Daily Homeroom with Sal: Monday, April 6

Hello, welcome! This Monday's a daily homeroom for those of you all who are new here. What this is, something we're trying to do to keep us all connected as we have the school closures going on throughout the world. Many of y'all know Khan Academy. We're a not-for-profit with a mission of providing a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere. When we found out that the school closures were happening, we realized that we had to do many things as a not-for-profit with this mission. We had to step up to support you, students, parents, and teachers in any way we could.

So, we had already, over the last many years—because we've never seen this situation—built content. There's Khan Academy Kids, which is for the young crowd, ages two to six, in reading, writing, and social-emotional learning. Then on Khan Academy (not Khan Academy Kids), you can continue on in math, English and language arts, the sciences, humanities, SAT practice. We realized that we should also do things that can help structure your day. So, we released some of those daily schedules out a couple of weeks ago that I've heard good feedback from all of y'all about.

We've been doing parent webinars, teacher webinars, and we are doing this daily homeroom, which is a place to answer any questions you might have. So, as you listen, definitely, whether it's on Facebook or YouTube, type in questions for myself or our guests. This is going to be Adam Green from our content team, and we're going to try to answer as many as we can over the course of the next few minutes.

I do want to give a special thanks to several corporations who have stepped up in the last couple of weeks. Khan Academy is funded with philanthropic donations, and we were running at a deficit even before our traffic spiked by two and a half to three times over the last couple of weeks. Bank of America, followed by AT&T, Google.org, and others have really stepped up and helped us close some of that gap. But I do want to emphasize to any corporations listening or any individuals listening that every dollar matters. We are still running at a deficit, and we want the resources to be able to support you as well as possible and for folks who are not in a position to donate, so that everyone has access to things that can bridge them through this time.

So, keep putting your questions in on YouTube and Facebook, and I'd like to introduce our guest, Adam Green, who runs, who's the head of our US content on Khan Academy. Adam, good to see you.

Good to see you—thanks, Sal! We're also joined here by Pistachio. I know some of the folks in the office miss her, so I wanted to say hello from her. Also, there's a neighborhood cat that she usually likes to bark at about this time of day, so this is the best way to make sure that she's not going to be barking during this conversation.

But, great to see you, Sal!

Thanks! I have mixed feelings towards Pistachio. What a cute dog!

One of the cutest dogs I know, but I think she knows that, and so doesn't always give me the attention that I think I deserve.

Treats are the way to go.

Yeah, anyway, Adam, maybe a good place to start for everyone listening is: what do you do here at Khan Academy, and what does the content team do here at Khan Academy?

Sure, thanks! Yeah! So, I lead the content team, the US academic content team, which basically means I work with about 15 people who are all really amazing content experts in everything from math to science to humanities, social studies, and English language arts. We all work together to build all the great content that you see on Khan Academy for those core courses. We're constantly working on that more.

I think—go ahead, Sal.

Yeah, well, I can go on adding more! One question I always get is: how does Khan Academy determine what content to add, and how does it go about adding that content? What's the day in the life of a content team member here at Khan Academy?

Sure! I think that's one of the things, if you were to ask a content creator, they really like about the job is that there are all sorts of different things that can be happening depending on where you are in the lifecycle of a course. So, we do a lot of research to figure out what learners and teachers really need out there. Everything from surveying teachers to looking at lesson plans that are out there, to looking at state and national standards to see really what we can provide on our platform that would be of the highest use to learners and teachers out there.

We do that research phase, and then there’s a whole series of different phases for content building depending on what type of content we're actually working on. If it's videos, articles, or exercises, all of those go through a pretty stringent review process, both internally and externally, as we create those resources. So, we'll be building them as a team.

The math team will get together and decide, "Hey, we need to do more geometry. We have to add geometry exercises in the next couple of months." That’s what we've determined will be the most useful to teachers and learners out there. So, they'll start to build that; they'll build a plan, then they’ll be building those exercises, reviewing them internally, and then sending them for external review to trusted teachers and other content experts. Then, we'll publish them on the site, and then we're not done there. We get a lot of feedback from folks, like the viewers of this YouTube livestream right now. We look at every single one of those pieces of feedback that we get and then we'll take that into consideration when we work to improve the content that we've put out.

And what did the queue right now, what can users out there expect to see, either improvements or new courses, in the next couple of months?

Yeah, great question! Some of those we’re pushing out more quickly than we originally anticipated. We had a whole bunch of stuff planned for the summer, and some of those things are being released earlier because of this crisis that we're in right now.

