Reflections based on the video  “Let's use video to reinvent education” by Salman Kahn.

Salman Kahn proved in this video his excellent communication skills. When I watched this video in 2011 very few people knew about what a flipped classroom meant. Now we talk about flipped classrooms in many staff meetings. Furthermore, we talk about Khan Academy in many of them;  “flipped classroom” has been associated to Mr Khan! 

I agree with him on all the advantages of using videos to support the learning to students so I am very glad that Mr Khan managed to convince so many people. However, I would like to say that many of us teachers have been using flipped classroom techniques for many years and there is much more than Khan Academy to be explored.

Thousands of teachers have been publishing excellent videos, tutorials, quizzes and demonstrations online for many years. Many of them are really good, but nobody has managed to become as famous as Mr Khan.

So how as Mr Khan become so famous? Is it because his videos are so good? Well, he certainly has a very good sense of humour, but his voice becomes quite monotonous if you watch many, and the visuals are very poor.

In my opinion Khan Academy has made a strong impact due to three factors:

1-     The need for such videos. We can see how many people are searching for help from videos when we type key words in different search engines.

2-    Mr Khan’s communication skills. And this goes beyond his interesting speeches. Mr Khan and his team have managed to promote their videos all over. This TED talk is just one of the thousands of videos, posts, articles and other media to promote the videos. In some blogs some users complain that it is easier to find the promoting videos than the videos themselves!

3-    Mr Khan has managed to communicate his “why”* and he has done it very effectively. Connecting not just with students, but also with parents and teachers.

4-    Did I say 3 factors? Sorry. I lied. He became famous because of the first three factors, but as it happens in this society, once you are famous you are invited for many other events that can make you famous, and you stay in this virtuous circle until people get bored. The only way to avoid this boredom is to avoid this filter bubble** and explore beyond KhanAcademy for educational videos.

* See Sinek's TED talk “How great leaders inspire action” (http://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action.html)

** See post in this blog Reflections based on Pariser's TEDtalk "Beware online filter bubbles".

 http://leadership-technology.blogspot.ch/2013/02/reflections-based-on-video-beware.html