Ask me anything with Sal Khan: April 20 | Homeroom with Sal

Hi everyone. Welcome to the daily homeroom livestream! This is just a way for all of us to stay in touch during this time of school closures. As we have in homeroom in the real world, the physical world, which we all now really miss, it's a time for us to come together to make announcements, to answer questions, and that's what we want to do here.

So, as we go into the meat of this homeroom conversation, and it's really just going to be a really informal session today of being able to ask myself and my team member Dan, who is going to join us as well, literally any question! So go onto Facebook, go onto YouTube, and ask anything you would like of me or the team here at Khan Academy.

What we have already been putting out for all of y'all—parents, teachers, students—over the last several weeks is based on the realization that Khan Academy exists. We never could have foreseen this type of a situation, but we want to create structures and support so that you can use all the content and all the software that we've been making, which is all free, it's all non-commercial, in a way that meets your needs as a parent, student, or teacher.

You can see right over here these remote learning resources we've been putting out. Things like teacher webinars, parent webinars, lesson daily schedules for students of different ages. We also put out learning plans recently in math so that students can learn through the end of the year and through next summer, so they can not stop learning.

I do want to give a special shout-out to several corporate partners who are helping support all of this. For many of y'all know, Khan Academy is a not-for-profit with a mission of providing a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere. That’s only possible through philanthropic donations from folks like yourself and from some of our corporate partners that you see listed here. These are folks that literally just stepped up in the last few weeks.

We have other folks who have been helping us keep going over the last several years, but we were running at a deficit even going into this situation, and our deficit increased because our traffic now is 2.5, actually approaching 3x, of what it typically is. We're trying to do more supports, trying to accelerate some content software programs that we normally would have done in a few years, so we can do it sooner than later.

Bank of America, AT&T, Novartis.org, and Fastly are all organizations that are really helping Khan Academy deliver on its mission. But with that, I would love to literally answer any question you have. I'll issue a challenge to surprise me, and my team members, we have team members who are looking at the message boards on Khan Academy, and they are going to surface any questions. Dan will also help me surface any questions that folks might be having.

Let's see, we have some questions I could start while everyone's warming up with some questions we had from last year. So, from last Friday that we never got to, one person up there, Mom Chick Hassan from YouTube asks how come Khan Academy is running a deficit? What will that have an impact on the provision of free world-class education as you do now?

That's a very good question, Abdul Rahman. So, you know, we're running at a deficit because, you know, simple math—we're spending more than we are bringing in in philanthropic donations. We are able to do that in the near term. We do have a little bit of reserves, but obviously, that's not something that we're going to be able to do indefinitely.

The reason why we've been spending more than the resources we've been bringing in is the belief that these things need to be out there; they'll be able to serve students, parents, and teachers that much more. The hope is that folks are going to step up—whether they’re individual donors or corporations or foundations—to allow us to do this work.

You know running a not-for-profit, there's always this tension of sometimes you want to move ahead because you think some work, especially, you know we're a bit of a unique not-for-profit, that we do software and content. We aren't your traditional not-for-profit that maybe does other types of great work like running a soup kitchen or providing malaria nets or things like that.

A lot of our work has to be front-loaded in terms of expense; you know, we have approaching a hundred engineers at Khan Academy, we have designers, product managers. We're all thinking a year ahead, two years ahead of what to build. Sometimes we have to say, "Okay, let's build it and hope we're going to be able to support it." But it's a constant, it's a constant tension that we are trying to figure out.

It's my intent that Khan Academy hopefully doesn't disappear. When I do wake up in the middle of the night, that is my main concern. I want to ensure that Khan Academy is an organization that doesn't just last through my lifetime but has the financial foundation that it can last well beyond any of our lifetimes to serve hopefully billions of folks in generations to come. That is, you're hitting at a very real issue for me and the team here.

So, another question! We have a great question from YouTube from Selena Chang. She says, "First, hi Sal! Hope you and your family are doing well." Selena's been engaging in online courses at Khan Academy and meditation, and her question is, "What are some of the habits that she can enforce to optimize productivity and learning?"

