Technology isn’t creative

Technology isn’t creative

Salman Khan was a hedge fund manager from Boston.
He had three degrees, and an MBA from Harvard.
So this is a bright guy.
But he was also a natural teacher.
He loved to look at complicated things and make them simple.
He had a twelve year old cousin who was having trouble with maths.
But she lived in New Orleans and he lived in Boston.
So he began sending her short tutorials in simple maths.
He did this via YouTube: simple, fast, and free.
All she’d see on the screen was his writing (black on white, like a blackboard) and she’d hear his voice explaining it.
She could watch as much or as little of it as she wanted.
And she could go back over anything she didn’t understand.
And it worked.
His cousin began getting better grades.
But something more surprising happened.
Salman Khan found his tutorials were being followed on YouTube by thousands of strangers.
He began getting emails from people all around the world.
Telling him this was the only way their children could actually learn.
Or their children had learning difficulties, like autism, but they loved his tutorials.
Khan was touched.
He began doing tutorials on other subjects: economics, physics, astronomy,
And the tutorials spread like wildfire.
All across the world, millions of people began following him.
Then one day, he turned on the TV and Bill Gates was talking about how he used the tutorials for his own children.
Salman Khan met up with Bill Gates and explained the education revolution he had in mind.
Basically, reversing the learning experience.
He calls it ‘Flipping the classroom’.
What happens in the conventional system is a lecture.
A single teacher explains a concept to a class of around 30 children.
All of different abilities.
The teacher has to go at the average speed of the class.
Slower than the fastest, faster than the slowest.
So it’s not ideal for anyone.
The teacher explains what they’ll be working on.
Then they take their homework home and do the problems alone.
Sulman Khan’s system reverses that.
They do the schoolwork at home, and the homework in school.
With Khan’s system, the children each watch the tutorial at home the night before.
This explains what they’ll be working on in class next day.
They can watch it as often as they like, as fast or slow as they like.
At their own pace, until they’ve got it.
Then, next day, they come into class and each work on the problems on their own computer.
At their own speed.
The teacher has a computer showing them what speed each child is working at.
If a child is having a problem, they can give them quiet, individual help without embarrassing the child.
Khan says it changes the teacher’s role to that of a coach or mentor.
Which he considers a higher value position than just someone delivering a lecturer.
Bill Gates and Google are both now funding Salman Khan’s new way of teaching.
This is a revolutionary take on the whole field of education.
The first truly creative use of technology in that area.
Allowing us to teach people like individuals, instead of just a single, simple mass.
But it’s not the technology itself that’s creative.
It took a creative person to see how to use it creatively.

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