- All right, it looks like I'm online on Facebook.
Hello, everyone at Facebook.
Sorry, running a little bit late.
If you ask, I'll tell you about my morning (chuckles).
And it looks like we're online on YouTube, all right.
So this is good.
As you can imagine, this has been an interesting
improvisational situation for all of us,
so my apologies for getting started
a little late this morning.
But this is what,
our fourth live stream that we're doing?
And, you know, the whole goal of this is
we have all of these resources at Khan Academy
that we've been building over the last 10,
actually, 11, 12 years.
And we could've never foreseen this type of a situation.
You know, Khan Academy, we've always imagined
the ideal use case being used in physical classrooms,
so students could learn at their own time and pace,
give teachers information on where students are,
and be able to do more focused interventions
for your classtime for other things.
And also support students who might not have had
traditional schooling or if you're in some part
of the world that doesn't have that.
We would've never foreseen this
school closure situation we're in.
But Khan Academy is eerily well-suited
to at least help us work on this.
Because obviously, we have things from Khan Academy Kids,
for early learners, for math, reading,
writing, social-emotional learning.
And then you get into the core of Khan Academy,
in math for sure, all the way through
from middle school, high school,
elementary school through college,
English language arts, SAT Practice.
We have the sciences, especially at the high school level,
AP level, and also several humanities,
American history, et cetera.
And the purpose of this live stream
is to give a little bit more connectedness to this.
Some people are starting
to call this kind of a homeroom for us (chuckles).
And like homeroom is in school,
it's the time to talk about anything,
a time, whatever announcements need to be made, et cetera,
and also just get a little bit of motivation,
a little bit of energy for the day.
Whether you're a teacher, you're a parent or a student,
this is just a reminder
that we're all going through this together,
and we're all gonna figure it out together.
And so I encourage anyone,
start asking questions on,
whether you're watching on Facebook or YouTube.
On the streams, I have team members
who are looking at those questions,
who are going to be surfacing them up
on my tablet right over here.
And so I'll know who to answer questions for.
You know, just a couple of updates on our side,
we are seeing, and I guess this isn't super-surprising,
but unusual traffic on Khan Academy.
What I heard from our team is Monday we saw 50%
larger than expected usage and then yesterday 80%,
and we're seeing kind of 10X the number
of teacher and student and parent registrations.
So that's great, that it sounds like a lot of people
are realizing that this is a resource that they can turn to.
It's free, it's accessible.
And hopefully, as we go through this crisis,
folks become more comfortable with using it.
And I think there's some ideas we can talk about
of how to complement it.
I do want to say thank you to Bank of America.
For those of you who don't know, Khan Academy,
we are not-for-profit.
That means no one owns Khan Academy.
We are not a company.
I don't own Khan Academy.
You own as much of Khan Academy as I do.
And we're funded through philanthropy.
And we love that we're able to serve everyone right now
as we have this crisis.
But our server costs are going through the roof.
We're having demand,
more folks to be able to do things like webinars.
We had a very large parent webinar
that had a thousand parents on it last night.
And so it's really valuable
that Bank of America stepped up.
You could do a Google search
and read about that press release.
But they stepped up to really support this,
you can almost call it a relief effort,
that we're trying to up our game at Khan Academy
to make sure everyone feels connected and supported.
And expect to see more from us
and our partners like Bank of America.
So thank you to Bank of America for that.
But let me get to,
let me get to some of the questions here.
So the first question is,
"How do I figure out what my child should be learning?"
So there's a couple of ways to answer that.
Obviously, as a parent,
you might know what grade your student's in.
And you might say, "Okay, my student's a fifth grader."
That might be an indication that fifth grade
on Khan Academy might be a really good place to start.
I will put a little asterisk there, little bit of a caveat.
What we found, even when working with traditional schools,
is the reason why a lot of kids have trouble,
and this is especially true in math,
but it's also true in things like reading and writing,
but especially in math, they might have trouble
in fifth, sixth, seventh grade math.
It's not because they're not bright.
It's not because the subject matter is difficult.
It's because as they went through
their academic foundations, they had some gaps.
