Success story: Salman Khan
http://www.prothom-alo.com/detail/date/2012-01-18/news/217343
Salman Khan, Founder of Khan Academy
His folksy lectures are revolutionizing how kids learn math and science
Before he started the most popular education site on the Web, Salman Khan was neither an educator nor an entrepreneur. His outsider status helps explain why he's been able to solve a problem that schools and other startups never could: how to harness technology to change the way kids learn.
Back in 2004, Khan was a 28-year-old hedge-fund manager in Silicon Valley looking for a way to help his cousin with her seventh-grade math homework. His solution: use Yahoo Messenger's Doodle feature to illustrate his points as he talked to her on the phone. Thanks to these homespun visual aids, his lectures leapt to life. Soon he began posting videos of his doodles on YouTube to accommodate his other cousins, and their friends, and their friends' friends. In 2009, Khan quit his day job to focus on making the videos full-time.
At last count, Khan Academy offered some 2,400 videos—all available for free on YouTube—covering topics from basic arithmetic to thermodynamics to the Napoleonic Wars.Hundreds of interactive practice exercises let kids put their newly acquired knowledge to work. The service, run as a nonprofit, reaches students across the world and is catching on with adults: Bill Gates and his son both love Khan's work.
Slate is published by The Slate Group, a Division of the Washington Post Company
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/top_right/2011/08/salman_khan_founder_of_khan_academy.html
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