, the head designer there,

  • we got the head of high frequency trading

  • from one of the top hedge funds in the world, as our head of analytics.

  • We are getting [UNKNOWN] who is our

  • president, was about to make partner at Mackenzie.

  • I mean, these are the, the, the, the best talent out there, and

  • what, what you realize, is there's actually

  • been psychological studies on this, is that.

  • People are happiest, and are the most

  • productive, and you will get the best talent.

  • You take money of the table.

  • You do have to pay enough, that they can live, they can get

  • a mortgage, they can buy their Honda Accord, and all, all the rest.

  • But you take that off the table.

  • You don't have to pay millions, you just have to to pay

  • a good, i would say upper middle class salary, in Silicon Valley.

  • And if you get, if do that, if you'd have intellectually satisfying work.

  • And they have a mission to pursue, they'll be the

  • most productive people on the planet, and we're actually seeing that.

  • The people that we're, the resumes that we're getting, the, the, the energy

  • level in the company, it's better than any hedge fund we've worked at,

  • it's better than any management consulting firm that many of our teams have

  • worked at, it's just, it's, it's, it's,

  • it's kind of been an unbelievable experience.

  • So we're, we're feeling pretty good about.

  • You know, we're in uncharted waters.

  • There's only a few, I would say highly scalable not for profits out there.

  • You know, Wikipedia's kind of in that space.

  • Kiva's in that space.

  • We're in there.

  • Mozilla foundation.

  • We're all kind of in there.

  • We're all a little bit different.

  • But I think, we are facing, there's an inflection point in society where there's

  • a space, for these type of, I would call them new institutions to emerge.

  • >> Hi, I'd like to ask a question about a phrase you used that's near

  • and dear to my heart, because I taught the subject for 12 years in high school.

  • How many people here are familiar with project based learning?

  • You've heard, yeah, okay, good, good.

  • Theodore Sizer, Brown University basically, this is a nutshell description.

  • Students go in depth into a subject, but

  • showing what they understand about science and math.

  • As it is applied to a real world situation, and since

  • you mentioned that phrase, I was just wondering what you might be

  • doing about developing it as one, an adjunct for students that, who

  • turn around, learn a subject, and then teach it to others, through.

  • >> Absolutely, so, right now, I think, you

  • know, the whole education debate is actually slightly distorted.

  • You have one camp, where they say

  • oh, we need more open-ended, project based learning.

  • And then you have another camp saying oh, well if you do that, our kids aren't

  • gonna do well on the SAT, and they're not gonna do well on the state exams.

  • We have to do more traditional, academic, a lot

  • of problem solving, a lot of traditional types of problems.

  • And I think there's two issues.

  • I think one on the project based learning side.

  • Projects in and of themselves, there's a huge spectrum of what they can be.

  • In one spectrum, they can be very cookie cutter, paint by numbers, you know, kind

  • of stuff that a lot of us might have done in, in elementary school, whatever.

  • And, and, and the other spectrum, they can be hugely open ended.

  • The could be you know, starting a business,

  • painting a picture, building a robot, inventing something, whatever.

  • And, and so, what we see as our role is.

  • Our role is, I, I think a lot of what I've

  • described, we can be a catalyst for freeing up physical human time.

  • And we think the best use of

  • that is broadly described as project based learning.

  • But what we are seeing is, now that you free up this time, it's actually becoming.

  • Some teachers, immediately they say oh, this, there's things that I've always

  • wanted to do with this time, and I can now do it.

  • But there's a lot of teachers saying wow this is kinda scary.

  • What do I do with this extra time now in the classroom?

  • And, and so, we're, we're exploring that.

  • And, and, and what we're saying is, it shouldn't even be one class anymore.

  • Let's explore the boundaries.

  • When every student learns at their own pace.

  • Why,why group them by age group?

  • Why separate calculus from physics, from art, from history, from statistics?

  • Have them all happening at the same time.

  • Why have a bell ring every 55 minutes?

  • Why be afraid to go deep in a subject, because you're going to miss class?

  • All of these things shouldn't be questions anymore.

  • And so, we're, we're pushing the envelope with as many existing schools as possible.

  • There's this school in Los Angeles, the Marlboro School, Marlboro Academy.

  • That is actually doing that.

  • They have seven to 12th grade girls, all in the same class.

  • All in the same class.

  • Teaching each other, going back to the peer-to-peer, peer learning.

  • And, and, so far, it seems to be pretty profound.

  • Next year they're gonna double the number of students,and they are

  • gonna double the number of teachers, but the teachers are going

  • to be in the same room together, which is also something

  • that's kind of unheard of in, in a traditional academic model.