So, take anything I have with a grain of salt; I'm always trying to optimize my productivity and learning as well. But the things that I found are definitely some form of structure helps. It doesn't have to be—and I actually wouldn't make that structure too intense. I think it's actually bad if you're, if your day is completely chopped up into very small sections because then you don't have time to do some deeper things, to do some more creative tasks.

What I try to do personally, and I've talked about this on the live stream before, is I try to have some easy wins early in my day. So, I wake up, I do that meditation, I get ready, I make the bed—which I've talked a lot about. That gives you an easy win. Then, in a normal time, so I'm coming to the office or I'm working from home during quarantine, I try to, I find the morning is when I get my most productive creative work.

That's why actually when I try to do some videos, I try to do two, three, four videos in that morning time period, and then I'm able to, and then I feel really productive. Then, I'd try to go to the rest of the day. If I'm a student, what I would try to do is in that morning period, I would try to tackle the subjects that you may find take the most cognitive load for you.

I would also make sure that you have a little bit of time. There's kind of this tension between having fragments of time to make sure you touch on everything, and then longer blocks of time so you can go deeper. I would try to ensure that you get every day some amount of math, every day some amount of reading, every day some amount of writing, and then free up time in your afternoon for maybe if you want to go deeper and say, "Hey, how far can I get with this project or this thing I'm trying to start?"

Other things I would recommend is just remind yourself to just get started. It's easy to paralyze yourself by overthinking things, but you say, "You know what? Let's just see what happens and just put one foot in front of the other." That act of moving will oftentimes unblock you.

We actually hope to bring on some guests over the next few weeks onto this live stream—folks who are experts in things like grit and resilience, folks even from the military who are experts at things like discipline and productivity, and how to stay focused on things. So we hope to bring you more resources like that.

Let's see. From YouTube, Katherine Pierce asks, "How long does it take you to record a video? Do you do anything to prepare or do you wing it?"

So, great question, Katherine, and the simple answer is it depends! This morning I got some messages from Charlotte, who's on our content team, saying we need some new content in some of our geometry because our old worked example videos used the old exercises that we had on Khan Academy. Now we have new exercises.

For something like that, where I'm able to take an exercise that one of our team members has created, copy and paste it onto my little drawing program that I have here, that doesn't take much at all. I actually try not to overprepare for that, so that when the student sees me doing it, it's really in real time, we're working through this together.

What we've heard and at least what I feel is one of the benefits of Khan Academy videos—many of you all are familiar with them—they're not super fancy in terms of, you know, computer graphics or they don't look like a help-produced movie. But their value, hopefully their differentiator, is that whoever's making the video with me or someone else is really thinking through it in real time. They aren't reading a script, and so sometimes that leads— you know, I might pause, I might say "uh" or something like that, but you can tell that we're doing it together.

So something like a math worked example, not a lot of time and reasonably winged, so to speak! But if I'm doing a topic that I need a really refresh on, or go deeper than I might have even known before, that could take some time. You know, we have videos on Khan Academy in world history or certain parts of, say, organic chemistry that I definitely have to spend several hours researching it.

What I oftentimes do is I might write some just bullet point notes just to make sure I hit the key ideas, but I don't write a script. The bullet point, you know, might be like, "Make sure you don't misspell the steps of photosynthesis" or something like that, and then I start the video. Because I do always want the student, the user, to feel that, "Hey, Sal's really explaining this; his brain is really with his mouth," so to speak!

So hopefully, people get that feeling.

Let's see. From YouTube, Elliot H says, and Elliot has been referring to me as Dumbledore Sal, which I am flattered! "Having scaled a start-up, do you envy friends who chose less risky, more lucrative careers in Business and Finance? Does that grass ever seem greener?"

So, Elliot, you're asking a great question. That is a very deep and philosophical question because, as you know, grass often always looks greener on the other side. But what I found in my life is, it's interesting. When I was in, I guess you could say, the more traditional industries—back when I was, I used to work at a tech startup. It's, you know, I'm aging myself, you know, 20 years ago now!

Yeah, I used to work at some tech startups during the first dot-com bubble, and then when I was working at a hedge fund after business school. When I was that, I—and I was lucky; I always had very good bosses and I always had, I would say, good jobs that were intellectually stimulating. I felt I was compensated more than fairly, but there was that, when you're measured by if you're a hedge fund manager or hedge fund analyst how much money you are managing or what was the performance of your fund or how large was your bonus, then when you measure yourself that way, it's very easy to, you'll always find someone who is managing a larger business, who has raised more money, who's getting paid more.

