Salman Khan is known across the world as the creator of the learning site, named Khan Academy. Khan Academy is now so popular that in schools it’s a part of the curriculum. That’s not just in the U.S., but also a thing all over the world. Though this popular site is very helpful, not a lot of people know how it was created. I feel that a part of the reason that Mr. Khan doesn’t get the credit he deserves is that he shares a name with a famous Bollywood actor. To undo this wrong, let’s take a journey through history and click into the life of Sal Khan.
Salman Khan was born in New Orleans, Louisiana on October 11, 1976 to a Bangladeshi family. Salman’s father Fakhrul Amin Khan was born in Barisal, Bangladesh while his mother Masuda Khan was born in Calcutta, India. Salman Khan went to Grace King High School. When Sal was once asked about his time there he recalled “ A few classmates were fresh out of jail and others were bound for top universities.” While at Grace King, Salman worked as a cartoonist for their high-school newspaper. Salman would graduate from high school as valedictorian in 1994. After graduating Mr. Khan would attend the University of New Orleans (UNO). After attending UNO, Khan got a bachelor’s degree in computer science and electrical engineering as well as a bachelor’s degree in mathematics at MIT in 1998. He would finish off by being class president in his senior year. If that wasn’t enough Salman Khan also holds a Master of Business Administration from Harvard.
Now skip a few years and it’s 2004 and Nadia, Salman Khan’s nine-year-old cousin is asking for Sal’s help on her math homework. Since Salman Khan was living in Boston working at Wohl Capital, a hedge fund. A hedge fund is an investment fund. At the time Nadia was living in New Orleans. So every night Sal would call Nadia by telephone and with the help of Yahoo! Notebook he would tutor her. Not long after, other cousins and their friends wanted Sal’s help too. After a while, it was getting a bit too overwhelming for Sal. 2 years later one friend of his suggested that instead of teaching the same thing over and over again to each student, Sal should just post lessons on Youtube where they could go and watch it. At first, Sal was skeptical. He believed that Youtube was a platform only for funny videos, not an area where you help kids with math! Finally, Sal got over his skepticism and posted a couple of videos. The feedback from his cousins was good so Sal kept going. Not only that but since Sal kept his Youtube account on public other people would stumble upon it and really started liking it. Sal was very happy with how much others were liking his videos but he never thought that these videos could be used in schools. He was usually getting notes from kids at that point in time telling him how much they liked his videos but now notes from teachers were coming in telling him how they are using his videos in their classes. By 2009, Sal had quit his day job as a financial analyst to work full-time on his videos and the software. By 2012, Sal had personally made about 3,000 videos ranging from all kinds of subjects. A video about math one day and the next day it could be about history. Sal Khan named is Youtube channel, Khan Academy. With the help of his close friend Josh Gefner, he was able to make his channel more popular. Khan Academy was gaining a lot of momentum now, and eventually, Khan got a sponsorship from Ann Doerr, wife of John Doerr, the American investor. In 2010, Khan got a $2 million dollar grant from Google and $1.5 million dollars from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. With this money, Khan was able to build a non-profit organization.
Sal outlined Khan Academy’s vision as “accelerated learning for students of all ages.” When Sal first started the organization he asked Shantanu Sinha from McKinsey & Company to join as President and COO of Khan Academy. Sinha and Sal were really good pals and went way back. They were mathematical rivals at Grace High and roommates at MIT. With Sinha, Sal hired Ben Kamens and Jason Rosoff from Frog Creek Software to lead software design and development. Together, the men created the first versions of Khan Academy. This version is very prehistoric to the Khan Academy we have today, but it’s still based on the same format: You do an exercise with a number of questions that you have to try and get right. If you’re wrong there are videos and hints to help you solve the problem. To shape Khan Academy, Sal and his team used this web called a knowledge map. When I say web I’m not referring to the Internet but to a spider web. This knowledge map keeps track of everything they’ve done from basic math to calculus to ancient history to starting grammar, helping them give their users challenges. Since Khan Academy has also been used by teachers, the team made features so the teachers can track their student’s progress and help them when they're stuck and much more. Eventually, Sal and his team got a chance to really make their non-profit big when a school in Los Altos, California tried out Khan’s site with their students. The site in the city was a HUGE success which led Sal Khan to do a Ted Talk which also helped him and his team grow into what is today: A world-wide organization, devoted to letting kids learn all sorts of subjects at their own pace, at their own time from quite literally from every single grade schools have to offer. Khan Academy can be used from the bumpy chair in your classroom to the comfy bed in your room. That’s the story of Salman Khan, the Online Educator. Do you like him? Did you like his passion and drive to make learning affordable to all people? Is he your kind of person? If you liked that get ready because now we are scanning are way into the life of the Plutonium Pilot!