They might have been in third grade
when they were learning multiplication tables.
They just didn't learn their seven times tables well.
And they got a C on a test,
and then they just moved on to the next thing.
And so when they see, have to multiply something by seven
in sixth grade, they just have to spend
a little bit too much cognitive load.
Or their decimals in fifth grade are a gap.
And so when they see a decimal in seventh grade, it's a gap.
So one thing we've seen teachers do to great effect,
there's an amazing teacher, Tim Vandenberg,
who I was talking to two days ago.
He was telling me how, with his sixth graders,
he starts them all on kindergarten on Khan Academy.
And if you know the material,
the students can go through each course quite quickly.
We have things like Course Challenges, Unit Tests,
Mastery Challenges that can accelerate students through it.
That helps them build some momentum, build some confidence,
get familiarity with the platform,
and then it ensures that they don't have any gaps.
So he has his students do early learning
and then do the arithmetic courses on Khan Academy
and the third grade courses.
He'd use those as the foundational ones and simultaneously
work on the grade-level course on Khan Academy.
If your student has, for the most part,
been proficient in math, then I would go straight
to the grade-level course on Khan Academy.
If, since we're already well into the year,
I would have your child,
and if you're a student, I would have you
take the Course Challenge,
and the Course Challenge will sample every unit.
And if you take the Course Challenge
and you get an 80 or 90% on it,
keep taking the Course Challenge
and try to get higher and higher scores
until you have mastery in the course.
But if you see there's some gaps
that you're consistently not getting right,
then those skills,
you can look at those units that they come from,
and then you can ensure that you get mastery in those units.
And so that's a way that we're,
you know, we're 3/4 or 80% through the year,
that you can quickly know what you know
and what you don't know and where you need
to actually fill in your gaps.
So that's my personal view of the quickest way to figure out
where might be the right zone for you.
And the same thing is true at the high school level.
You know, even high school students,
doesn't hurt starting a little bit behind.
You have more time now,
and make sure you fill in those gaps.
And things like our SAT Practice
that we do with the College Board, that adapts to you.
So if you start getting questions of a certain skill wrong,
it'll give you slightly easier ones
or then slightly harder ones if you get 'em right.
So that's my best advice there.
You know, some people have been asking
for just general tips.
And I was on some of the morning shows today,
and what I say is make sure you have some structure today.
As we get more days into the social distancing,
it's very tempting to stay in your pajamas
and kinda try to work from bed
with the TV running and all that.
That's not going to be good,
and it's not good even for your own mental health.
It's good to have a pattern.
Wake up in the morning,
just like you would have done for school.
Have your breakfast.
Get ready.
I even heard about some people pretending
like they're on a bus for some period.
I guess that's maybe a form of meditation.
And then break into the schedule.
And we, at Khan Academy,
we've released some schedules for school closures,
and it's for different schedules for different age groups
that have different amounts breaks
and things like that in them.
But use those.
You could use those just as they are,
or you can modify them to meet your needs.
But if you have that schedule,
then that also gives you a clearer sense,
as, hey, if I get all this done by one o'clock
in the afternoon or two o'clock, I can then relax,
I can then go do other things,
pursue my passions, work on other hobbies.
Ideally, you have a place in the house
that is nice and clean, free of clutter,
where you just associate that with work.
And that spatial association, I think,
will help your productivity.
All right, so we have Sayed Mohel Rosales asked
"Will Khan Academy always be free?"
Simple answer is yes.
You know our mission statement is free world-class education
for anyone, anywhere.
The whole idea about being a not-for-profit,
there's nothing wrong with for-profit companies.
Most of my career I'd worked at some form
of a for-profit or an other.
But a for-profit company at the end of the day,
their bottom line literally, is,
you know maximizing shareholder value or income,
or things like that.
Nothing wrong with that, that's how capitalism works.
But a not-for-profit, its bottom line is its mission,
and our mission is free,
world-class education for anyone, anywhere.
And the reason why we set it up
as a not-for-profit you know twelve
years ago I could have never foreseen
this scenario is because there's certain
parts of our market economy where
market forces alone might not work properly,
or if they did work properly, it might not
lead to the types of outcomes we want.
