Have you ever found yourself struggling with sixth grade math when you are in your forties? I know, just when you thought you'd escaped the nightmare, your child enters into it. And, who do they look to for help? You of course. Well, at our house, that's a humbling experience to say the least. Now, we are facing seventh grade math. I'm afraid we've started a pattern.
Imagine my delight when I discovered a site that was built to help with math concepts. It's design is beautiful (I'd say that even if I didn't think I'd just found the gold at the end of the rainbow). Really, it's based on simple, short learning videos focused on one concept at a time. So, break it down and make it cool to learn. Not rocket science, right? The genius behind it is Sal Kahn who started tutoring his niece virtually and stumbled into a great learning tool. Now the video learning site has expanded from basic math skills to trig, calc, geometry, science, history, business issues, the housing crash, finance, etc., etc.
Best of all, it's free. It's a perfect example of what Chris Anderson describes in his book "Free". Sal is creating wonderfully helpful tutorials for all the world to use. Now, others are discovering it and it is growing exponentially. Advertisers are starting to be very interested and revenue is beginning to be generated. The tutorials though, are reaching students who have never had this type of content available to them. The introduction our schools provide to our students is something that we take for granted. Sal is bringing this to the world for free realizing his goal of providing free worldwide education through his academy. Check out the Kahn Academy- but be careful - you'll probably learn something and have fun at the same time! It's now a staple in my home and I'm wondering how I can introduce the adults I work with to the learning style!
I was just thinking through this free thing myself. I had read another blog story about the dictionary going ALL online and no more hard copies being printed. People would pay for a subscription to Websters. The other blogger - a classmate - mentioned you can find everything through Google - definitions and spelling. I too am struggling to figure out how a lot of these companies will keep going with huge companies like Google offering services for free.
ReplyDeleteIt really is such a huge shift in how we think of "stuff" and "property" and what we can actually make money off of. Information, it seems, is becoming more and more free, while our stuff seems to become more expensive.
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