And that can—and you also don't see how difficult their job might have been. You know, I actually really enjoyed my jobs. Maybe that friend of mine from business school who was making twice as much as me had a horrible boss and had a lot of stress, and maybe, you know, their relationships were breaking down. So you never truly see that side of it. But it is tempting to always say, "Oh, maybe I should be making more; maybe I'm making less."

I realized, even before I started Khan Academy, that that's a never-ending proposition and a no-win proposition. That was part of, frankly, the rationale when starting Khan Academy to kind of try to be in its own lane rather than try to start it off as a business and get and stay in that, "Oh, let me beat those people out." Say, "No, what's the right thing for Humanity?" And hopefully, if we do the right thing that's there for Humanity, that humanity or the world will help support this.

It's a very idealistic point of view, but you know, we live once; why not try to be idealistic? Why not try to be optimistic?

I'll say, you know, I can only speak for my own narrative; it didn't come without its share of stress and moments that I thought I might have made a blunder and wondered what, you know, what I was doing to my family's finances and whatever that. But when we got that first funding, and even though, you know, my initial salaries at Khan Academy back in the day were, you know, a fourth or a fifth of what I was making in the hedge fund world, it didn't matter because I was still—I still had enough to be able to provide for my family, to eat out every now and then, to, you know, have our two Hondas in a 2,000 square foot house.

The fact that I was able to spend my days doing something that I really cared about—that I was able to get feedback from folks around the world, form a connection with them, feel like I was helping them—that made me feel like the luckiest person on the planet. So you fast forward to today. No, I don't have any regrets. If anything, you know, I obviously have a lot of friends who've done very, very well in life. You know, I ask a lot of them for donations now, but I don't envy them in that way because I remind myself that, you know, knock on wood, my—my, you know, I have my health, my family has their health.

You know, I have an amazing, super intelligent, beautiful wife. I have hilarious children. I get to spend time with them. I get to work on something that I care about, and I'm, you know, from my point of view, the board here at Khan Academy compensates me more than fairly. So I feel, you know, all my basic needs for sure are met. What else can someone ask for? I actually have trouble thinking, seeing other people's grass as anywhere closest greenness as mine. I consider myself very fortunate.

So let's see. From Facebook, Lotto Stile off says, "How do you think students can overcome their fear of math?" So that is a great question, and you know you're talking about something that a lot of adults, very accomplished adults, were clearly very capable of—so, math, "I'm afraid of that."

My theory—and I've seen things that back up this theory—I saw this with my cousins when I first started tutoring them 15 years ago, 16 years ago—that the reason why they were having trouble in math is math is very cumulative. In a traditional model, you were pushed together at a fixed pace, and let's say that unit on dividing decimals, you're a little shaky on it. You got a 70 or 80% on a test. Well, that gap remains, and then later in 9th grade in algebra class when you have to divide decimals in that equation, you're like, "I never really fully learned that! This is stressing me out!" Or maybe you did learn it and did not—you forgot it.

One of our core beliefs at Khan Academy is we need to create the mechanisms where you, the student, can learn at your own pace, learn at your own time, not have to feel embarrassed about something. If you're an algebra student but you forgot how to divide decimals, not a big deal! There are many adults who forgot decimals. You can go back to that content and not only get videos but you can get that practice and that feedback.

So my answer, Lotto, is especially if you know you're a student and schools are closed and you have the summer right after that, go to Khan Academy. Start at the very beginning; start at early learning on Khan Academy. I know that stuff will seem super easy for you! But you'll be able to get through that; if you use the course challenges and the unit tests, literally in a matter of probably less than an hour, you could get through early learning, first grade, second grade, and then just keep going.

