Hacker News Reader

The Khan Academy content is currently concentrated in areas such as math, science, and finance. Do you think the approach can be applied to other disciplines; e.g., programming, business (other than finance), other social sciences? And how about more advanced levels of skill development?

In short, are there boundary conditions to the Khan Academy approach? And if so, what are they?

View on HN

Khan Academy currently heavily depends on examples. Anything that you can teach by example is probably fair game. For example (ha!), his history stuff right now, while perfectly fine, I find no more engaging/effective than reading about.

That doesn't mean it won't work, just it probably won't be as effective for some other stuff as it has been for math and such.

I think it just becomes story-telling.

I agree. I think making it work beyond math and science will be a bit challenging, I think the style would need to change quite a bit, away from just the white board and more toward something like a real lecture.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com