Office Hours With Sal: Wednesday, March 18. Livestream From Homeroom

Hello everyone, Sal here. Sorry, so this is a very makeshift situation that we're dealing with. I've moved locations. Yesterday the internet connection wasn't so good; I think it was because I was away from the Wi-Fi router. So now I'm in my mother-in-law's bedroom, who lives with us, and it is closer to the Wi-Fi router. So hopefully all of this is going to be a little bit smoother today.

So, uh, welcome! I guess you could say live stream. Some people have started calling it a homeroom of sorts, just to get us started on the day. For those of you who are new, the goal of this is really just to be a resource for parents, for teachers, and for students. All of us are trying to navigate this whole situation that we find ourselves in, where we have school closures around the country and around the world. I think I saw data yesterday that there's nine hundred schools around the world that would normally be in school but who aren't in school right now.

And all of us at Khan Academy, we realized that this—we would have never foreseen this type of a situation—but, uh, we kind of exist to help out a situation like this. So all of our entire team at Khan Academy, I really want to thank everyone on Khan Academy's team and all the supporters of Khan Academy and our volunteers and our teacher ambassadors for really stepping up over the last few days.

You know, I've been mentioning this every day, but some of the core resources that we've been putting out, other than doing this daily live stream or homeroom, if you will, we've been putting out teacher webinars to help teachers get signed up. We've been seeing record number of registrations of teachers. It looks like something might even be a factor of 10; at least that's what one of my team members told me earlier this morning.

We're seeing a record number of registrations for parents who are running parent webinars to help parents get set up. Over the weekend, we realized that, you know, we have a lot of resources at Khan Academy that cover all of the major subjects and grades, but parents and teachers who are now looking to kind of virtualize need to know, “Well, how do I structure the day so it kind of feels like school?” Obviously, this is a substitute for it, and this is a very sub-optimal situation.

So we released schedules that work for students as young as Pre-K going into kindergarten, first, second grade. Then we have a schedule for elementary age, a schedule for middle and high school, and then a schedule for later high school across subjects and grades so that people know how to structure their day. It’s not just, you know, “Do this thing on Khan Academy” or “That thing on Khan Academy.” There are breaks scheduled in. There's even some resources we like—a recess. One of my family friends, immediately when she saw that it had Yoga with Adrien on it and Just Dance, she knew those are two of my favorite exercise activities when it’s a rainy day and I can't go outside.

So yes, I had a little bit of editorial influence, but those are resources for all of you. We’re doing this live stream. Expect, over the coming days and weeks, to see more live streams that may be spawned off of this. We are exploring ways to provide teachers, students, and parents more support. One idea that we've talked about—and I talked about this yesterday—is as you go through those schedules, leveraging Khan Academy and other resources, if teachers could set up a webinar or video conferencing for their students, that way the students could log in while they're, say, working on Khan Academy math or biology and then ask questions.

Students could also self-organize around that. And if folks are still just getting off the ground, parents could also... The other thing I really want to emphasize for everyone is, you know, don’t stress out about the situation. We're really just in the beginning of a situation that's very new to all of us. Even if it takes several days, you know, going into next week to get everyone into a rhythm, that's completely understandable.

In my house, we have that situation; I had to hush my children outside as they were screaming over fighting over a chair for eating breakfast. So this is an interesting situation for all of us. And you know, we just saw news last night. We’ve been talking about something like this that, you know, if you just look at what’s been happening in other countries and when you might hit peak virus or peak infection, it looks like it’s going to be more than just a few weeks. Several school districts, the team tells me, I think Kansas—let me make sure I'm getting that right— announced, it says Kansas is the first state to close schools for the rest of the academic year.

We have about two, two and a half months in the academic year, and so that probably will be extended for a lot of folks. I think all of us need to figure out how do we work together to make sure that everyone keeps learning, not just through the rest of the academic year, but then we can leverage summer as well to keep that learning so that as we go into the new school year, where hopefully everything is fine by then, everyone is ready and capable to engage.

