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Khan Academy: The Proverbial Online Learning Resource

Many people claim that information is now free thanks to the invention known as the Internet. Yet all it takes is an interest in medical billing and enrollment in online college to see that the information you need to succeed still comes with a premium attached, Internet or not. However, free information provided in a learning environment is not impossible to find online. You need look no further than the Khan Academy.

The Khan Academy is easy to explain: it’s a website filled with nearly 3000 different video lessons covering everything from basic math to college-level chemistry. While this might just sound like an off-brand Youtube – and in fact many of the Khan Academy videos are on Youtube – the videos created by Salman Khan, the founder of the non-profit organization, have been recognized as being extraordinarily useful when it comes to viewers acquiring new information.

Khan’s origins as an online educator stem from a stint as a personal tutor for his nephew back in 2004 when the youngster was struggling to keep good math grades. Khan, a Hedge fund analyst at the time, opted to create a sequences of sketches edited together along with his narration to help his nephew grasp concepts more easily. The results were immediate, and soon the rest of Khan’s family was asking for him to make similar videos for their children.

Eventually Khan established a website for the assortment of videos he had created – which had evolved into finer-tuned versions of what he made for his nephew. The website eventually found its way to Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, who showed them to his children who in turn improved their grades as a result of the lessons being learned. Considering how easy it would be for Gates to hire the best tutors in the world, you can see how effective Khan’s videos must be.

The truly amazing thing about Khan’s videos, apart from the fact that they are entirely free for anyone to use, is that they cover material that virtually any member of the household can utilize. From working on rusty math skills to studying up on college-level physics in anticipation for taking the GRE, there’s sure to be a Khan Academy lesson relevant to any aspiring knowledge-acquirer.