You might have seen we have new AP Biology and AP Chemistry content that's out there to help students with AP courses. We have all sorts of English language arts content that's been coming out and will continue to come out over the next couple of months. We have big refreshes on the math side in geometry and in algebra. Those are sort of the big projects that are happening right now. In the pipeline, we have all sorts of other projects for improvements in physics, AP Physics 1, and also we're looking to build a civics course that hopefully the first part of that civics course should be out this summer. Then, we have a whole new world history project that we've developed in partnership with the Gates Foundation, and that's actually going to be coming live tomorrow on the site, which is very exciting!

All of this is very exciting stuff!

We’re getting a lot of questions about AP exams. I do want to let everyone know that the president and CEO of the College Board—the folks who make the AP and the SAT—he's going to be on this livestream tomorrow, David Coleman. But Adam, how should someone who is thinking about the AP exams? I guess we're about weeks away from it now. How would you recommend students typically prepare for it using Khan Academy? I know there's a lot of consternation maybe about how things might be different this year. What advice are you giving the students, especially relative to how they could use our resources?

Yeah, there's a lot packed in there! So, I'll start off by talking about how I would recommend using our resources, and I think you’ve had some good advice in the past on that. We have a whole support page that we've dedicated to AP being different this year and how you can use Khan Academy resources to help you. But I think that really, the first thing that I would suggest is to make an account. It's free to do that—you can use our resources without making an account—but by having that free account, you can track your progress and really use all of the tools available on Khan Academy that will help show you what you need to practice a little bit more and what maybe you can practice a little bit less to get prepared for the exam.

So, once you make that account, I think that there's really one of two paths that I would recommend. If you're the kind of student where you know there’s a unit or some topic in the AP subject course that you're about to take the exam for, if you know there’s a particular unit that you need to brush up on, then I would just go right to that unit on Khan Academy. Let's say you're an AP Statistics student and you know probability has been kind of getting you down, then you can go right to the AP Statistics course and jump into that unit. Start practicing, watch some videos, read some articles, and then do some practice to get brushed up on that sort of topic and really feel more comfortable with that particular unit.

If you're not sure where you should start, or you're already feeling pretty good, then my suggestion would be to jump right to the course challenge. Most of the AP courses that Khan Academy offers have practice content. Most of those courses also have mastery-enabled features, and one of those mastery-enabled features is the course challenge. You scroll all the way down to the bottom of any particular AP course, you’ll see the course challenge. You can click that button. It's like a 30 to 45 minute investment in time; it’s 30 questions. That really gives you a big survey of all of the different types of questions that you're likely to see in the entire course.

Once you get through that, you'll get a bit of a report that shows you how you're doing on those, and it can tell you which topics that we think you should focus on a little bit more. Keep in mind that the AP format is a bit different this year. One of the pieces that's different is the amount of content that's going to be covered on that exam—in most cases, it's about 75 percent of the course or what most classrooms will have covered by early March of this year. These course challenges cover everything, so in my opinion, you should try to get through all of the content for that course, because that'll really prepare you for the best experience in college if you end up applying this credit to college credits.

But the AP exam this year itself will only cover the first about 75% of the class, and you can get more information about what that means and which units are covered and not covered, both in that AP support post that we have on Khan Academy and also through the College Board website, where you can get really specific details about which units will be covered on the exam and which ones won't be covered on the exam.

So those are sort of the two ways that I would approach it: targeted practice if you know you need targeted practice, and if you're not quite sure, or you’re feeling pretty good, then jump into that course challenge and let our tools tell you what you might want to focus on more. You may have other suggestions, too, Sal! I’d love to hear from you.

Oh, well, everything you just said! I think, you know, in previous years, with the standard AP format, you have roughly half multiple-choice and you have a free response section. I think the Khan Academy modality we have—multiple choice, we also have things like free response, numeric entry—not long-form free response, but that really prepares you historically well for the multiple-choice section of the AP. I think, to a reasonable degree, for the free response as well.

What I've always told students is to get to as much mastery as you can on Khan Academy, just like you mentioned. A few days or weeks before the exam, go through the worked examples of the free response questions on Khan Academy. These are in video format, and, you know, when I or some other content creator gives the question, pause it, try to solve it on your own before we solve it. That’ll really help you for the free response! I think that same combination is going to be really effective for this year, where it's going to be a shorter, free response-focused, virtually proctored exam.