  • And, we are bringing people on.

  • We're running in, a summer camp this summer, to

  • explore, what can you do with a physical environment?

  • Like that risk game that I talked about, where kids are, you

  • know, they're learning what a market is, and probability and all that.

  • What can you do in a physical environment?

  • Building robots, starting businesses, whatever else.

  • And so, what we wanna do is see the best practises, document them.

  • If we can make tools for them, so they

  • can happily use in a classroom, we wanna build them.

  • Or at minimum, document them so that other teachers

  • can, can mimic them any, anywhere in the world.

  • >> Thanks for being here.

  • I just wanted to know, what's your curriculum ideology,

  • if there's any ideology behind your what you're doing?

  • And what, as you have studied doing, having

  • doing these videos, what do you think that

  • you're doing better than say, traditional teachers in

  • the classroom, that makes kids get it faster?

  • >> Yeah, so the ideology question.

  • This is something I like to stress.

  • I don't think there's one thing I said here,

  • that's kind of new, in terms of an idea.

  • I mean, the more that I talk to people, the more that

  • I, I realize wow, someone, someone's been writing about this 100 years ago.

  • Someone's been writing, and there's even been

  • studies that people said, wow this really worked.

  • And for some reason it gets lost.

  • So, I dont know exactly what ide, ideology would be called.

  • I mean, I mean there, you know.

  • it, and it's very scary when you label things, because then

  • there's people in the other camp, who immediately try to, you know.

  • If you say that you are constructivist, and they're like, oh constructivism.

  • Where we need to be.

  • But I would say it is a combination of master

  • based learning, so this idea that you should learn things, well.

  • You don't have to be the absolute

  • expert on exponents before you do basic equations.

  • But you should have a solid foundation, so that you don't get tripped up later.

  • I, I would say, highly influenced by constructivist thinking,

  • that you really do learn well, when you explore things.

  • But at the same time, you have to relax the

  • tension that the world is assessing you based on these exams.

  • And so, we think, hopefully we can, we can help do both at the same.

  • I think, you know, there's kind of self-paced learning

  • peer-to-peer learning, I mean, whatever you wanna call it.

  • But, I mean, we're just trying to do what kinda makes, be practical

  • about it, not, not be too dogmatic about one, one or the other.

  • In terms of, in terms of, in terms of, kind of, why the videos

  • have resignated with people it's an open question, I mean, people comment on it.

  • I think there's been a couple things.

  • I think it was really important that I started off making them for my cousins.

  • I think if in 2006, Bill Gates kind

  • of descended, and, and, and, and said Sal here

  • is x million dollars, make some videos that

  • will are gonna reach hundred of millions of people.

  • I probably would have made things not too different

  • from what you get on a DVD from McGraw Hill.

  • I probably would've made these very fancy computer graphics, and those, the

  • next stage in photosynthesis, you know, it sound like your GPS device.

  • [LAUGH] And, and, and.

  • And, and, and, the reason why those look

  • that way, is because when a decision maker, superintendent,

  • or even sometimes the teacher,so when anyone looks at

  • it for 30 seconds they're like, oh, that's professional.

  • That looks cool.

  • That's using computer graphics.

  • And the decision makers are never actually sitting

  • down and asking, am I actually learning photosynthesis

  • here, am I actually understanding photosynthesis, do I

  • actually feel a human connection, with this person?

  • And, I think what was neat, early on for me is, I was like.

  • It was, it was a human to human.

  • Even today when people watch the videos, they feel

  • like I'm, I'm, you know, I'm their older brother.

  • I'm their neighbor.

  • You don't see my face.

  • Faces are, are high distracting, especially when they have a unibrow.

  • And, and so, [LAUGH] and, and, so, you take that out so it really feels,

  • it really feels like, or an Indian

  • Ray Romano, I've sometimes been referred to [LAUGH].

  • But, but, but, it, it really feels like we're

  • sitting next to each other at the kitchen table.

  • The focus is on the content, you know.

  • The, the voice is, is kinda of there I mean, I've

  • actually gotten letters from people saying, you know, when they normally think

  • they think in their own voice, but as soon as they

  • see an equation, they start hearing, well, let's think about this now.

  • >> [LAUGH]

  • >> They hear this, you know, so I don't, I don't know.

  • I think it's the conversationality of it.

  • It feels human.

  • It feels, you know, I think a lot of education material is made very top down.

  • The, you know, some group, some politician or executive

  • says we need to make content in this area.

  • Then they go hire a bunch of experts and I'm

  • not being disparaging of the experts, but when you have

  • a crowd doing it together, they have fights on what

  • the content should be, they should write, they'll write scripts.

