Caroline Hu Flexer: research shows Khan Academy Kids boosts pre-literacy skills | Homeroom with Sal

Hi everyone! Welcome to the daily homeroom live stream. I'm Sal Khan from Khan Academy. For those of y'all who are new to this, this is a homeroom that we are doing every day, as the name implies, to really stay connected during these times of school closures. Khan Academy realized that we have a role; we have a duty to step up. When we saw the schools closing, we said, how can we better support parents, teachers, and students around the country and around the world during these really hard times?

Since we've been running parent webinars and teacher webinars, putting together all of our content from early learning— and we're going to talk a lot about early learning today— from early learning all the way through elementary, middle, and high school. We’re also developing learning plans and schedules that can help folks; then also to do this so that we can stay connected and answer folks' questions in a live synchronous way during this time of social distancing.

I do remind everyone that Khan Academy is a not-for-profit organization. We can only exist through philanthropic donations from folks like yourself. So if you're in a position to do so, please think about making a donation to Khan Academy. Every donation matters.

I want to give special thanks to several corporations that have stepped up in the last several weeks. As soon as they saw the COVID crisis was happening, they said, "Hey, we want to make sure that you can stay up and running." We were running a deficit even before the crisis, and we continue to run a deficit; but the support from these organizations has made a big difference: Bank of America, AT&T, Google.org, Novartis, and Fastly. Thank you so much! If any of you representing corporations can reach out to us, I'm sc@khanacademy.org. Anyone can email me there if you think you have an interesting way for us to get sustainable.

You can imagine, we're already running into a deficit, and then the crisis hit. Our traffic is about 3x of what it typically is, and we're trying to do more programs, so we need that support. I am super excited about our guest today. We've had her on before, but she's got several really exciting announcements. I have to say, I was just telling Caroline before this, I'm quite enthusiastic; I'm quite excited about some of the stuff she's going to talk about.

So Caroline, maybe I'll let you take the floor. You know you have a couple of announcements. Tell us what's new at Khan Academy Kids. Or actually, start by reminding folks what Khan Academy Kids is, and then tell us what's new.

Sounds good! Yep, so I lead the Khan Academy Kids team, which is a program for children ages two through seven, so preschool through grade one. It's a comprehensive early learning program that covers multiple subjects—everything from academic subjects like reading and math to social-emotional development and executive function skills. Our app includes thousands of lessons, books, and interactive activities that kids can learn from. There's an adaptive learning path that adjusts to a child's level, and there's a library that has those thousands of lessons in it.

Today we have a lot of new things that we've been working on. One is a big research study that was just announced, and I can go through that. We are also announcing our teacher tools launch in Khan Academy Kids version three, so let's start—there's a lot of good news here. First of all, tell us about the research study.

Sure, sure! It was very important for us to get an independent academic study on our program to test its effectiveness. We did a study with Professor David Arnold from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, and he just released his results publicly. The study was a randomized controlled trial study, which is the gold standard of academic studies, where there are two groups of randomly selected students. One group gets the Khan Academy Kids intervention, and one is the control group.

This was a study of four- and five-year-olds prior to entering kindergarten, and they were from low-income families with a median annual income of about $24,000. What we saw was that in a 10-week study, the kids that were using Khan Academy Kids saw substantial increases in their pre-literacy skills. They were tested with a pre-test using the Test of Preschool Early Literacy, the TOPEL test, and then post-test, and we saw the gains were really substantial. They were, at the beginning of the study, about at the 34th percentile, likely due to the effects of poverty. After 10 weeks of using Khan Academy Kids for 20 minutes a day, they were close to the national average at the 47th percentile.

The size of these gains is substantial; they're equivalent to what is typically found in much more expensive interventions. For example, the phonological gains were comparable to those found in an intervention of 25 one-to-one sessions with a professional tutor.

I mean, there's a lot of what you just said that I think is worth unpacking and underlining. Just the first thing is 10 weeks is not a lot of time. It was 20 minutes per day, and that essentially closed the gap between these students who are performing a good bit below where they need to be and getting essentially to the national average—if I heard that correctly, right?

Right, because students, particularly low-income students, often enter the first day of kindergarten already behind in these critical pre-literacy skills, which are things like recognizing letters of the alphabet, understanding letter sounds, knowing their letter sounds, and understanding phonological awareness skills—being able to break down sounds in words and sentences. These are really critical to learning how to read, so they start school behind, and then they don't catch up.

