The Khan Academy’s well-designed and user-friendly website (khanacademy.org) offers a wide range of tutorials adjusted to serve the needs of teachers, parents and self-learners. For learners in any of these categories, registration is easy. The academy’s first display screen which cheerfully assures visitors that “You can learn anything”, invites learners, teachers and parents to register under separate categories. After providing your e-mail address and selecting a website dedicated password — and perhaps most important, exempted from having to provide credit card details because all KA content is provided free of charge — learners can select any of the subjects listed on the academy’s website. Among them:
Mathematics: Primary, high schools and beyond
Science: Biology, physics, chemistry, organic chemistry, cosmology and astronomy, health and medicine, electrical engineering, discoveries and projects
Economics & Finance: Microeconomics, macroeconomics, finance and capital markets and entrepreneurship
Arts & Humanities: History of music, art history basics, Renaissance and Reformation in Europe, prehistoric art in Europe and West Asia, Baroque, Rococo, and Neoclassical art in Europe, art of Asia, art of the ancient Mediterranean, art of the Americas to World War I, art of Africa, art of Medieval Europe, art in 19th century Europe, art of Oceania, art of the Islamic world, Expressionism to pop art
Computing: Computer programming, computer science
Test Prep: Full SAT and New SAT, MCAT, GMAT, IIT-JEE practice tests worked through by Sal Khan and other KA faculty
Partner content from museums (Tate, J. Paul Getty, American Museum of Natural History, The British Museum, California Academy of Sciences, Asian Art Museum etc). Other partners: The Brookings Institution, Big History Project, Crash Course, Pixar in a Box, LeBron Asks, Stanford School of Medicine, The Aspen Institute, Dartmouth College, Wi-Phi (Wireless Philosophy), NASA and Code.org, Silicon Schools Fund and Clayton Christensen Institute, MIT+K12, NOVA Labs, Breakthrough Junior Challenge.
All the above content in video format with English language commentary and explanations is easily accessible free-of-charge on the academy’s website and/or on You-Tube by Indian institutions and individuals with reliable broadband connectivity and is being utilised by 350,000 KA registered users in urban India. To enable Indians unfamiliar with English, KA (India) has signed joint venture collaboration agreements with the Mumbai-based Tata Trusts and the Delhi-based Central Square Foundation (CSF) to translate and/or adapt KA content into vernacular languages. CSF has already begun work on translating KA’s maths and science content mapped to NCERT’s class I-XII curriculum into Hindi, the dominant language of north India.
Although rather belatedly, favourable winds of a perfect storm which will shower a plethora of benefits on the country’s floundering and dispirited education institutions and short-changed self-learners, are blowing over India.
