Has learning changed over the last 10 years? How about 50 years? How about 250 years? The traditional way that we learn is through a typical classroom format which normally has anywhere from a handful of students to lecture hall with a teacher in front of the room who leads the discussion.
Yes, some learning is more interactive and varies greatly depending on multiple variables, though at the end of the day we’ve been learning the same way for hundreds of years.
We are now breaking from this mold by utilizing the tools we have available and an interesting not-for-profit to watch is the Khan Academy. So far they have over 3000 videos covering everything from math, biology, chemistry, physics, finance and history which are set up in a format that helps make learning interesting while providing interactive tests to help you move through the basics to the more complex issues.
Khan Academy, which was started by Salman Khan who created a few tutorial videos and posted them to YouTube to help his cousins. His cousins joked that they liked the YouTube version of Sal more because they could learn at their own pace and go back and watch the different lessons as needed. What started as a few videos continued to grow as Sal noticed more and more people watching and commenting on the videos.
Khan Academy is even working with school districts to create full programs that teachers can utilize in their classrooms which allow their children to watch the videos and complete the online exercises as their homework and then the teachers can review their progress with the students during regular school hours and work with the students to better understand their problem areas and help the students through them. This allows a much more interactive and cooperative approach to learning and this opens huge possibilities to learn.
Khan Academy offers their courses for free and they are continually expanding which allows anyone to brush up on a subject or to explore new areas of interest. They also provide ways to monitor your learning and continue to offer ways to help with the learning process by utilizing technology and various other tools. It’s going to be interesting to find out where this goes and what other companies offer to continue this amazing transition from the traditional learning at which we are accustom….
“We now accept the fact that learning is a lifelong process of keeping abreast of change. And the most pressing task is to teach people how to learn.” ~Peter Drucker
Giddyup
