Salman Khan (educator)
Encyclopedia
Salman Amin 'Sal' Khan is an American educator and the founder of the Khan Academy
Khan Academy
The Khan Academy is a not-for-profit educational organization, created in 2006 by Bangladeshi American educator Salman Khan, a graduate of MIT. With the stated mission of "providing a high quality education to anyone, anywhere", the website supplies a free online collection of more than 2,700 micro...

, a free online education platform and nonprofit organization.

From a small office in his home, Khan has produced 2871 videos elucidating a wide spectrum of academic subjects, mainly focusing on mathematics
Mathematics
Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...

 and the sciences. As of November 2011, "Khan Academy" had attracted more than 218,000 subscribers.

Early life and Education

Salman Khan holds three degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...

: a BS in mathematics, a BS in electrical engineering and computer science, and a MEng in electrical engineering and computer science. He also holds an MBA from Harvard Business School
Harvard Business School
Harvard Business School is the graduate business school of Harvard University in Boston, Massachusetts, United States and is widely recognized as one of the top business schools in the world. The school offers the world's largest full-time MBA program, doctoral programs, and many executive...

. Salman Khan is a Bangladeshi-American.

Khan Academy

In late 2004, Khan began tutoring his cousin, Nadia, in mathematics over the internet using Yahoo!
Yahoo!
Yahoo! Inc. is an American multinational internet corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, United States. The company is perhaps best known for its web portal, search engine , Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Answers, advertising, online mapping ,...

's Doodle notepad. When other relatives and friends sought his tutoring, he decided it would be more practical and beneficial to distribute the tutorials on YouTube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....

 where he created an account on 16 November 2006. Their popularity on the video sharing website and the testimonials of appreciative students prompted Khan to quit his job as a hedge fund
Hedge fund
A hedge fund is a private pool of capital actively managed by an investment adviser. Hedge funds are only open for investment to a limited number of accredited or qualified investors who meet criteria set by regulators. These investors can be institutions, such as pension funds, university...

 analyst in late 2009 to focus on developing his YouTube channel, 'Khan Academy', full-time.

His videos attracted on average more than 20,000 hits each. Students from around the world have been attracted to Khan's concise, practical, and relaxed teaching method.

Khan outlined his mission as to "accelerate learning for students of all ages. With this in mind, we want to share our content with whoever may find it useful." Khan also plans to extend his "free school" to cover topics such as English
English literature
English literature is the literature written in the English language, including literature composed in English by writers not necessarily from England; for example, Robert Burns was Scottish, James Joyce was Irish, Joseph Conrad was Polish, Dylan Thomas was Welsh, Edgar Allan Poe was American, J....

 and history
History
History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...

. Programs are being undertaken to use Khan's videos to teach those in isolated areas of Africa
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...

 and Asia
Asia
Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...

. He delineated his motives:
With so little effort on my own part, I can empower an unlimited amount of people for all time. I can't imagine a better use of my time.

Recognition

Salman Khan has been featured on the The Colbert Report, PBS NewsHour, CNN
CNN
Cable News Network is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States...

, and National Public Radio. In 2009, the Khan Academy received the Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...

 Tech Award for education. In 2010, Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...

 provided $2 million to support the creation of more courses and to enable the Khan Academy to translate its core library into the world’s most widely spoken languages. In October 2010, Khan was tied for #34 in Fortune
Fortune (magazine)
Fortune is a global business magazine published by Time Inc. Founded by Henry Luce in 1930, the publishing business, consisting of Time, Life, Fortune, and Sports Illustrated, grew to become Time Warner. In turn, AOL grew as it acquired Time Warner in 2000 when Time Warner was the world's largest...

's annual "40 under 40"
40 under 40 (Fortune Magazine)
Fortune Magazine's 40 under 40 List details the young stars in business across the globe.Mark Zuckerberg topped the 2011 list. Facebook now has over 800 million users.-External links:***...

, a list recognizing business's hottest rising stars.
In March 2011, Salman Khan was invited to speak at TED
TED (conference)
TED is a global set of conferences owned by the private non-profit Sapling Foundation, formed to disseminate "ideas worth spreading"....

 by Bill Gates who claims to use the Khan Academy Exercise Software to teach his own children.
In May 2011, Salman Khan appeared on The Colbert Report to talk in an interview about his teachings. He told the audience how he planned to use his software to revolutionize the field of education. Included in his interview was a montage of notable teaching moments from Khan's YouTube channel.

Khan has also been interviewed by the famous news anchor Tom Brokaw
Tom Brokaw
Thomas John "Tom" Brokaw is an American television journalist and author best known as the anchor and managing editor of NBC Nightly News from 1982 to 2004. He is the author of The Greatest Generation and other books and the recipient of numerous awards and honors...

.

Khan is scheduled to be the commencement speaker for Rice University's commencement exercises on May 12, 2012.

External links

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