That strong foundation and what you're going to find is when you do that after a few weeks, you're going to get to your grade level. When you get to your grade level with that strong foundation, you're like, "What was I stressed all about? This all makes sense now! This is all intuitive!" We get so many letters from 25-year-olds, 30-year-olds, 50-year-olds, 80-year-olds saying, "I can't believe that I used to be afraid of math! I went on to Khan Academy and I started learning from the beginning. I realize how much fun it is and how it helps me look at the world in a different way—in a fun way—and I realize that all those things I was stressed about were because of my gaps! It had nothing to do with my ability; it had nothing to do with math somehow being a difficult subject!"

So that's my tip, and my other tip is that if you're going to do that, do it regularly. I tell family members all the time, friends, anyone who asks me, "Put in at least 20 minutes a day!"

If you're able to put in at least 20 minutes a day and give yourself even a break on weekends unless you're inspired to take advantage of the weekends as well. But if you do Monday through Friday, 20 minutes a day of Khan Academy, always progressing, always trying to level up skills using the course challenges, unit tests to accelerate as necessary, get that mastery. I think in about a month, you're going to start having a different attitude towards math. And I would say in about six months you're going to realize that you're all of a sudden one of the strongest math students you know.

Let's see. We have a question from Facebook; DD Vant Van Wermer says, "Do you have any resources to make reading fun?" Reading is an area that we are just starting to get into at Khan Academy, so it's a fairly nascent state. We just launched what's known as a beta—and software speak, that's an early version that still needs to be refined—of English and language arts. That starts at reading levels roughly second grade through eighth grade.

I will let you determine whether it's fun. I'll say the same thing that I just told Lotto about being able to do things regularly. If you are an elementary student and reading is something that you've always struggled with, start at the beginning.

Put in twenty minutes a day; keep going with that. That could be helpful. For older students, we have our official ICT practice that has reading comprehension in it. Once again, I think it's a mindset. When I used to prepare for standardized tests when I was in school, I disputed as I said, "Hey, let me enjoy this thing!" It's, you know, I'm kind of training for something the same way that you would train for a sport, so that could be fun.

My other tip is: try to find books that you really enjoy. Oftentimes, they'll be reading lists, and we provide reading lists too that will give you, "Hey! Here are books that are appropriate for different grade levels," etc.

Definitely take a look at those and have an open mind to things. But, you know, I discovered my love for reading when I started to find books that were really about topics that I found interesting. When I was young, things like, you know, space and the future, I found captivating.

So I was willing to push through books that were maybe even a little ahead of my reading level because I was so captivated by that thing. So think about what you're interested in and then just keep reading, and I think that'll always serve you well. You know, the more you read and the more you're interested in it.

I wish I could give you more detailed answers!

Sal, would you like to take a question on screen time? We get a lot of questions from parents about the amount of screen time.

So on Facebook, Kübra Shrivastava asks, "Hi Sal! Hope you and your family are safe and well. My child enjoys learning on Khan Academy, and since the courses are so interesting, she can't stop doing them. I wanted to keep going, but my concern is screen time. Do I limit the lessons? They're so fun and interesting! Should the app introduce time limits or something like that?"

Yeah, a great question, Shubra, and one we get a lot. I don't know how old your daughter is. I mean, it's a great thing that she wants to keep learning. My general rule of thumb if she is younger—if she's using the Khan Academy Kids app and she's four or five years old—I would say, you know, try to keep that screen time limited to sessions of 15 or 20 minutes, making sure that she gets time outside, time with family, play, gets creative time, and so I often type.

But you know, I flipped the screen time argument. Instead of talking about, "Well, what's the right amount of screen time," I say, "Well, what's the right amount of other things?" You got to make sure that your child gets time to play, gets time outside, has quality time with you and other family members. If they're able to do that and they have time to play and relax, then I'm less worried within some reasonable constraints.

On the other hand, there are kids who have no screen time, but on the other side they're also not getting those other things. I would be far more worried about those kids who are not running around outside, who are not getting that meaningful time with their family.

My general rule of thumb for a very young student, I would say maybe 20-30 minutes at a time max if we're in this kind of stay-in-place order world with COVID. I think all parents are having to—everyone's going to have to get on screens a little bit more than normal even if it's to Zoom or be on a Hangout with family members, etc., etc.

So I would say use your judgment. Make sure your daughter is able to play and has time for true relaxation away from the screen. For older students, you know, there's a lot of screen time where, you know, sometimes when I'm making videos on Khan Academy, which is a creative activity, I might spend a few hours doing it. Or if I'm writing a paper, or if I am writing some code.

