Khan Academy

I have been busy busy busy, first writing my book and then later doing a project that will culminate in an awesome graduation gift for Maddie.  In other words, there has been no time for frivolous writing.  But as of yesterday I am free of one, and not quite ready to delve into the other again (all writing projects pretty much suck me in so completely I lose all track of time and space!) so I am taking a breather.  The nice thing about a blog post is that it, by its very nature, is relatively short.

Amen to that!  So I was catching up on the own blogs I follow, and found an interesting link to  http://www.khanacademy.org/, which I followed.  This is a pretty cool thing -- a huge (and growing) collection of short lessons on a huge range of topics -- with an intense concentration in math.  I decided to check out one on futures ... and let me tell you, I am not sure if I understood the concept before, because well, I don't think a lot in terms of finance on that level, but I get it now.  I think I saw one of these that my sister put on her facebook page -- and I thought it was so busy and schmaltzy -- but that was because I didn't understand the basis of the concept.

Which is?  Well, Sal Khan helped out his cousins by tutoring them remotely using youtube videos.  He just left them in the open either, and people all of a sudden were sending him messages thanking him for his help.  Which got him to thinking ... and now that is what he does, with help from funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, he has created an impressive array of these videos that anyone can access -- for free!

Bill Gates thinks it could be a revolution -- and while I've never been a fan of his -- the underlying premise of providing free education to anyone who wants it is pretty monumental.   There is a little buzz going on -- with key people from other technology-based companies leaving to go to Khan Academy, so I presume something even bigger than quality free education is in the works.

But in the meantime, I might just become math literate.  It has never been my strong suit, and when the kids ask me questions about their homework, I have to straight out tell them, sorry, I don't get it.  But maybe I can change all that!  (Though truth be told, the whole not knowing math thing has never been a problem for me in the last few decades!)  What I would like to learn is languages -- so hopefully they will expand to cover that category.

Okay, that is my tidbit for now!