KHAAAAAANNN!!!!

Saturday, March 12, 2011 at 2:05 AM | Posted by Juwen


I have been interested and a big advocate for proper science and math education for a long time and I have to say that this man has probably done more about the advancement of how we think about education than anyone else in the world. And all he did was just do an online version of educational videos. Then everything exploded. From a fairly low tech teaching tool of just a pen, tablet and screen capturing tool to a full blown website chock full of features to help teachers devote more time and attention to the students who are really in need. This really is the future of education where the world is just one big classroom. Full of Youtube videos. And the best thing is that, his videos are not restricted to science and math. But I have to say it works exceptionally well for science and math.

His teaching methodology and principles however are not something new or at least for me. While the use of education videos are probably as old as television itself and his principle of humanizing the classroom has been around for awhile now, it's the marriage of the two that makes his work so profound. On hindsight, I got a glimpse of that when I was in A-Levels in the form of my two Further Mathematics teachers. While they still gave lectures, spending most of their time giving a roughly one-size-fits-all lecture and marking papers, their teaching methodology was very similiar to what Salman had done (except without the videos). They intuitively knew who were the ones that needed help and spent the remaining spare time helping them than those (myself including) who were just a tad bit slow in understanding, say differential equations and proof by induction. Because they knew the other people who got it fast can help the slower ones. The math exercises were by the bucket full but it was necessary for us to keep on the bicycle, so Salman uses the metaphor, until we understood. Of course back then it was rather infeasible to do what Salman and his academy did but essentially my teachers did it.

It was ultimately because of them that I had this immense love of mathematics, something rather rare among Asians beyond getting through an exam in high school or first year uni math and of course the reason why I pursued my undergraduate degree (and potentially a PhD) in mathematics. Had I not have the wonderful tutoring of the two teachers, I might have wound up in a completely different area, something more mainstream, something more Asian. And I'd probably be a bit less appreciative. A by-product of their teaching was the revelation of bringing that same style of teaching to educate others that science and math isn't that hard to get and that is OK to love science and math. I've always been a firm believer that most people would love science and math if taught properly or had a good teacher. As evident from his academy, awesome tools that help teachers and students get the most out of understanding these difficult subjects is also a big plus point. But the technology by itself cannot replace the human aspect of the teacher in the classroom, as in we cannot learn effectively from just the internet or, in the near future, robots. For some unknown higher level cognitive/psychological reason, we learn the best when there's human presence around as found out by some human development psychologists researching on language in babies. The goal of humanizing technology (crudely speaking, making ourselves cyborgs) where we learn and interactive with technology on a daily basis but still maintain our relational human identity seems to be the general trend for today and tomorrow's people.

By the way, it is because of this man that I learned what really went wrong during the financial crash of 2008 from his videos. And since then I've been rather interested in the economics of a crash and brought me to the beginnings of behavioral economics. So I have experienced first hand what this guy is capable of, teaching wise.

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