And if for whatever reason this whole situation comes back, we know how to switch between these modalities quite fast. So let me look at some questions that are here. One question was, "Are we able to meet increased demands or even are we seeing increased demands?" What the team at Khan Academy has told me, on Monday we saw a 50% increase in traffic from the Monday previous, and it looks like Tuesday, yesterday, was even higher than Monday.

So we're still looking at the data, but it looks like there's a pretty dramatic increase in demand. Obviously, there's an increased demand for this type of thing for us to be able to help people navigate the entire crisis. I want to make a huge shout out for those who haven't seen it; there was a press release last night from Bank of America. I want to thank Operation— to step up. We've had a long-standing relationship with Bank of America.

They’ve been the main partner for our financial literacy content and our career content over the past seven years, and they’ve—you know, the reason why Khan Academy even has been able to step up in this crisis is because of many years of support from folks like Bank of America. But as soon as Thursday and Friday of last week, they saw that this is going to be a bit of a situation around the school closures.

They immediately saw us as a really instrumental part of this, and they called us up and said, “What can we do to help? We want to make sure that America and the world can keep learning.” And over the weekend, they’ve provided resources for Khan Academy so that we can keep our servers up so we can do this type of live stream. We’re kind of calling it a national or international homeroom. They’ve provided—they’re going to help provide awareness so that parents, teacher, students around the country who might not be aware of Khan Academy or the resources we’re providing over this, I guess you could call it social distancing, that we’re able to provide more of those resources.

We have the aperture to think bigger about how we can solve things. And they also have a lot of really good partnerships with other nonprofits, school districts, to solve parts of the situation because Khan Academy is a part of it. We have, obviously, we can do things online; we have all of this content, all of the software. But above and beyond that, we want to look to partner with folks to ensure that all students can have access to things like the internet.

Right now, that’s valuable not just for Khan Academy, but it’s also, I think, important in this time of social distancing to be able to have some social interaction. That’s, you know, not traditional social media, but you can also interact with people and things like that. So thank you so much to Bank of America for being, you know, in record time, stepping up to support Khan Academy so that we can support so many others and help in the support directly.

So I’d love to answer all of your questions. Let's see; I can look at this stream down here and I can see what the team is surfacing to me. So there is one question: "How do I figure out what my child should be learning?" So there's a couple of ways to think about this. I actually had a really great conversation—some of you might have seen the video with Tim Vandenberg, who is a grade math teacher in Hesperian, California. I also learned yesterday he’s the number two Monopoly player in the country or the world; there’s a documentary about him, apparently.

So he's an impressive guy all around. And I always thought Monopoly was mostly luck, but he— I said, "Can you always beat me in Monopoly?" He’s like, "Yes, I will pretty much always beat you," and then he said, "My sixth graders will beat you in Monopoly." So he knows what he's doing in Monopoly. And frankly, if we can figure out a way to bring in remote guests on this live stream, I would love to bring Tim in.

But the reason why I brought up Tim is he has some really great ways to work with students' gaps in their knowledge. There are kind of two views; one view is saying, "Okay, we're about three-fourths through the school year, so therefore maybe we should be exactly three-fourths through whatever grade level your child is working on." There’s a lot of truth to that. What Tim Vandenberg has seen is that a lot of his students, as they've gone at a fixed pace for all students, they might get a B in one concept, so they have a ten percent gap, a C in another concept; they have a twenty percent gap, and those gaps keep accumulating.

And that’s why when he gets them in sixth grade, oftentimes they have trouble engaging in that grade-level material. So what he does is he has all of his students—these are sixth graders—start at kindergarten on Khan Academy and do our—or actually our early learning section on Khan Academy and our arithmetic section on Khan Academy and our third grade. Those are the three that he says he has them focus on, and then simultaneously he also tries them—he tries to get them to complete unit by unit at sixth grade so they’re able to be on grade level and make sure they have all their gaps filled.