And you know, I frankly, I think education and healthcare
are the two areas where you,
you don't want someone's access to it
to be gated by their ability to pay,
or you know, what their parents do for a living,
or that you know, things like that.
And so that's why Khan Academy is free,
and will always be free.
And it's not, and it's not-for-profit.
It's primarily funded through philanthropic donations,
So Tada Bevell says, "Frustrating trying to help
"my college engineering son with his Internet issues."
"He also needs tutoring in calculus two,
"and physics, any help?"
So depends what the Internet issues are.
I don't have good advice for if there's connectivity issues.
Maybe the local carrier,
whoever might might be able to help with some of that.
But if he's taking calculus two and physics,
we can help there.
Khan Academy has a full,
depending on which college you go to,
first two semesters or three semesters
of college calculus, not just videos.
We have exercises, you get as much practice as you need.
So I really encourage your son to get on that.
Make sure he, same advice I have for the younger students,
take the course challenge.
Understand what he knows and doesn't know,
then he can focus on the units that he he has some gaps in,
and then if he's able to get to, say 90% mastery
on our, on our college calculus, or our Calculus BC,
which is AP, but still a first-year college course,
I think he'll do great.
We have the same thing in first year physics.
He could use our AP physics,
which is really college physics, that I,
hopefully will, will help him.
So let's see Alisharova Kilola asks,
"How do I motivate my little brother to study
"during the quarantine?"
"He really doesn't want to do anything."
And Alisharova, I empathize with you.
I know I have three kids at home.
And the older two, I have to give them a lot of credit.
11 and and eight years old, they are really productive.
I think even more productive than me.
Their school's doing a, you know they're getting
a list of stuff to do every day.
They're, they're connecting on Hangouts with their teachers
at appropriate times.
So they're fine, but my five-year-old,
I've been having a lot of difficulty motivating him.
I think he's just getting used to the circumstances
that we're all finding ourselves in.
We had a good tip from a homeschooling parent
a couple of days ago on this livestream,
where she said you just have to stick with it.
At first it's hard,
everyone's getting used to the same patterns,
but it's just about sticking with it,
maintaining a pattern.
Having consistency, you know, for very young kids.
I hope none of y'all are, well I hope you are listening,
but my technique with my five-year-old sometimes the direct
course of action is not the ones work on this.
He will resist but if you say,
"Hey, that was really amazing how many points
"you got yesterday!"
Then you know, kind of strokes his ego a little bit,
he gets a little excited about that.
Or if you say, "Hey tell me about that song
"you really like."
And then while, while he tells you about the song,
I'd kind of open up the work he needs to do,
handwriting or whatever else.
So, that's one possibility.
But I think, you know, this is one of those times,
don't beat up yourself.
It's really impressive, as a sibling,
you're trying to help your sibling.
But you know, don't put too much pressure on yourself.
Do what you can, keep some consistency.
And what the homeschooling parents are telling us
is that, "Oh it's still the first week
"for most of us, and so you know it's okay."
"We can we can give all of ourselves a break,
"and you know."
And this is the other thing
we're gonna probably form some habits
over the next month or two as the
schools are closed and it sounds like, it
in many places they will be closed
to the end of the school year.
We're hearing that in California.
But know we have the whole summer to continue learning,
to, you know, catch up if we need to fill in gaps.
And then continue learning.
So as long as people are able to ramp into the summer
and keep learning during the summer,
I'm not worried that they're going to be able
to do just fine when schools reopen.
All right, so someone says "How will Khan Academy
"get me into places like Stanford University?"
"I understand", oh "I understand.
"a guy who was locked up for 15 years
"used your resources and got into Stanford."
Okay, so Adam, Adam Bukhari asked that question.
So I'll first give my disclaimer, where you go to college,
just does not define you as a human being.
I think too many times in our society,
and a lot of the signals you get in high school,
and, and when you're young,
from your friends are like, you're defined.
But you know you try it you're trying to
find your identity and you might be
defined by your test scores, or where you go to college,
et cetera, et cetera, and you,
your life is far more than that.
