Jeff: I want to start by introducing Sal.

He really needs no introduction,

particularly for a group that's this passionate

about education, but as you all know,

In day is about transformation

and we love to be able to welcome folks

who I think are illustrative of true transformation

and Sal is absolutely an example of that

within the realm of education,

which is something all of us here are so passionate about.

So, for those that don't know,

I've been interested in education reform

and I may have to amend that.

I love the title of your TED talk, which is Reinvention,

Reinventing education because I think at this point we need reinvention.

I don't think reform is going to get it done.

I may have borrowed that line from Sal,

but I've been interested in education reform and reinvention

really since back graduating high school and at the time

was thinking about the best way to make a difference

and thought about going into teaching,

thought about administration,

thought about getting involved in public education

in some regard and the other alternative was going into business.

And people oftentimes say,

"Well, how can you go into business

and make a difference in terms of education?"

And the belief, the thesis was, amass enough influence and resource

where I'd ultimately have the chance to do that.

And long story short, being in business

led to meeting and extraordinary guy named Charles Best,

who's the founder and CEO of donorschoose.org,

which is a philanthropic marketplace for teachers

very close to my heart and being in business

brought me to TED this year and I had

the extraordinary privilege to see Sal Khan,

the founder of The Khan Academy, give a TED Talk

that literally brought the house down.

So, for all the talks that I was in attendance for

and there was some wonderful talks,

this talk that Sal gave literally lit the place up.

People were vibrating with energy on what was possible

because I think there was a lot of people

in the audience that day who know how challenging

it's going to be to make a difference

in terms of education.

For those of you in the audience who have

committed some of your time and energy,

you know that's the case and the reason

I wanted Sal to be here today was because,

to a large extent, and this may be a big statement,

I think he may have cracked the code.

I think he may have secretly cracked the code

on how we can improve education.

So, long story short, I think you all know by now,

but Sal was in the hedge fund business

and was asked to help out, it was your cousins?

Sal: Cousins.

Jeff: Your cousins with some math questions

they had, so did a YouTube video

and they raved about it and he'll tell you

a little bit more about the feedback he got

that was the impetus to do more and, of course,

fast forward today, he's got over 2,200 12 minute videos

from everything, algebra to American history

and it's helping people learn in ways

that were really unimaginable before the web came along.

And it's gone way beyond that, so there's a back-end system

that he and his team have put together

that, for lack of a better term, I'd say

has created a true adaptive learning platform

that's going to scale and we're going to talk

a little bit about that and if he doesn't mention it

one of my favorite Q and A parts of the entire TED conference

was an exchange between Bill Gates and Sal.

So, with that, how about a huge round of applause for Sal Khan.

(applause)

Welcoming him to LinkedIn and Sal,

I'm going to ask him a few questions to get started

and he'll talk a little bit, but we'd really love

for this to be a brainstorming session.

I think we've got a lot of incredible talent in the audience

We're going to be recording this so potentially

we can inspire some folks who are going

to see this remotely at some point

and maybe they can get involved too.

So, let's start with the beginning.

I know most people here saw the video,

but just talk a little bit about Khan Academy came to be.

Sal: Yeah, it was literally, as you mentioned

and I'm sure some of you all know,

I was an analyst at a hedge fund in Boston in 2000-

this is 2004, fall 2004 and my cousin and her family,

her two younger brothers, my aunt and uncle came

and visited me in Boston right after our wedding.

Our wedding was in New Jersey and they came up

to just kind of tour the sights and actually,

while we were touring Boston, it was the fourth of July weekend

and I remember while we were waiting for the fireworks

to start over the Charles, I would kind of give them my battery

of brain teasers that I use just as a time killer.

I'm sure you probably all use them as interview questions and what not.

(laughter)

They're very good, interview-

And I remember, Nadia, who was 12 at the time was super engaged.

Most people when you give them brain teasers like this,

my aunt and uncle, everyone else were like,

"What's the answer?"

But Nadia was like, "No, don't tell me the answer!"

And she would like walk out and these were hard,

CSE logic problems, 100 people who can't see -

There's all sorts of crazy things and I was really impressed.

The next day we were touring MIT and in front of the whole family,

I said, "Nadia, you should think about MIT.

"I saw you've got some skills," and she didn't pay -

My aunt, her mother, gave my uncle this weird look when I said that.

I didn't make much of it and then the next morning

(unintelligible) who is Nadia's mom told me,

"That's really nice what you said about Nadia yesterday,

"but she's actually being tracked into a slower,

"not even the regular algebra track."