If you have a 16 or 17-year-old who wants to spend some time practicing their calculus or their history on Khan Academy, or is writing a paper, or wants to edit a video, I would call that constructive screen time! If an older student is there, I would still recommend that they get breaks fairly regularly, but if they can, you know, that could be several hours a day!

But there, I would still emphasize make sure they have time to go outside, play, have creative time, and that if they don't have to be on a screen, they can do things otherwise.

Yesterday I saw my son—my sister-in-law has been kind of staying in place with us—and so she's in our house. He wanted to play chess with her, and he made her upload an app on her phone so he could play on his iPad with her. I was like, "This is ridiculous! We have a chess board! Go to the chess board! Do not be on a screen just because it's a screen."

Sometimes we all are guilty of that sometimes or something captivating about a screen. I definitely think when possible go to, go to real life, play real chess, play real Monopoly, etc.

So let's see, other questions I have here. Samira Hashem on Facebook says, "Can you provide guidance to more people around the world to set up learning centers like Khan Labs? We'd love to see something like it in Pakistan."

So Samira, for those who you don't know, there's a school called Khan Lab School. It's officially, it's not part of Khan Academy, but it is a school that I started along with several other families six years ago that my children go to. The whole idea there is a lot of people think virtual education is somehow in competition with physical learning, and I've always thought the exact opposite.

That virtual things like Khan Academy could be used to liberate and empower what happens in a physical setting; that it could allow students to do more games and simulations and have Socratic dialogue and time for play. To prove—I wrote about that in "The One World Schoolhouse" and then to prove that out, said, "Well, there's no way better way to prove it than to actually start a lab school!" So that's what Khan Lab School is.

Our hope over time—the school is now K through 11; it's going to be K through 12 in a few months—is that as we can prove out this model more, you know, it's also not for profit. We just want to share it with the whole world. We want to share what the model looks like so I'm hoping that in a few years, anyone who's interested in starting a school like that could say, "Okay, this is what they did out there in California. Here my geography, Pakistan, wherever it might be is a little bit different," but I can modify it to what we're doing in my geography because I hope it can be an example of what could be done either as a new type of school or in traditional schools.

Extinct, maybe we could run our math class a little bit more like that! It's not that Khan Academy has it all figured out. A lot of what is happening at Khan Lab School is informed by what's happening outside of it. For example, Tim Vandenberg, who we had on the daily livestream, talking about how he's had incredible results with his 6th grade students in history in California—you know, I forwarded that to the Khan Lab School team, saying, "Hey, Tim's got some great ideas! We got to figure out how we can incorporate some of his ideas a little bit better."

But thanks for asking!

Let’s see! Other questions! So Kim Heiling sorts—and I'm literally reading these without knowing what about to read out loud—Facebook says, "Hi Sal! If you did not work with Khan Academy, what else would you be doing? What other projects are high on your list of importance with regards to your interest and skill sets?"

That's a fascinating question! Who knows what that alternate reality is? I will say that I'm—it’s perhaps in my nature; obviously Khan Academy is where I focus all my energies. But there are parts of the broader vision of Khan Academy around how do you fully empower people? How do you empower teachers? How do you empower students?

How can you reach people who might not have access to school? How can you give people credentials so they can prove what they know? So all of those types of problems I'm fascinated by, and so I'm hoping that we can tackle most or all of them within the umbrella of Khan Academy.

But whenever I meet a friend who has skills in a certain domain, and they're like, "Hey, what should I work on?" I was like, "Well, you should think about a way to pair teachers and students, so that they can, you know, it could even be informal tutoring, but do it in a way that can be free to empower everyone." Or we should figure out a way so that we can credential people, so that more people can get apprenticeships.

So that whole area obviously is of interest to me. I would say if I wasn't working in education, the other area that's interesting—you know, we talked about meditation earlier. I've become really intrigued by, you know, happiness. How does someone become happy? So much of our life we measure by, you know, economic success and happiness.