But I think, either way, as Adam mentioned, that’s what's going to make you feel very comfortable and confident in this year’s exam.

So, even before you go on, Sal, just to double down on that, not only do we have those free response videos that students can use in that sort of active way to really pause the video, try on their own, and then watch your response to that: In the AP resources blog post that we have on Khan Academy, we have links to free response questions from previous exams. I think for most exams in the last three years, those go right to College Board and have PDFs of the free response questions you can practice with, along with responses and scoring guides for each of those.

So although most of our questions in the AP courses on Khan Academy are multiple-choice or something close to it, they're all designed really with free response questions in mind. They take you through the thought process and the sort of modeling that thought that you would need in order to be successful in the free response questions.

Even though you may be practicing and using the mastery system with multiple choice or close to it, you're really laying that foundation to have a firm understanding of all the content that you need in order to be successful in those free response questions. So yeah, I would do mastery stuff first, then I would watch the Sal videos that go through the free response questions from the past few years. Finally, at the end, I would look at those College Board resources for free response questions and try to work through those on your own, look at those scoring guides and sample responses, and follow that progression over the next, you know, four to six weeks—or potentially a little bit longer, depending on when your exam actually is.

You should be in pretty good shape. There's a lot of resources out there for everybody. Plus, there are College Board resources like YouTube videos that they're doing live YouTube review sessions for all of the different courses. You can get information for that both on our AP blog post and also on the College Board website; it's super, super useful!

Let’s see, we have some questions. This is from YouTube; Pamela Criswell asks: "What is your suggestion for the best ways for teachers to use Khan Academy, since we have had to go to remote learning?"

I could take a first stab at that, Pamela, and I'd love to hear what you have to say as well, Adam. I think there are several ways that you could use Khan Academy. Before the school closures, when schools were in session, what we've seen is if teachers are able to have their students work on personalized learning and mastery learning on Khan Academy, even 45 minutes a week, the impact has been associated with accelerated outcomes on a wide variety of measures.

That's something like, let’s say you’re a sixth-grade teacher, you can assign the sixth-grade course mastery to your students, and that's something that could take all year. It could take a good amount of time, and so the kids over the year are going to learn at their own time and pace, try to get things leveled up, and you, as a teacher, are going to get a dashboard where you can see who’s progressing, who’s not, who’s engaged, who’s not, and who’s getting stuck on certain concepts. Then in class time, you can take some of the kids who are stuck, and you could do a focused intervention with them.

You can maybe pair them up, or you could pair them with a student who might have already mastered that concept. We’ve seen that work really well. Now that we have this school closure situation, what we're seeing a lot of teachers do is lean on that a little bit more, where they can now expect a set of 45 minutes a week, depending on the age group, anywhere between 20 to 60 minutes a day of being able to work on their math at their own time and pace.

One of the things we did a few weeks ago was we released these daily schedules for students of different age groups that articulated, "Hey, for this age group, maybe 45 minutes of Khan Academy math at this time of the day might make sense."

We're going to be releasing, over the next couple of days, actually learning plans, not just over through the end of the school year but also potentially leveraging the summer, so students can make sure that they have a plan to cover all of the major concepts they need to be at grade level or above. For students who maybe are weak in some of their foundations, we recommend, let's say they're sixth-grade students; again, keep going on fifth grade but simultaneously also try to get mastery on arithmetic on Khan Academy to make sure they have really strong foundations.

Now, as a teacher, one of the things I think we've seen teachers do really well is if there's a certain time of day kids are working on Khan Academy at their own time and pace, you can monitor that. But also, if you could make yourself available via Google Hangout or Zoom or something like that, where students can jump on maybe a couple of times a week, ask you questions, you can work through worked examples with them. It should feel like a tutorial because everyone's looking for that social connection right now, so the more interactive it is, the better!

So, I think something like that, that type of flow is really powerful and also encouraging parents and students to continue through the summer. We're in a tough scenario right over here where it looks like most of the country’s schools are going to be closed probably through the end of the school year. So, there’s a loss there of two months, but then there’s an opportunity to maybe leverage the summer as well to make sure students are at grade level!

Adam, anything to add to that?

No, I think you covered that really, really well!

Alright! You know, if we think of war and all of you teachers out there, a lot of what we are trying to recommend to the teachers is coming from teachers doing a great job! So, we’re all learning this together, so send us your ideas as well.