I was like, "That's impossible."

One, I saw what she did two nights ago

and we share a certain amount of DNA. (laughter)

When Nadia woke up, I said,

"Hey, Nadia, I don't believe this placement exam.

"What was the problem?"

She said it was units.

I was like, "Two nights ago you were tackling stuff

"that's a million times harder than units.

"What do you say when you go back to New Orleans

"we get on Yahoo Doodle and speaker phone

"and if you're willing to do a little bit of extra work,

"I'm willing to spend half an hour an evening with you,"

and she was up for it, so that was the genesis.

Jeff: You referred during your TED talk to what made it so effective.

Half-jokingly that they liked you better in video

than they did in real life.

Sal: Non-jokingly, actually.

Jeff: In all seriousness.

Talk a little bit about the magic of what you did

and the efficacy and how you built on it from there.

Sal: It all started where I left off.

I started tutoring Nadia kind of live, but remotely.

Then I started tutoring her brothers and the whole time

I just had a doodle note board and speaker phone.

She only heard me, she didn't see me,

and we just saw the same thing that each of us were writing.

Fast forward about two years, so now we're going

into November of 2006, I was having trouble scaling.

The first time you give a lecture on the greatest common divisor

it's kind of fun, the 20th time it kind of sucks.

How do I do this?

It was actually a buddy that recommended

that I put it up on YouTube, which I was very dismissive of at first.

That's for dogs on skateboards, that's not for serious mathematics.

When I got over the idea that it wasn't my idea,

I decided to give it a shot and it was interesting,

because I was like, "Okay, how do I do this?"

"I don't have a video camera, should I go get one?"

I was like, "No, because that would cost money."

With Nadia, we just had this screen going,

so there must be some type of software that captures a screen.

I didn't even know there were screen capture software existed.

I did a web search, I found some freeware that did it,

and I needed an art program.

I only used Microsoft Paint for the first 500 videos

and just started doing it and when I put those first videos up,

the first collection of videos, 20 or 30 videos,

my cousins literally did tell me that they preferred me

on YouTube than in person.

I think there's a lot of things.

Since then, I've heard a lot of feedback.

One is just the form factor.

This is true of any on-demand video.

You can pause, you can repeat, you can review stuff

that you should've learned last week or last year

or a couple of years ago, you don't have to feel embarrassed.

You can do it when you're ready for it,

you can go ahead, it's not a one-size fits all,

but that's true of all on-demand video.

Khan Academy is not the first on-demand video.

MIT open courseware started doing this in 2001.

I'm sure there's people who did it before that.

I think the feedback I get over and over again from people

is that they appreciate how conversational it is.

To some degree, that wasn't by design.

It was literally like I didn't care, because it was for my cousins.

They're not paying me, so I said,

"Let me just make some videos for them."

There's literally an early video where I answered

a telemarketer call during the video and I don't edit it out.

It's just there, I'm like, "I'm not interested in Dish Network.

"Please stop bothering me," and I (laughter).

(unintelligible) Exactly, how to say no to obnoxious telemarketers.

People enjoy the conversational nature.

Early on, because these are for my cousins,

I didn't have a script, I didn't have a lesson plan even.

Some of those early videos, actually, I kind of cringe at them now,

because I'm like, "Hmm, what should I talk about now?"

and I just do, "Let's talk about this."

People really like the idea that I'm expressing exactly

what's going on in my brain right now.

It's not some thing that's made by some bureaucracy

to meet some state standard and one group of people write a script

with some computer graphics and then another group of people

just read the script while the computer graphics happen.

They like the organic nature.

A lot of people, once again, the form factor

that's kind of our brand now, I did it because I didn't want

to have a video camera, but people say it actually feels intimate,

it actually feels like you and I are sitting next to each other

and looking through the concept together.

This is kind of crazy.

I've gotten letters from people who've said,

"Not only does it feel like I'm next to you,

"it feels like you're in my brain."

When they go normally, on an everyday basis,

when they go and think they think in their own voice,

but as soon as they get to a math test, all of sudden they say,

"Well, let's see what the next -" and they hear me. (laughter)

The other thing is, it had to be limited to ten minutes.

I guess that was another Khan Academy innovation,

but once again, YouTube limited to ten minutes,

so I had to do it and that was really good discipline

and now I've gotten tons of feedback

and I've actually dug up research

that shows people actually can't pay attention

in any reasonable way for more than 10 to 18 minutes.

After they do, they zone our for five minutes.

After zoning out for five minutes, they realize they were zoning out.