  • And at the end they go and find some teacher or somebody,

  • some and they pay them by the hour to essentially read their script.

  • And that whole process is saying the least important thing in this process

  • is the actual content, and what we're saying are the most important thing is.

  • Even, you know, I'm the executive director of the [UNKNOWN] but I still spend at

  • least 50% of my time making content

  • because that's what's going to resonate with students.

  • We put a high priority on our developers

  • that are making actual content that students are using.

  • We're not, we're not just all

  • oh, strategy's everything, platform is everything.

  • The content is what actually, that's where the rubber hits the road.

  • >> Hi.

  • I'm an undergrad here at Stanford and, I was fortunate enough to attend

  • Montessori School for until 7th grade, and one of the strengths I see

  • of Montessori School is, kind of exactly what you're doing in letting people

  • go at their own pace so in 2nd grade I was already starting algebra.

  • And I could be at a totally different level in reading and so I'm wondering.

  • >> Do you have like four PhD's now?

  • [LAUGH].

  • >> And so I'm wondering to what extent you've looked at existing models like

  • Montessori it's kind of like what his question was and to what extent you're

  • maybe working with Montessori schools to kind

  • of make Montessori scalable when it's been

  • criticized as something that can only work

  • in small schools where teachers are highly paid.

  • >> Yeah, you know, and I'm not an expert here, I

  • mean you know, like a lot of people I always thought Montessori

  • was something that goes through you know, pre-k and maybe kindergarten

  • and I've only started learning about Montessori programs that go much deeper.

  • And we've actually just been reached out by Montessori,

  • I think their K through 12 on the east bay.

  • And I think they hear a lot of what we're saying and wait that's

  • what we've been doing forever that's what you know, that's what Montessori is about.

  • Self paced learning kids teaching kids kids experimenting

  • with things and yeah we're here to kinda of.

  • And you know, we have a long way to go.

  • We think we're in the beginning of the first inning.

  • But, a lot of what we're talking about

  • actually is maybe the missing link in Montessori.

  • Is that yes, a self paced learning all of that but

  • how does the, how do we know that you're learning things?

  • Or how can we, [UNKNOWN] you know, how does,

  • how does a teacher have data to intervene properly?

  • Or how does the student know they're learning properly and things like that.

  • And so, there's a certain level of you can have a scaffold of, kind of, this type

  • of self based learning that I think makes

  • people more comfortable with the really open ended stuff.

  • So yeah, I think they're one and the

  • same very, very, very complimentary.

  • >> How do you, given that, so.

  • In creating the content for Kahn Academy, you focus on economic subjects like math.

  • Here, we'll teach you math in extremely granular patterns,

  • or we'll teach you biology or chemistry or whatever.

  • So why couldn't you extend this to nearly any other form of human learning?

  • >> Yeah.

  • I don't want to, like,.

  • Think of like, I don't like, I don't want to, like

  • imagine Kahn Academy as like some self help course.

  • But why couldn't Kahn Academy have a course in procrastination?

  • >> Oh, yeah.

  • [LAUGH].

  • >> Or social skills, [CROSSTALK] since you have so many of them.

  • >> Well no, and I, I have a, my daughter and, my

  • daughter is now seven months old, my son is three years old.

  • And I've been thinking, because, you know, right

  • now I'm not that far from the dating world.

  • I mean, you know, I'm still pretty far, I'm, but, but, you know, if I give her,

  • them advice now and we time shift, [LAUGH] so

  • I give like, dating advice, they'll take it more.

  • So I you might see that type of stuff [LAUGH] on, on, on Khan Academy.

  • But, but, but, but what that said, you know, we

  • actually, I don't know if the, there's a presentation still up.

  • >> You want me to, yeah.

  • >> The, presentation is still up, [INAUDIBLE] the next life

  • we're actually exp, we, we've started some experiments with, with

  • the Stanford Med School, and actually have some videos of

  • some of the stuff that we, we, we were playing with.

  • I mean, it's just Purely experimentation.

  • >> There you go.

  • >> But, what we really want to experiment, what we really wanna do.

  • And I'll show you these videos 'cuz they're kinda of fun.

  • I mean these were just kinda just, we just tried it out.

  • I just hung out at the med school.

  • >> And so there is a problem right there at that junction.

  • >> So at least that part of drug kinetics we

  • need to understand how they penetrate different parts of the body.

  • >> if we can get to those patients and get them to skilled health care.

  • Both in the field and at the hospital.

  • We can affect their outcomes and, and what

  • the, the lamina connects to the spinous process.