So, there's a quick question. So, Jamil B.P. Liana Gay says, "Do we have content for TOEFL?" Unfortunately, we do not have TOEFL content; that’s the test for foreign students who need to show English proficiency. We don’t have that yet or have plans for that.

Let’s see. We have a question from YouTube; Suzanna Garcia Dominguez says: "How can I use your science course to prove that I have mastered middle school science?"

I have a few ideas, but Adam, I’d love your take on that.

Yeah, that’s a good question! We don’t have specific content out for middle school classrooms yet. That’s something that we’re hoping to work on in the future. But right now, I would take a look at things like high school biology. We do have courses in chemistry and in physics, and if you can work your way through those courses—you know, if you're a really motivated student, which it sounds like you really are—then you can watch those videos, read articles, and you can continue to practice those exercises over and over and see new types of questions. That’s going to be a really great way for you to start to build that mastery in those courses.

In terms of being able to show that you've done that, I think it’s just having that knowledge in your head and being able to talk with that with your teachers and fellow students is the best way that we can help support that right now. But Sal, what do you think?

Yeah, I would just add that what I’ve been telling a lot of students is that, you know, some of these courses that are labeled high school courses—you could try engaging in this. It’s a great time to try it out! I think high school biology is something that a lot of middle school students can engage in. You know, the math you need you already have, and, you know, you start learning the basics—what is life, what is DNA/RNA, and viruses—very, very relevant things right now! I think we're all a little bit more motivated than normal to learn about viruses and RNA and DNA and things like that.

Also, on the math side, exponential growth! So, I recommend high school biology as a great place to go, and if, as a middle school student, you're able to engage in it, it's going to be a great leg up—not just for high school but for college too.

You’ll even sound smart at dinner parties these days if you talk about how RNA is likely to mutate. You'll be able to keep up with some of the biologists out there! So, that’s what I would recommend. I'm actually even doing it with some of my kids because everyone's curious right now about this, and I think you're ready to learn it, especially if you have that motivation!

So, let's see. We have from Facebook; Jane Molnár says: "Any plans for upper division math classes, or like abstract algebra or complex analysis?"

So, I hear you! You know, as a math nerd, I’m just talking to myself in the affectionate possible way. I would love to do that at some point! Our focus has been trying to do the courses that the most students have the most trouble with right now, but I hope one day we do get into some of the more advanced areas. We do have things like multivariable calculus, differential equations, and linear algebra, but you're really talking about complex analysis, which isn’t around that level as well. I hope we are able to get there over the next many years, but it’s not part of our pipeline just yet.

Okay! So I have a Facebook question from Adam Muakkir: "Sal and Adam, how will Khan Academy get me into Stanford?"

Adam: I don't think that’s our job—not directly our job! What I will say, putting my guidance counselor hat on, is first, I wouldn’t over-index on any one school. It’s really more about what you make of it. My advice generally, and it’s great to have today; I miss school or that school is where I could imagine myself—is just be curious, learn as much as you can, do it for authentic reasons, do other interesting things above and beyond your academics, but don’t do it just to be able to fill out a college application.

The college admissions folks that I know are good at spotting engineered applications. They like authenticity and want to know who you are as a person and how you might be able to contribute to the world. Then when you apply to colleges, just be your authentic self! Don’t try to be some version of what you think that admissions officer wants to see. And if, for whatever reason, your true authentic self isn’t what gets you into a school, well, that’s probably good! It’s like a marriage. If your true authentic self and the other person doesn’t want to marry you, well, it’s good to know before you get married rather than afterward.

So, my advice is just be curious, learn, and use this time right now to work on interesting things, ways to help your community, inventions, or whatever else. You know, I've been thinking about it: wouldn’t it be cool if there were gloves that not only protect you from the virus but also kill the virus on anything it touches? You know, I’ve been walking into the supermarket with like Clorox wipes on both hands, and when I go to open the door, I'm like, “Wow, am I protecting myself, but I'm protecting the next person to open this door!” So, I think there's plenty of opportunity for invention!

Adam, any advice for Adam? Great name!

Yeah, I think that what you're saying rings true! College admissions counselors and all those folks have seen it all before—they're going to know if you're just writing for that. You should really be writing for yourself, and, yeah, just as Sal said, be curious about the world around you, and just be your authentic self, both before and after the college admissions process, and things will generally work out!

We have this question from Instagram; sarah_mode66 asks: "What if students do not have reliable access to the internet?"