I was super excited. I mean, this is one of those things where, obviously, this is part of Khan Academy's Khan Academy Kids, but Caroline and her team are a bit of a mini-team on their own, and sometimes I don't know about these things until I hear them. I have to say, it was really, really heartening. You know, we always had an intuitive sense that this was really valuable. I have to say, you know, Caroline, I was telling you this before we got on the call—I have a five-and-a-half-year-old, as many folks know—and you know people might say, "Oh, Sal's five-and-a-half-year-old. He must be super motivated." No, he likes to dance a lot and, you know, make potty humor, and my wife says he got that from me. I don't know; I think I'm quite sophisticated.

But he's been on it so much, and intuitively as a parent, I gotta say it feels right. It is incredibly engaging for children, but it's not just your classic edutainment. It is true standards-aligned. Tell us about the work that's put in to make sure that it is standards-aligned and engaging at the same time.

So Khan Academy Kids, each of our lessons is aligned with national standards. For preschool, it's the Head Start Early Learning Outcomes Framework for Literacy and Math, and then for kindergarten and first grade, it's the Common Core Standards. We've worked with educators from the Stanford Ed School who specialize in early learning and child development to make sure that our lessons are aligned with standards and also taught in a way that reflects how really experienced teachers teach these concepts in the real world.

What we've learned through looking at the research on the science of learning is that technology has the power to further children's learning if it meets certain criteria. It has to be active, hands-on, and engaging learning. It has to give kids specific real-time feedback, and it also needs to adjust to a child's individual level. That's what we've built Khan Academy Kids around—those principles.

I want to emphasize to folks this is all free; this is all non-profit. I think a lot of people are skeptical about things like this; they're like, "There must be a catch." I mean, people have talked about that concerning Khan Academy. But there are other resources out there that are more than happy to charge you, you know, five dollars a month, ten dollars a month, or buy an app for this amount. You know, anyone who doesn't believe me should go download the app and put it in front of a two, three, four, five, six, or seven-year-old, and you will see not only does it work and keep them engaged and is very good for them, but it has a lot more in it than you would normally expect of an app.

I mean you touched on it; there's a ton of stories in there, a ton of activities.

Yes, that's what we've been hearing from parents—that particularly during this time of remote learning, they are relieved to find something that is so comprehensive. Actually, they can see their children building their vocabulary, learning how to count. We've heard directly from parents who are saying that they didn't realize technology could teach their child so much, but they're in these desperate situations. They've found Khan Academy Kids, and now after just a few days or weeks of using it, they're realizing that their kids are really building these skills.

And it's not only the academic skills that are so important for this age; as Sal was saying, his son wants to play, and so all kids at this age want to play. The way we approach learning is play-based, entertaining, and engaging for kids. It's like they want to learn through stories and songs, and that's how kids build some of those critical early numeracy, vocabulary, and literacy skills.

I do want to remind folks—if you have questions, start putting your questions on YouTube and Facebook on the message boards. We have team members looking at them. I will get them to Caroline over the course of the conversation, but there are a few more things I want to just make sure I have a chance to talk to Caroline about. I mean, I do want to double down on this. You know, my wife is a physician, and she was in a physicians' moms' group, and people were talking about this age group, and people were saying, "What should I use?" A lot of parents were saying a lot of physician moms were saying: "Khan Academy Kids, it's incredible! It's free and it has way more than you think." But there are other people who are saying, "Oh, you know, this thing that I paid ten dollars a month for." My wife is like, "I can't believe people are paying money when this is available!"

Especially, and some of that stuff you pay money for is not as engaging, it's not as standards-aligned, and it doesn't have the types of efficacy studies that you just talked about. Look, you and I are not selling anything; we are funded with philanthropic donations, and I'll say please donate so that we can keep doing this. But, you know, if you have young kids, you shouldn't have to pay for this. If you know people with young kids, make sure they know that this stuff is available there for free. We don't have the marketing budget to put ads out in the world, but this is all free, and it’s the most high-quality resource.

Caroline, tell us about the announcement around some of your teacher tools. Tell us about that, and I actually also want to make sure people know about some of the first-grade content you've added recently as well—tell us about what you're doing for teachers.