  • >> Remember this is a drug that didn't even touch the breast cancer.

  • Had a dramatic effect in the survival of these young women.

  • >> Right.

  • >> And so again it just makes this a whole new way in thinking about disease.

  • >> Yea, so, what we're hoping to do over there, and you're

  • gonna see it hopefully over the next year is, you know, I

  • started with a lot of content, we started building this platform, analytics,

  • and all the rest, we're like, hey, that can be used by anybody.

  • And so hopefully over the next year you're

  • gonna start seeing other, possibly major institutions saying

  • hey, we can start offering courses on this

  • platform, leveraging it in any shape and form.

  • So I would love, I mean i don't know, how many of y'all read Diamond Age?

  • Niel Stevenson?

  • So yeah, I would love this to be the young ladies illustrated primer where.

  • >> [LAUGH].

  • >> The book is essentially NEO Victorian

  • China you know, it's highly, highly hierarchical society.

  • This is like you know, in the future.

  • this, this nobleman wants to essentially get this engineer

  • to build like the ultimate learning platform for his granddaughter.

  • The, the, the engineer thinks it's so good

  • that he builds a version for his own daughter.

  • And it being China, gets bootlegged [LAUGH].

  • And and, and then it gets in the hands of

  • two thousand orphan girls and they take over the planet.

  • >> > [LAUGH].

  • >> So, yes, that, that'd be a good outcome.

  • Yeah.

  • >> And we should probably go for two more questions.

  • >> Yes, sounds good.

  • >> Three more, just so we can end and get you to your next commitments.

  • >> Yes.

  • Two more questions.

  • Better be good.

  • >> Thank you for speaking today so I'm actually a

  • first-year medical student and I recognized Dr. Perber's voice on there.

  • >> Oh yes.

  • >> And I'm meeting with some teachers from

  • the Children's Hospital school tomorrow at Lucille Packard

  • to see how Khan Academy can be implemented,

  • 1 because they are at times under staffed,

  • and 2, it might be interesting to assess

  • the cognitive effects of certain treatments downstream, so

  • what, I guess, guidelines, or even cautionary notes

  • would you provide to people who are looking to.

  • Implement Khan Academy in new settings.

  • But perhaps, you know, in a somewhat experimental way.

  • >> Yeah, no, we think it's great.

  • I mean, we think it's great.

  • I mean, that's, that's a fun thing about it.

  • You put it out there.

  • And people are figuring out, I mean, that's actually

  • an example that we've heard, that people are, you know,

  • with children with these, with these kinda chronic diseases

  • that are in the hospital for months at a time.

  • They can learn now we've, we've heard

  • of, actually like child athletes and actors using

  • this because, once again, they're We actually heard

  • about prisoners I mean, there, there a captive

  • audience I mean, it's, it's a- [LAUGH] but, but, it, it, it's, yeah, yeah, I

  • mean, I would say do it.If you hit

  • road bumps, and it should be relatively self-service.

  • We're trying to make it more self-service every day.

  • But ping us you know, I'm skhan@khanacademy.org.

  • You can look at our, at our, our website.

  • Emails, if you have any questions.

  • Cuz our goal is just to make it as self-service as, as possible.

  • >> Thank you.

  • >> One more question.

  • >> Alright so, hypothetically, if someone were

  • thinking about starting a company in the ed

  • tech space that built off of, built on top of, but didn't compete with Khan Academy.

  • >> Oh, there's nothing wrong with competition.

  • >> No, no, no, sorry.

  • That's, that's not exactly my question.

  • so, there seems to be, rhetorically, a lot of excitement around the potential for,

  • for individuals, to learn from Khan Academy

  • and become more confident in their skills.

  • But in your talk what I saw a lot of excitement from you

  • about was your partnership with schools, Los Altos schools and also the schools of

  • medicine here, so I would say, I would ask, for your vision for

  • Khan Academy, let's say over the next five to 10 years to be realized.

  • Who do you think are gonna be some of your key partners generally speaking?

  • And what role do they have to play in kinda of the larger educational space

  • in order for Khan to really have the impact that you want it to have?

  • >> Yeah, no and I mean, I'll, my answer will

  • probably change every week to, to this, but the general notion.

  • I mean, I think, going into this class, I think the content providers, I mean.

  • One of the fun things for me about this job is I, I get

  • to hopefully kind of spend the rest of my life learning and teaching things.

  • I mean, I'm already kinda of, you know, and, and that's a

  • fun thing to do, but I, there's no way I can teach.

  • Everything or even a fraction of everything and so I

  • think, I think catalyzing other people like Doctor Prober and other,

  • you know, experts to one, be willing to do this which

  • I think they are and also feel comfortable in this type.