At his school, ninety percent of the students that come to him are well below grade level, so it’s super important for him. But what he finds is, by allowing some time for the students to remediate or fill in those gaps, they’re more likely to really master the concepts at the grade level as well. So this is just a long-winded way of saying you should absolutely, you know, talk to your student, or if you are the student, think about where you are in the year. You can start on those units on Khan Academy.

But given that we have more flexibility right now, given your school day is really defined by you and your parents and your teachers, you could, especially in math, spend a little bit more extra time where you can do things at your grade level, learn that at your own time and pace on Khan Academy. So if you’re a sixth grader, work on the sixth grade math. You could take the course challenge. The course challenge will take you about 30 or 40 minutes, but it’ll accelerate the things that you already know and then the things you’re having difficulty with you can go to those units and then you can take the unit test there.

And then on those unit tests, when you take those, you can learn what skills you might need help on. If you do that in sixth grade, then it wouldn’t be a bad idea to set some other time, maybe another half an hour a day, where you start with early math on Khan Academy, go into arithmetic, go into third grade to really make sure you have your basics. You can use things like the course challenges and the unit tests and the mastery challenges to accelerate through it. So it’s not going to take you a lot of time if you already know all of the materials.

So let me look at other questions. Another thing about the schedule—what to work on during the year—I think it’s important to realize this is for parents as well. If you, the student, or the parent, as long as the student can focus on the foundations and really master it. So, you know, what I’ve been telling the press lately is, you know, we have these schedules that can fill up most of what would be the traditional school hours, but if you at least do two hours a day—an hour of reading, an hour of math—that will get your basics. Those skills won’t atrophy; you’ll, you know, your reading comprehension will keep up and your math skills won’t go away.

But ideally, you’re able to look at a schedule like what we’ve published and modify it to your own needs, obviously, and hopefully make use and give us feedback on that. Questions: "Is it okay if I put up a pic of you? Students want to know how you look." I don’t think I could stop you from doing that, and you know they might be disappointed when they see what I really look like, but I’ll defer to you. You’re the educator; if that’s a good idea...

Okay, Chandra Park asks, “Would there be live academic classes on Khan Academy? I saw some live SAT math classes on YouTube in the past and I was wondering if this is something that’s going to be especially because of COVID-19.” Chandra, we are exploring doing things like that exactly. You're exactly right. In the past for things like SAT and AP webinars, live streams, and our team is exploring how we can do that.

I'm—I also want to know folks who do write video, create video conferencing software. Are there ways to get people into video conferencing groups so they can also help each other? So we can do these larger scale live streams, whether it's from me or other teachers or content creators, and then it would also be great if we could find ways for folks to connect with each other and answer each other's questions. So the simple answer is yes; the plan is there.

Hopefully, you’ll start seeing some of that stuff by next week or even at the end of this week. Okay, let’s see. It says on Facebook we saw a lot of comments about pursuing passions and hobbies. Is that in the schedule? How important is that? So, you know, this—passions and hobbies are a super important thing. And in some ways, you know, you could do this situation we find ourselves in—this glass half full.

I think especially as you get into high school, a lot of students—and if I’m if you are a student, I’ll talk to you—a lot of you are, you know, would traditionally have a lot on your plate. You have—you're taking six classes, you're doing all these extracurricular activities, you're taking the SAT, you're studying for AP tests, you're applying to college. It can be pretty stressful. Now, all of a sudden, a lot of that is cleared out. And so I think this is a really powerful time for you to keep on your academics, and that’s where we’ve really got to help you.

And also think you have time to pursue your passions. It might be creating videos, it might be writing, it might be software, it might be dance. And I think, you know, creativity is oftentimes the byproduct of boredom. So if you have a little bit of time on your hands now, really think about what motivates you. And, you know, this whole crisis that we’re all going through together, there are a lot of new problems that I think need to be solved.