Than these test scores, or where you go to college.
Now, for those of you who are, you know, you,
there's nothing wrong with wanting to go
to a highly selective University.
I would just say just don't be attached to it,
as Buddha says the course of all the the
source of all suffering is it you should
always try your best and it's great to
be able to find a college that will challenge you,
that will put you around other people
that will make you make you better.
My best advice, and I tell this,
you know we have a Lab School downstairs,
and I tell this to the students about your age
is make sure you really master material.
Don't try to, you know, be, do everything.
Master the core for sure.
You know the the mathematics, the sciences,
the writing, the humanities.
But make sure you have time and space for your passions.
You know, you see a lot of students
who, they think they have to do everything
in order to impress other people.
And in some ways the other people will say,
"That person is just trying to do everything to impress me."
"Who are they really?"
And we, I've talked to a lot of admissions officers.
We have some on our advisory board here at Khan Academy,
and they all tell us we just want to see authenticity.
For sure, they need to see kids
who they feel confident, will be able to handle
the academic rigor of their campus.
But they just want to see authenticity.
They want to see curiosity.
They want to see creativity.
And so I think, find your passions.
You have, you know glass half-full,
the school closures, you might have a little more time now.
This is a great time to explore your passions,
find solutions for people in your neighborhood.
There's all sorts of people who need help right now.
Do it authentically, don't do it just to get into college.
Say, "Hey, there might be senior citizens
"who can't go to the grocery store."
"Maybe I can drop off the groceries
"out there at their porch."
"Maybe I can turn into a thing me and my friends
"can volunteer to do that"
If you do it authentically, then when it's time
to apply to college, and if you're academically prepared,
you've given it your best shot.
And so that's that's my best advice.
You know the example you gave, of Jason who was,
for those of you who don't know the story,
this was a young man, when he was in his teens,
he got arrested for selling marijuana.
He got thirty years in prison in Illinois.
While in prison, his mother gave him transcripts
of Khan Academy videos
so he could start to learn.
They had no access to the Internet.
He had his sentence shortened to 15 years.
So he gets out in his early 30s,
and then he gets on Khan Academy for real
at the local library, uses our official SAT practice,
and he's able to kind of catch up,
and he initially said his local music college.
But he decides that he wants to apply to Stanford.
And he was able to transfer, and I met him.
And that's how I even know the story.
So there's some, I don't say that is the way
that you know, you should go to Stanford.
But I'm saying that as a way
that I think anyone, if you apply yourself,
you put your best foot forward,
and you're authentic about it.
You know I would say what's really powerful
about Jason's story is how authentic he is,
and how much he owns his own history.
And I think that's really powerful, and people would
be impressed by that.
Let's see Abed Sheik says, "Do you have any science classes
"for middle school on Khan Academy?"
So obviously that is actually
a gap that we have, officially.
We don't have middle school science, per se.
With that said, what I will tell you
is I think the high school biology is completely doable
by a middle school student.
The math prerequisites you would have already seen
in middle school, things like negative numbers,
and decimals, and exponents, and things like that.
And so, and especially because high school biology,
super interesting right now,
because you'll learn about viruses, and DNA and RNA.
And you know that's very relevant to the world we're at,
so I would recommend high school students
to work on the high school,
sorry, middle school students to work on the high school
biology on Khan Academy.
I think that could keep you busy,
and you'll learn a lot and that's just
a useful, useful skill for life.
All right, so, so Lethal Hipster, interesting name,
says, "Hi, Khan, how long have you been teaching?"
Well, depends how you define teaching.
You know I, I've taught in various
formal and informal settings over over many years.
If I were to go really far back, the first time
that I realized that I enjoyed tutoring
or teaching was in high school.
It might not surprise people,
but I was the president of the math club.
I assure you, it was cooler than you might imagine,
and as part of that we had,
we used to tutor a lot of our,
we had free tutoring for everyone at our school.
And I saw over and over again that students,
my friends who thought they weren't good at math,
if they just had a little bit of attention,
a little bit of being able to fill in their gaps,
then all of a sudden were like,
"Wait, this isn't so bad."