At some level, you do need some base economics, and you see that, you know, it's a scary world we're living in now where even in places like the US or because of the quarantine or the closures, a lot of people's economics have gotten a lot tougher. You need that baseline economics to have that baseline of not being overstressed and happy, but then you see beyond that, you know, things like wealth doesn't necessarily correlate so much with happiness.

So it's a fascinating thing from my point of view. You know, when I think about my children, obviously education matters. I want them to be proficient in math and reading and writing and have a love for science and want to invent things. But I also see more and more—and I see this with kids I grew up with and family members—that you can be off the charts academically, but if you go through, you know, life's going to throw stuff at you.

I've been fortunate. I've been thrown a few things, but I know people who've been thrown much, much harder things. It's all how you are able to process that. Whether you, you know, your level of resilience and grit and all of that, that really determines where you end up.

So that's actually a really fascinating space, and that's why we experimented with a few of these meditation videos for students, because that's kind of the intersection about academic success but also emotional resilience. You know, some of these questions we're getting about how do you overcome math anxiety—it's related to that same notion!

It's not just about learning the quadratic equation; it's also about kind of reprogramming your mind to realize that you're fully capable of doing this! There's nothing wrong with getting a question wrong. That's actually when you learn the most!

No matter what life throws at you, oftentimes you just have to wait it out, and it tends to get better than the very dire situation that you often find yourself. Obviously, there's exceptions—there are people out there dealing with war and hunger and all of that—but for all of us who aren't dealing with war or hunger, or bears chasing us, or, you know, really hard things—and there are people dealing with disease and things—but if you're dealing with just day-to-day work stress, life stress, education stress, most of the stresses are abstract things in our mind.

It's interesting to think about what tools can we do to make the best of it.

So, Kevin Rodriguez says, "Sal, are you playing around with a new book? I read yours years ago and loved it!"

Oh, thanks! Thanks, Kevin! Yes, I do hope—I was actually planning before all of this COVID stuff that happened. The book might be different now. The original thinking around the book was trying to get a little bit more into the space, you know, "One World Schoolhouse," which, you know, not to plug it, but that you brought up the book.

“One World Schoolhouse” was really about how did Khan Academy exist? What's the history of K-12 education? Given where we're going and what the economy in the world is like, what could K-12 education be like in the future? That was kind of the inspiration for starting Khan Lab School, which can hopefully share things with other schools to think about how things could change.

Then the next I do want to think about is some of you know that signaling to the world, how do someone prove what they know to the broader world? What's the future of higher education, and how does someone showcase their best self and also be happy about it?

So there is an aspect of social-emotional well-being above and beyond the academic that I've been thinking about for the next book, and maybe it's the exact same book now that this COVID thing happened. Maybe all that stuff’s even more important!

Or maybe, you know, because of COVID, a lot of things in the virtual space are having to accelerate in certain dimensions, so who knows when I get to writing that next book?

So let’s see! It looks like we’re all out of time! Wow! After one more question! Since, well, there's actually a lot of good questions. If I—whatever I don't get today, I'll get to in future sessions when we don't have a guest. But from Facebook, which Don the Reek asks, going forward, how important do you think traditional textbooks will be?

You know, I'm one of—I enjoy textbooks, but I think they are in a lot of ways, you know, a lot of from my generation who did well, we were the subsets who were good at reading textbooks. We built that muscle, and I think there's always going to be a skill there because there is so much knowledge to be had in textbooks.

With that said, you know, was a textbook different than a nonfiction book? A textbook, like a nonfiction book, will explain things to you, but it also gives you practice problems. My belief is something like Khan Academy can give you far more practice problems with far more feedback.

Hopefully, the explanations we give, either in video form, text form, or even in the exercises when we give the solutions—is more digestible than what would be in your normal textbook. So I hope that Khan Academy can get a lot more people learning at their own time and pace, and I think textbooks will then become a reference if someone wants to dig a little bit deeper for some reason they can't get online. They always have that reference set; I think could be really useful.

So I’m a little over time! This is fun! Time always goes by fast! The questions are getting better and better!

But thanks for joining! This is a fun way to stay connected in times of social isolation. I'll just remind everyone again we are not-for-profit, and we are only possible because of donations from folks like yourself. So think about that if you're in a position to do so.

But with that, I will see you tomorrow! Have a good Monday!