Learning using the Internet

I just watched a video posted on the Khan Academy website, a tribute to their free education using video. A man who never really succeeded in anything in high school, took a music degree because he felt he wasn't any good at anything else, went back to university after using the Khan Academy videos and after his first year in electrical engineering, is earning a 4.0 average, getting perfect scores on his exams. He says that the main reason for his achievement is that he could watch the videos 30 or 40 times. He says that he doesn't know of any teacher that would sit down beside him and explain the same concept that many times without becoming judgemental about his ability as a student.

Success story? This man says that the true impact of the Khan Academy's work in his life will be seen over the next 30 or 40 years.

So, I went to the Khan Academy's website after seeing a link on the Will Richardson blog and checked it out. Yes, it is free. The videos (ones I saw) were high quality. I checked out who was behind the website and who is on the team: high quality learned people with various degrees from recognized institutes and various life experiences. These were just the paid people. There are many others who volunteer as coaches, mentors, and contributors.

The set up allows participants to register as students, teachers or coaches, or principals of schools or other learning institutions as pilot projects. The learning is self-paced and if you need incentives, you can earn badges of learning, some are easy to get and others are very rare and involve copious amounts of work and research.

I checked out who could register and what the cost was: respectively, anyone and at no cost. If you are 13 years of age or older you can register yourself through Google or Facebook. If you are under 13, you need your parents to set up accounts for you.

After checking out this web site, I have so many questions. What implications does this have for our students? Can our students be presented with learning in this way as a differentiated mode of learning in our own schools? What kind of learning is this exactly? Could a 13 year old student get a degree in Mathematics through Khan academy? Are there other web sites like this? Should we be advocating our students to get on the Internet and learn what they need to know through organizations like this?