And, and then they were, they were off to the races.
And so that's what first stuck in my head of
the reason why people are held back
isn't because of their ability,
it's because of these gaps.
And they just need a little bit of
personalization, so to speak, to fill in those gaps.
Then in college I, I did some, actually I taught at the,
there's a local school district in Brookline, Massachusetts
and they had lost funding for some of their classes.
And so they were looking for volunteer teachers.
So when I was in college it was actually myself,
and my roommate, who's named Shantanu Sinha,
and he was actually the first president of Khan Academy.
We used to go volunteer teach at Brookline Devotion School.
This was in Brookline, Massachusetts
in middle school students.
And then later in college I actually was doing
some test flight, test prep stuff for for folks
like Princeton Review.
And then my career took a completely different,
I went into tech, et cetera, et cetera.
But I was always fascinated by this whole teaching side.
And so when my cousins, in 2004, needed help,
I was like, "Hey can I tutor you?"
"'Cause I just love, it's just fun to be able
"to connect with people."
"I love the subject matter."
And then that's kind of how I got started
on this this Khan Academy adventure.
That was about 16 years ago.
Yesterday someone commented about how old I look,
and so that's why.
(laughs)
Someone is asking, Andy says
"Hey Sal, it's 8:17 AM here,
"and I'm about to live with
"schedules that you planned."
"Thank you so much!"
Andy, great news!
And yeah, my apologies.
I know these livestreams conflict
with the same schedules that we publish,
and it's hard.
'Cause those schedules are whatever time zone you're on,
and obviously this live stream is happening
at different times, depending on what time zone you are in.
But I'm glad you're using the schedules.
And we are going to look for more ways to support
those schedules and we can get you support.
See, it says "How can I learn personal finance
at Khan Academy?"
You could literally look at our menus.
There's a course menu when you go to the top left.
And Finance and Personal Finance
are sections on Khan Academy.
Those don't have the exercises
the way that math and other subjects do.
But there's a lot of videos there,
and I think if you look at those videos,
and especially if if I'm working through a problem,
you pause and you try to do it on your own.
You'll be surprised how much personal finance
you might learn.
And I'm happy to answer actually
any personal finance questions if anyone has any.
And I know this is a time that might be
stressing folks' finances, so I'm or maybe
they're having questions about the stock market,
and my, you know my old life I used to be
an investment analyst.
So I don't mind answering questions about that.
Okay so Christine Priti,
"Will you be adding more courses, et cetera
"if schools stay closed for a longer time?"
A great question Christine.
You know we, we're looking to do anything and everything
necessary to be able to support folks
through this school closure situation.
It looks like they
will be closed and you know in many
places through the end of the year.
We're talking, you know everything we do is
philanthropically funded, so you know we talked earlier
about the the gap we have in middle school science.
I would love nothing more than to be able to create
some middle school science content on Khan Academy.
We need to find philanthropists.
Small and large philanthropists, every donation counts.
So that we can start hiring up a team of folks
who can start helping build that content.
You know a lot of time I get
disproportionate credit for Khan Academy
'cause I make a lot of the videos.
And you know I'm kind of the mascot,
for better or for worse.
I'm not so pleasant of a mascot.
but there's a lot of people behind the scenes.
We have over 200 employees who have salaries
that we need to be able to
pay so that they can do their work.
Most of these people have taken salary cuts
from what they could be doing in the for-profit sector
because they're so passionate about this mission.
And on the content side I have a ton of support
from people, oftentimes with PhDs in the subject,
who are curating what the, what the sequence should be,
how we cover the standards,
writing these thousands of items
that we have to write per course,
getting it vetted with outside third parties.
So there's a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes
for those courses, but I hope that we can add
more and more courses, especially if it looks like this,
this crisis continues for, you know
beyond what we're thinking right now.
So let's see, high school seniors are stressed
about school closures, no prom, no graduation ceremony,
what advice do you have for them?
So I'm, I'm, I don't know how all of this
is going to play out,
and you know there's some part of it
that's not so great.
That you're, you, you might miss out on some of these,
whatever you want to call them,
rites of, rites of passage.