So if you’re a student, think about how you would solve those problems. Are there, you know, new types of things you can invent that will lower the spread of the virus or that can help people? Are there ways, you know, are there volunteer efforts that you could do, even while people are socially distant, to make sure that maybe members of your community who might be living alone might not have as much support, that they are feeling a connection with other people, or that, you know, they feel supported or people can help them with their groceries and things like that?

There are things we have to think about with the economy. You know, I’m very fortunate; I’m continuing to get my salary because I can do my work remotely. There’s a lot of folks that now that there’s this social distancing in place—California, where I live, is now in full, you know, stay-in-place orders. There are a lot of people who aren’t able to make their living right now. So are there creative ideas how we help some of those folks? So, yeah, I think this is a great time for your passions, and you can almost—you could really view this as a bit of an opportunity.

See, other questions, I keep having to re-log. Let’s see. So Sonya Taborg says, “Sal, you talk about eliminating the Swiss cheese analogy of math education—lots of holes in one’s understanding. Once learners gain mastery of certain math concepts, is there a way of leveraging the knowledge and unlocking more practical tasks or challenges or math projects? It would be cool if embedded in the site were Easter egg-like challenges for kids to unlock.”

Well, Sonya, what you’re describing is something we would love to do, and I hope we can do over time. And, you know, I was talking about Tim Vandenberg and I talked about his methodology he uses, but he's been seeing incredible results where pretty much every one of us—he starts the year, ninety percent of his students aren't at grade level. He sees pretty much every year where ninety percent of his students are at grade level or above by the end of the year, by making sure that his students can fill in the Swiss cheese gaps.

And I'll ask the team to put the link to the Tim Vandenberg video—or actually, the webinar that we had—below in our description or in our live stream, someplace, because it not only is it inspiring for teachers to see what Tim's done, I think it can be very inspiring for parents to say, “Oh, well now we have an opportunity; we can do this at home leveraging Khan Academy.”

It's also hopefully inspiring for students to say, "Oh, maybe this is why I've been having trouble in algebra; it's not because I'm not right, it’s not because algebra’s difficult; it’s because I had all these gaps accumulating." And what Tim says is even sixth graders, seventh graders, you start them on that early math, third grade math, arithmetic—they almost always discover, even the ones that are A or B students, some of the ones who are performing at grade level—they discover that they had some gaps with mathematics.

And so, let's see... Let's see, Michael Pisgrano says, "It's probably old at this point, but this title of video really puts the home in homeroom!" Yes, you're right; this is literally a room in my home! So, yes, that is that is correct.

So stuff going on at home, you know, I have three kids, and I have to say my older two—our school is doing kind of engaging in his work. So yeah, it’s interesting times. I definitely empathize. And you know, it's one of these times where it's a lot of gratitude and thankful—it makes you appreciate a lot of the small things.

I went to the grocery store this morning at 6:00 a.m., which is when it opened. I figured that might be the best time, but you can imagine it was already an interesting place to be. But, you know, I felt fortunate to even be able to go. So let’s see—other questions.

Is Khan Academy—Nolan Fisherman asks, “Is Khan Academy going to be enough to study for the AP exam?” What is other questions that people have? Let’s see, just a lot of nice people. Apparently, I am lagging. I’m sorry. Give me feedback; this is closer to my Wi-Fi router. We’ll see.

Let’s see, do you see—someone says, “Do you think scientists will find a cure for COVID-19? If so, when do you think they will find it?” I’m not an epidemiologist; I’m not a virologist, so take all of this with a grain of salt. But, uh, I’ve taught some of the things on viruses and things on Khan Academy. Look, I don’t think any of us really know, including many of the experts at this point. We can only hope.

There are some early reports of doctors using cocktails of existing drugs that have been used for other things, like malaria or AIDS, that might have some promise to it. Who knows? We're just getting such disjointed reports from different parts of the world with very different mortality rates and infection rates. And obviously, the testing is a big issue.