My advice is, you know, videos are a little bit harder with intermittent access to the internet. Our exercise platform does leverage the internet to be able to keep track of what you're doing or not, but it’s not that intensive from the data point of view. So, you should be able to work on the exercises, get the feedback, and our Khan Academy’s iPhone or tablet and phone app actually does allow you to download and sync, so you can do that kind of thing overnight, and then you can have a little bit more consistent of an experience.

But this is a major problem; there are obviously a lot of kids in the United States and around the world who don’t have access to the internet. We're trying to work with telecom carriers and other folks to see how we can help solve that issue.

Let’s see other questions that we are seeing. So, YouTube's Abel Notame says: "What can I do on Khan Academy during this time?"

Adam, do you want to take a first stab at that?

There’s a lot you could do! There are literally hundreds of courses on Khan Academy that you can play around with. So, I would suggest mixing things up a little bit! If you’re in a biology course, or if you’re in fifth grade taking math, do a little bit of work in those courses but also just sort of look around! Poke around and follow your nose—follow whatever you happen to be interested in! We have content on there from Pixar in a Box if you’re interested in animation. We have lots of computing courses on there! So, if you’re interested in computer science or learning something about programming, you can poke around in there.

There’s just a lot going on in the Khan Academy universe, and I would just suggest opening things up and looking at something that maybe you haven’t looked at before. Something that you've heard might be interesting—just play around! It’s an open sandbox, and I think that you’ll find a lot of things in there that will be interesting to you, especially in this time where you might have a little bit more time or a little bit more flexibility to get interested in things.

And I’ll just add to what Adam said: You know, this bad situation the world finds itself in has a silver lining that you now have time. If you construct your day, you have every day—you can spend, you know, sessions, I don’t know how old you are, but you could spend sessions with twenty minutes at a time, thirty minutes at a time—maybe three or four of those sessions? You could make sure you have super solid foundations in math by doing everything that we've been talking about, not just in this livestream but in previous ones where you can get practice feedback.

Take that course challenge if you’re feeling a little weak in these subjects. You can remediate with things like our arithmetic or pre-algebra course, and if you're feeling good, just keep going! Between now and the start of school—I can’t tell you enough how confident that will make you in whatever subject you engage in. So that can be in math! I encourage folks who feel they’re ready, even at the middle school level—especially the high school level—to get a leg up on biology, chemistry, and physics.

You have the time now, but then a year or two from now, when you’re taking those courses, and you’re taking six or seven courses and you have homework, you’re thinking, “Oh, I wish I used those five months a little bit better!”

I would also encourage you to read a lot right now and think critically about that reading. I would even—if you’re not planning on taking the SAT in the next several months—I actually think the SAT practice on Khan Academy that we've been doing with the College Board is not just in math! It's in reading and writing as well!

There’s just a great practice in general to sharpen those skills.

And get you ready for problems related to this question from YouTube: Sri Harsha Pirate Shuhei says, "Do you guys have plans to do a guide for the GRE as y’all have done for the SAT?" He is very generous—“You guys really help me out on this! I can’t thank you guys enough!”

Well, thank you, Sri Harsha! Unfortunately, we don't have GRE prep right now, but you know, I think that SAT prep is fairly general-purpose. A lot of folks have also asked about the ACT. Allison Gabble on Facebook asked about it. We don’t have an ACT-specific prep either, but once again, if you get really good at these things, they’re all highly correlated—SAT, GRE, ACT.

If you use our SAT work and get really strong at it, that's going to transfer, I believe, to the other tests!

So, it looks like we’re out of time. It’s always fun! I want to thank Adam for joining us. A lot of folks think that Khan Academy is still Sal in a walk-in closet, although I’m back enough—I’m in my kids’ kind of workroom right now. But it’s a team effort! What you see is a finished product of over 200 folks; Adam leads a large chunk of that. You know, hopefully, you appreciate that there are a lot of folks who are dedicating their time and energy to this effort.

I want to thank all of them. And, you know, before we head out, I just want to remind everyone: Stay safe, stay healthy, stay socially distant! That’s the best way that we can stop the spread of what we’re all going through. I want to thank you for joining, because not only is this a way for all of you to feel connected, it's a way for us to feel connected to you, which we all need right now!

And I’ll just say again a reminder: Khan Academy is a not-for-profit. We are dependent on philanthropic donations from folks like yourself! Every dollar matters. So, if you're in a position to do so, please think about donating to Khan Academy. You can see the links at the end—it’s kind of academy.org/donate. Thank you so much! Have a great Monday!