What I would say to you is you
and your generation, especially those of you
who are high school juniors and seniors right now,
this is going to define your generation.
You know when you're my age, y'all are gonna sit around
the table and reminisce about 2020.
"Remember that, remember coronavirus?"
"Remember what was special about our generation?"
And I think that actually will, in many ways,
form deeper bonds than you know,
all of the other things that you might have done
in the past.
And I think there's ways
that you can still have those experiences.
Let's say you graduate.
Let's say we're still in this, in this quarantine,
or stay at home policy and so you're not able
to get those formal ceremonies.
Maybe they can happen in the fall, once ought we
surface from this.
Or at a later date, and that,
that could be fun too.
You know, I'm supposed to be involved with a few graduations
earlier this summer, and yeah I'm assuming
they might not happen.
But the, I hope they eventually happen
so that those students can get their proper congratulations
for what they've done, so, so it'll all be,
it'll all be good at the end.
So I wouldn't worry about it too much.
Take care of yourself more than anything,
and I think it'll all, it'll all work out.
So let's see other questions here.
Lisa Moore says, "So homeschooling parent here."
"Can confirm it, it does get better."
"The routine becomes normal."
"Important to keep a routine of sorts, and you're right."
"Ditch the PJ 24/7 habit, it's harder to break later on."
Okay, so reinforcement, change out of your pajamas,
patience, and perception.
Know yourself, know your kid.
Great advice, Lisa thank you for that.
You know I just got news from, I just got news from,
from our team here that, you know our partners,
Bank of America, you know we had that earlier question
about financial literacy?
They were the ones that have funded
that financial literacy work and career work
we have on Khan Academy over the last seven years.
And especially for many of y'all who are teenagers,
or in your early 20s we have a ton of content,
not just on financial literacy,
but different career paths and how to navigate them,
and and the pros and cons and, and the financial stresses,
or benefits of different careers.
And so the bank has been instrumental in funding all of that
over the last seven years,
And as I mentioned, they have been the first company
to step up, over, literally over the weekend
when they realized that we needed support
as a non-profit.
They step up and it looks like
they just announced a hundred million dollars
of support to non-profits worldwide.
So that's a huge deal, you know.
I know the folks at the bank for a while.
Folks like and Anne Finucane, and Meredith, and Michelle,
and you know I've just been inspired by their willingness
to step up and help the world, as just as human beings
and I think that is just representative of the whole,
of the whole bank.
Let's see, any other questions?
So there's more questions coming in,
we're close to time.
Maybe I could do one more question, but, well,
you know I'll just finish up with a standard message.
This is a time that is challenging for all of us.
But you know the point of this livestream
is to remind all of us that we're in this together.
As I've said in previous live streams,
this is actually something that I really enjoy connecting
with all of y'all because I've been
penned up in my house for this week.
And so I think it's, as all of us are navigating this,
as long as we stay connected, as long as we keep learning,
and as long as we recognize that this is
all gonna, this is all gonna sort itself out.
Over time, it's going to be a blip in our life.
It's going to be, make for great stories
to tell our children and our grandchildren
how we all stepped up,
and dealt with this, and supported each other
in this together.
I'll also just give a public health announcement.
I really do encourage people to take
the social distance seriously.
I posted a video over the weekend,
and I think you do a search for like
Khan Academy and COVID, or something like that
it'll tell you how,
you know, these things grow,
and the reported cases are probably,
are for sure understating the actual cases out there.
Because not everyone's tested.
Not everyone has had symptoms.
And so you might be carrying it,
and you might be lucky and not have so much symptoms,
especially if you're young.
But if you want to protect your parents
and your grandparents,
do your best to keep a social distance.
That's the best way that this looks.
The sooner that everyone does that,
the quicker that we will get through this,
and that the lower chance we have
of overwhelming our healthcare system.
So thank you everyone, it's, it's a real treat
to be able to do this with you.
Thanks for joining in.
And, you know, get on Khan Academy and learn,
and use the schedules, and tell everyone about it as well.
I think there's still a lot of parents and students,
who are feeling a little lost and and so the
more that