  • You know, not the traditional lecture but the more

  • conversational style maybe two people at the same time.

  • So I think the content creators, I think, and that's not just video.

  • It could be exercise content it could be static questions.

  • We're hoping to experiment with maybe crowd sourcing of questions.

  • I mean it's crazy that every teacher in

  • the country has a different set of questions.

  • And if they want comments then they have to go pay someone money.

  • They should just be able to pool it, there should be analytics on it, they

  • should be able to create you know, kids going to the computer lab and say give

  • me a test where every kid's gonna get

  • different questions but they're statistically the same and

  • the distribution looks like this and there's only

  • a 5% chance that one kid doesn't finish.

  • And bam, it just happens.

  • That should exist.

  • I mean, there's nothing scientifically implausible about that.

  • so, so, I think, it, it's kinda of the

  • community is what we're going to have to leverage.

  • In terms of, in terms of kind of the key

  • partners, I think there's an interesting, I, I think the major

  • institutions that, to some degree research institutions that we are,

  • we're hoping [UNKNOWN] kinda turns into a platform for cognitive education.

  • Whatever type of research.

  • I mean, you know, you have 2 million kids doing problems every day.

  • I mean, that might be 2, mill, 20 million problems done every day.

  • You could, if you have a better you know, and idea of how, a better way for

  • people to conceptualize fractions and you have a

  • way of measuring it, we already doing AB testing.

  • We put 5% of the audience in front of that versus the control.

  • See what, one day you have your data for your PhD.

  • You, I mean, it sounds crazy.

  • Oh you are doing it.

  • Well you can come by, no.

  • We actually have a post [LAUGH] guy from Stanford who is

  • about to come on board to, to do research on our data.

  • So I think the research institutions.

  • I think, I think there's a very interesting

  • potential, obviously from a content point of view.

  • With Stanford, the MIT's of, of the world.

  • I think, the really forward thinking, its the, I would say, schools of any.

  • You know, age or demographic, you know.

  • Whether it's Marlborough, which is an elite girls' school in

  • Los Angeles or East Side Prep, which is a highly

  • effective charter school, actually they're an independent school, but they're,

  • they cater to an underserved demographic in east Palo Alto.

  • I think those are gonna be key.

  • I think and I think it'll be interesting, I think employers will be key, too.

  • Cuz I think, I think at the end of the day, all of this, I mean,

  • the end goal, you know, people sometimes confuse,

  • the end goal is happy and productive people.

  • That's the angle.

  • And, I guess, a thriving democracy, run by happy productive people.

  • [LAUGH] That's the angle.

  • And, so I think a lot of it is, well let's just

  • cut to the chase, how do we get to that angle, and

  • a lot of employers play a big role of that, how do

  • we, and so, you know, everything we've talked about is the learning side.

  • But I think there's, and we could talk for another hour about it,

  • I put some videos on there if you all are curious about it.

  • But I think there's a whole other

  • dimension of education which is the credentialing side.

  • And I think, what we're in the process of seeing

  • is that the two things are going to get decoupled,

  • which will be a very good thing because it kinda

  • of liberates the learning to happen in whatever way's best.

  • And then the credentials become stronger signals

  • because they're, you know, you, you, you guys

  • Stanford, everyone, you're gonna anywhere in the planet

  • and people are gonna know, oh Stanford, yes.

  • You get an interview.

  • But 99% of universities in the world you spend

  • the money, you take the time, you go there.

  • Even if you learn the stuff tremendously, you go to the next day the

  • next city and much less the next country if you're like what is this?

  • I don't understand what this is.

  • And so I think the credentials could become

  • even more powerful kind of more recognized things.

  • And as that happens I think you're gonna

  • see a lot of Interesting dynamics in, in education.

  • >> So, we should probably honour our commitment with you that

  • you get home and have some time with your own family.

  • >> Yes.

  • >> After spending time with us.

  • We do have a small gift for you knowing that you graduated from Havard

  • Business School, we wanted you to have a taste of the Stanford Business School.

  • >> Oh, yes, yes.

  • >> So we have autographed books by Jeff F Fort, Chip Keith and Jennifer Aaker.

  • >> Oh, very good, Oh, thank you.

  • >> And the requisite.

  • Stanford swag.

  • >> [NOISE].

  • >> Oh, very good, thank you very much.

  • >> Thank you so much for doing this.

  • >> Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

  • [NOISE].

  • >> You are a great guy.

  • >> Oh, well, thank you.

  • [NOISE]

I am thrilled to see so many people here on a Thursday evening.

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