Sure! Right before school closures at the beginning of March, we launched a large update to Khan Academy Kids, which included all of the Common Core standards for first grade ELA and math. After school closures, we decided to fast-track our teacher tools update. So we have just in the last week announced our teacher tools, and this was really important for us because since the beginning, teachers have been clamoring to use Khan Academy Kids. They had actually been using the home accounts to set up their students, but it really wasn't designed to support a whole class.

These teacher tools include easy ways for teachers to set up their class with the teacher and students and then to look for and search all of our lessons by standard—so the standards that they're teaching to. They can find the relevant lessons, assign lessons to their students, and monitor how their students are doing after they've completed those lessons. They can see which students have completed these lessons, how they're doing, and what the scores are. They can look at the assignments by assignment or look at the scores by student as well.

In remote learning, we’ve made it easy so that teachers can just share a code with parents at home so that the students can learn on their devices at home, and then the teachers can continue to send them assignments and monitor their progress. This is so important in this age because students really need that connection with their teacher, and the teachers know best about what their individual students need to be learning now.

I want to emphasize that a parent can also use that functionality. A couple of days ago, I was like, "Where is this functionality that Caroline and Michael had shown me?" I realized I had to update the app. So just a reminder to update the app, and then you will see this functionality. There are instructions available. Where can people find instructions if they want to understand how to activate the teacher tools or assign things?

If you just go to khankids.org, we will have a link to our teacher tools, and we have modules like quick setup guides and things like that to walk you through the different steps.

Yeah, and I gotta say, it's quite powerful. You're able to look at the entire library of lessons by standards, by grade level, and just sample it very nicely. You can assign things to your students. You know, I've been talking to my five-year-old's teachers, and it is amazing. I think they're very thoughtful about what my five-year-old needs to be doing right now, but they were doing primarily those classic worksheets.

The stuff that y'all have done covers those same standards in a much more engaging, interactive way. Frankly, he wants to do it; it’s a bit of pulling teeth to get my son to do even one worksheet that, in theory, could take him like three minutes to do. But like, you know, a long "o" versus short "o," and I'm like, "No, just do it!" But with the same activity on Khan Academy Kids, he wants to do it. I have to kind of pull him off of it.

If you can't tell, I'm very excited about the work that Caroline and her team are doing. We're really heartened in this time. I think there's a risk of academic loss during this time without teachers and being in school, and this is why we're so motivated to do this work. We're so heartened to see all the kids and parents that are writing to us with stories about how they are just hungry to learn and they love learning; they're sending us their stories and their photos of the activities that they're doing.

So, there's two questions here from Facebook. Scott Yang says, "Hey Sal, why didn't you put the big bear behind you today?" You know what, Scott? I'm gonna do that! I'm gonna go get Cody. Someone told me I had to be on—I think it was CNN, and one member of our team said, "Well, you know, Cody Bear looked like he was just kind of staring at you," so I took it out. I'm gonna get that, but while I’m getting that, I'm gonna give a question from Andrea Adams Majette from Facebook: "How can I ensure—for this is for Caroline—how can I ensure my five and seven-year-old do not get addicted to tech during this time of homeschooling online?"

Sure, look forward to seeing Cody! That is a great question. I think at the top of our minds we designed Khan Academy Kids to make sure that it was developmentally appropriate and not to focus on using technology for hours and hours on end. It's designed for kids to be using in 5, 10, or 20-minute increments, depending on their age and what's appropriate for them.

Some ways that we've done that are by designing activities so that after a lesson, you are coming back out. The lessons are paced to be short increments with an introductory video, and then highly active interactive experiences. After a few activities, we'll tell your kids to get up and sing this song or dance or go outside and take a look at the leaves or something related to the story. We really are cognizant of not having it be an experience that just sucks your kids in, which a lot of adult technology, as we all know from social media and all that, is designed to be addictive.

So, we're on the converse designed to be hands-on, minds-on learning but not sucking your kids in. You can kind of tell when they get that glaze-over look for things that are not active learning, and so we design it to be active and interactive.

Another thing is that we have come out with some schedules for kids just as a starting point, and every family is different and has different routines. Having some structure to the day helps, particularly with young children, by letting them know, "Okay, we're going to have reading time now, and then in half an hour we are going to go outside and play." So understanding those regular routines and those transitions can really help.

We really advocate balancing not only the Khan Academy Kids time but all the other learning that they're doing outside and inside the house. We've come up with some programs to support that as well. We believe in offline learning and have some printables on our website, as well as activities that you can do with materials in your house.

