Khan Academy: A global teacher of 1,516 lessons and counting | Hacker News Reader

Khan Academy: A global teacher of 1,516 lessons and counting

physorg.com

96 pointsMgreen23 comments

These are a fantastic resource (I've actually up-voted the submission), and everyone should know about them, but do we have to see them here so often?

http://searchyc.com/submissions/Khan+academy?sort=by_date

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1459869

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1415147

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1351584

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1177230

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=995830

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=993632

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=898167

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=892222

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=733383

I agree that higher education is the next wave. I am doing kinda the same thing as this math teacher but with music. http://www.MusicTrainer.com . I should be "officially" launching soon. Please let me know what you think. I read hackernews everyday and value the opinions of the community here.

From what I've seen the video quality is very good and I like the introduction video. Do you plan on focusing only on these four kinds of instruments? Keep the good work!

Slug, Thanks we take much pride in developing the quality of the production and instructors so it's nice to be commended for that. For now just planning on focusing on guitar, drums, bass, percussion, keyboards, vocals, music theory and ear training. Hope to expand out to many more one day but decided it best to focus on those for now. Anything in specific you are looking for?

Excellent start! I like the way the website is set up, and the videos seem to be high quality.

Thanks Mike. I will be uploading around 600 clips in the next month or so. Keep a look out. I hope I can start generating enough money to up the quality even more. It might take a while though.

600?! Wow. I wish you had been around when I was first learning guitar.

The site looks like it will be a great resource especially for young people learning. Just curious why are you disallowing anyone under 18 from using it?

Is that right? I don't see any mention of age on the site and the first video I clicked started without problem for me.

I was looking at the terms of service here: http://www.MusicTrainer.com/lgl/tos/

"ALL PERSONS UNDER THE AGE OF 18 ARE DENIED ACCESS TO THIS WEBSITE. IF YOU ARE UNDER 18 YEARS OF AGE, IT IS UNLAWFUL FOR YOU TO VISIT, READ, OR INTERACT WITH THIS WEBSITE OR ITS CONTENTS IN ANY MANNER. THIS WEBSITE SPECIFICALLY DENIES ACCESS TO ANY INDIVIDUAL THAT IS COVERED BY THE CHILD ONLINE PRIVACY ACT (COPA) OF 1998."

I thought COPPA (Children's Online Privacy Protection Act) only applied to people under 13, and only when accounts are created.

Thanks for the compliment. Regarding the age limitation. Just working out the legal information for the younger audience. I plan on opening up the site to all ages once the applicable legal policies are created.

So this is a bit weird but, I recognize my old guitar teacher from there! I used to take lessons from Dave Wood back when he lived in NYC and can easily say if you have him involved in the project you are headed in the right direction. Absolutely amazing teacher!

It's not the prettiest site out there, but it's definitely easy to navigate. I would consider making the menu a little smaller, and the page flap in the top right is kind of annoying.

Man what an amazing coincidence. He lives out in the Los Angeles are near me now. Considering getting rid of the email signup flap. Thanks for the encouragement.

I agree with you. As long as you're passionate about a subject, you can start your own micro-school. I couldn't get a job as an organic chemistry professor even with an MIT pedigree and a long list of papers, including one in Science. So I said screw it, I'm doing this anyway, and I'll treat it like it's my own business. So I started a blog devoted to teaching undergraduate organic chemistry, and I make money from funneling a small portion of the people who read the site into online Skype tutoring. So much fun to be my own boss and not have to deal with academic bureaucracy. Good luck to you.

Great story. I agree passion is very important. I believe that is why a ton of companies fail after making a pivot point. I believe it can remove much of the original passion for the project. Good luck with your site and thanks for the kind words.

I finished my undergrad 6 years ago and want to get into a PhD program in a year or two. I expect my research will pertain to DSP and involve FFT/DFT on a regular basis. To brush up on my math (PreCalc, Calculus, Linear Algebra etc), I've been watching Khan's videos nightly. I must say his videos are a great way to recollect what you've already understood once but forgotten now.

I wish there was a way to speed them up though. I've thought about downloading the mp4s from YouTube and playing them locally at high-speed with VLC.

Yeah I'm planning on going through the stats stuff on there, failed a stats class last year because I didn't really give it attention so want to make sure I pass it easy this time round.

It would be cool if he offered all the courses as a single download via torrent or perhaps a mail-order DVD.

I think that would detract from his primary focus, which is teaching the subject. If he had to spend time maintaining a server, managing accounts and sending out DVDs in the mail, there won't be much time left for teaching. If he had to hire someone to do it for him, he couldn't offer the service for free any more.

You know, it doesn't take that much time to upload a torrent of some MP4s to The Pirate Bay or LegalTorrents or whatever.

They also have an open-source code repository for some web applications that they are trying to build.

http://code.google.com/p/khanacademy/

I daresay that they could use technical help from all the web/javascript gurus out there.

I was hoping that this would be an effort to transition the content from video to smart html5 markup. The lessons themselves are obviously valuable, but it would be nice to have it done w/ text, JS animation and optional audio.

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