Khan Academy Releases New App for iPhone & iPod Touch, Giving You Mobile Access to 3600 Videos

Non-prof­it Khan Acad­e­my, an orga­ni­za­tion ded­i­cat­ed to “pro­vid­ing a free world-class edu­ca­tion for any­one any­where,” does so pri­mar­i­ly through online video cours­es and lec­tures. The over 3600 videos are free and access is open to any­one (any­where), allow­ing K‑12 stu­dents to study math, sci­ence, com­put­er sci­ence, finance & eco­nom­ics, human­i­ties, and test prep. The orga­ni­za­tion was found­ed in 2006 by MIT and Har­vard grad Salman Khan, who began by tutor­ing rel­a­tives and friends in Bangladesh while he worked as a hedge fund ana­lyst in the States. His videos became so in-demand that he decid­ed to quit his job and dis­trib­ute them full-time, fund­ed by dona­tions from indi­vid­u­als and major donors like the Bill and Melin­da Gates Foun­da­tion.

While there is a healthy amount of skep­ti­cism about the effi­ca­cy of Khan’s meth­ods, there’s no short­age of demand for the kind of instruc­tion he offers to stu­dents all over the world. To fur­ther meet that demand, Khan Acad­e­my has just released an app for iPhone and iPod Touch. Unlike the app released this past March for the iPad, the iPhone ver­sion does not allow inter­ac­tiv­i­ty. Users can view videos but can­not, as with the iPad app, down­load playlists, read sub­ti­tles, and log progress, mak­ing this ver­sion “more for con­sump­tion rather than full inter­ac­tion.” Nev­er­the­less, and whether crit­ics like it or not, this rep­re­sents a fur­ther step for dis­tance learn­ing, as edu­ca­tion increas­ing­ly moves out of the class­room and into the hand­held devices of net­works of stu­dents no longer restrict­ed by geog­ra­phy or phys­i­cal mobil­i­ty.

The app has been added to our brand-spank­ing new col­lec­tion: 200 Free K‑12 Edu­ca­tion­al Resources: Video Lessons, Web Sites, Apps & More

Via Makeuse­of

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.