The number one thing all of us can do is minimize contact—with physical contact right now, try to stay with your family. You know, I’m really glad that California, where I live, decided to make the hard decision of doing the stay-in-place order. It’s hard. You know, everyone has to be in their house; they are allowing that you can go outside if you go for a run, but even then they say, you know, make sure you keep distance from people. But this is the kind of action you need to do.

And, you know, in any type of epidemiological response, if you do the right thing, it will look like you are overly cautious. But if you aren’t overly cautious, then you see these things grow exponentially, and then it’s very hard to stop. And, you know, in the United States, we are in an unfortunate situation where the testing isn’t where it needs to be.

And so, you know, I posted a video that the likely cases are far higher—are likely far higher; in fact, almost for sure far higher than the reported cases. And so it’s very prudent that, you know, in our area, the seven counties for seven million people, they did the stay-in-place order. I think it will be useful for much of the rest of the world. Obviously, it has economic implications, etc., etc., but it’s much better to nip things in the bud, and I’m, you know, it might be a little bit past the bud stage right now.

So we will see; we're all through this together. This is a really interesting time—it's a great time to learn about what a virus is, what DNA is, what RNA is. Listen to the news; you’ll learn a lot about how the economy works because people are realizing, okay, there are certain roles where people are able to have income, but there are other parts of our economy where people already didn’t have a lot of money, but they're, you know, they’re getting hourly paid.

Now the restaurants in our area, all of the restaurants are closed except for takeout. How are the owners going to have money to pay them? And if they don’t have money, how are they going to be able to even, you know, get their basic necessities they need or pay rent? So there’s all sorts of interesting ideas that people are starting to float on how to get everyone through this. But I’ve been proud just to see how most people have been acting in the collective interest, which I think is really, really, really powerful.

See, maybe time for a few more questions. I started late and I really enjoyed this. This is almost, you know, a little bit for my sanity as well. It feels really nice to feel even virtually connected with all of you because I am also socially distanced. Let’s see... um... see other—let’s see.

Um, that’s the other question; someone said, “Will you get into the engineering field? We have some content on electrical engineering on Khan Academy. In the near term, we probably won’t go deep into the engineering field, but, you know, long term, I hope one day we can do some of the basics of some of the engineering fields.

Let’s see other—someone said, “Do you have any plans on expanding concrete higher studies of like engineering?” A lot of people want engineering. Let’s see other questions. I’ll go to see what the team might have surfaced as well. I see there are a lot of comments coming in on social media as well.

So, do you—Anna Murray asks, “Do you have things for early learning before first grade?” So, Anna, Khan Academy Kids—it’s available on Android and on iOS; it's free. Go download it! What you’ll see is, you know, when you see most apps for especially that age group, they just do one thing. This app has a little bit of a universe inside of it; it has over 100 books, has hundreds of videos, and they're interactive videos where there’ll be a song and a dance, and then they’ll stop and they'll ask your child or your student to do something.

It's appropriate for students as early as age three. In fact, I would say even potentially for age two. You know, for that age group, it’s always best to be able to do it next to or on the lap of a loved one—a parent, an uncle, aunt, a grandparent, older sibling. But if they’re able to do 20 minutes, 30 minutes a day, I think they’ll really enjoy it.

We’ve seen some promising efficacy studies around it, and it’ll get them—you know, it starts with letters, numbers, colors, social-emotional learning, but it goes all the way through the Head Start standards, the Kindergarten Common Core standards, and the First Grade Common Core standards. So if you start your child on it starting age three, say, it has plenty of runway for them and it can keep them busy for a while, and it adapts to them based on what they know and what they don’t know.

So highly, highly encourage that; that’s why we created Khan Academy Kids. And we’ve seen downloads go up—last I heard from our team, five or fivefold from what they typically are. So, hopefully, you know, people are making... People one foot in front of the other are representing other companies.