lecture 2

Khan Academy

In today’s globalised world technology is changing our day to day experiences in a radical way. Be it finding long lost friends on facebook or using a mobile app to book tickets. This technological wave has changed the way companies work. Various innovative models have been developed using technology to revolutionize the way of doing things.

Khan Academy is one of these models which have completely changed the traditional way of teaching. Since ancient times of ashram teaching to present situation where the whole model of teaching is designed keeping in mind the teacher’s perspective. Different students have different pace of learning and grasping things. But all are made to study in same manner. It is similar to producing same brand of clothes for everyone. Everyone has to wear Brand X clothes, no consideration for individual preferences.

Khan Academy did an exceptional work of turning the whole education model by 360 degrees making it student centric. It believes in theory Y that students are enthusiastic about learning. In traditional theory X approach where the students are made to sit in class quietly, they can’t discuss with their peers, they may feel insulted in asking the teacher to again explain the concept and so they may not understand the concept clearly. But Khan Academy has an interactive approach of teaching students where in students can pause the video anytime they want, understand the concept and then take test to analyse.

In some cases this model was actually implemented during the class, the academy has built in software which can calculate how much time each student is taking to study and answer. In this way the teacher will be able to identify who are the children which are weak and give special attention to them. It made me think it happens in every organization processes and people go wrong, but the most difficult thing is to identify where things actually went wrong. If there is proper tracking of the resources using the present day technologies companies can track down the weak links and transform the way they manage their quality.

Organizations should try to rethink and transform the way they carry out different processes using technological innovations. Things are changing at a very fast pace and customers are asking for more personalised products and services. Khan Academy’s success has showed to the world how educational processes can be revolutionised using technology. Organizations should also try to improve or may be replace old processes with the help of technology.