Yes, The Khan Academy is the Future of Education
I haven't exactly been as amazed by the Khan Academy as everyone else has. After watching a few videos, I decided that we need to focus more on the material that we are teaching - rather than the methods we go about doing it. They will obviously go hand by hand, but in my opinion the material that we are teaching is our biggest weakness and therefore needs the most reform.A video that everyone should take the time to watch is Conrad Wolfram's TED talk on teaching students with computers (http://www.ted.com/talks/conrad_wolfram_teaching_kids_real_m...). While we may use computers now to enhance the learning methods, we haven't taken advantage of the content/knowledge computers have and can supply for us. The majority of what is taught in grades K-12 in science and math could be done by a computer in almost no time with increased accuracy. Why wouldn't we take advantage of that?The gist of Wolfram's talk is that we are teaching students mechanics (which computers can do more efficiently) when we should be teaching them the higher orders of thinking and problem solving.Against popular belief, concepts can be understood without learning the nitty-gritty mechanics. One could solve a quadratic word problem without solving the quadratic equation themselves, and still understand the problem just as well. Think about it: do you need to learn how the engine of a car works before you can drive it?While all of this is not entirely relevant to the article, I humbly believe that the future of education should be and will be (if everything goes right) orders of magnitudes higher in efficiency as students will spend more time learning the right material. I'm not sure how much the Khan Academy will play a role in that...