Then Sophie and I from my team are hosting a circle time where we encourage kids to get up and dance and we read books with them and do interactive activities that also highlight the types of learning that are in Khan Academy Kids.

And I'll say, just as a parent—and this is literally something that I observed this morning and last night—when my son is on a device, he looks kind of like—and I don't know if you can see me right now—but he looks kind of like a zombie. No parent wants to see that too long where he's just staring at it. But when he's doing Khan Academy Kids, there's something about it where he's actively engaged. I don't know, I don't know what it is, but I've definitely seen him engage in a way that feels healthier than just being a tablet zombie.

And I would add, no one is advocating to do this for hours a day. I think your research study was 20 minutes a day, so I could imagine a couple of 10, 15-minute sessions a day as plenty to keep kids progressing. If you need time for your kids to be on a screen, this is a very healthy screen time.

Yeah, we've designed it so that Cody Bear—the one behind Sal—talks to your child, and we've scripted the language with open-ended questions so that kids are talking back to the app and telling you what they're thinking and learning.

Yeah, just this morning my son was doing a lesson on subjects of sentences, and it had a picture of Cody or a little cartoon of Cody riding a bicycle. It was like, "What's the subject?" You could tell he was processing it because it said he and Cody was riding a bike, and he was like, "Cody's riding a bike; I guess Cody is he?" It was really powerful for me to see that process going on. I actually thought being able to identify subjects or kind of verbs in a sentence was a little bit beyond him at this stage he's in, but I was very, very impressed with how the app delivered it.

I see more questions coming in. So, this is from Dave Hankin on YouTube. He says, "As a teacher, I'd like to know how you recommend introducing Khan Academy Kids to parent guardians so they'll buy into regular use."

As a teacher, I think now with our teacher tools, it would be a lot easier to get them to buy into regular use, particularly if you send them an assignment or two a day. Then they will know they are getting something from their teacher, and the students will be able to see that assignment in their view. You'll be able to see which lessons they've completed and how they've been doing.

Completing these assignments is really quick; you can just search by standard or even just look through our library and see which lessons are aligned with what you would like to teach and then just press a button and assign them.

I have to say, what I've seen for my own children in school is they’ve been doing a heroic job. They have a learning management system, and they send us printouts, but every morning my wife and I have to go print out the worksheets. Then my child does them; we take pictures of them, and upload it onto the learning management system. It’s quite stressful for us on some days.

But you could imagine now with Khan Academy Kids you can, as a teacher, assign it. Parents, families, and students just have to get in the habit of, "Hey, in the morning, let's see what's assigned," and they can go through that. They don't have to upload pictures and all this other stuff they'd have to do with worksheets in this time of social distancing.

So, yeah, as a teacher, you have a lot of power there to get families on it. A related question from Lauren Byer on Facebook asks, "Would any of the teacher platform tools be useful for parents to use at home?"

Absolutely! Particularly during this time when all of you are homeschoolers. If you want to use Khan Academy Kids teacher tools, all you need to do is set up an account as a teacher, or if you're a parent and you already have an account, you can convert it from the parent section. We have some documentation on our website on how to do that.

From Facebook, Scott Yang asks—and I can help answer this as well—but Caroline, who helped you? Oh actually, I read this wrong way, but I'll answer what I read it the first time. Caroline, tell us a little bit about how Khan Academy Kids was founded.

I read "funded" the first time. I'm gonna answer that too, but—

Well, I founded a company called Duck Duck Moose about 10 years ago with my husband Michael. We created 21 educational apps for mostly preschoolers and elementary school early elementary school. We did this independently for about eight years, and then in 2016, we joined Khan Academy. So we have been part of Khan Academy since 2016 and focused on now developing Khan Academy Kids, although the Duck Duck Moose apps are still out there and they've been downloaded, I think, over 60 or 70 million times.

Yeah, I've oftentimes espoused my benevolent alien theory that benevolent aliens are using Khan Academy as a vector to prepare humanity for first contact. When Caroline and Michael reached out, I guess it's been a while now—four years ago—and said, "We want to donate our organization to Khan Academy," I was like, "All right, benevolent aliens, thank you! We get the message."

To your earlier point about how we're completely free, we couldn't do that when we were not a non-profit and when we were independent. To us, it was so important to focus on deep education for kids and not interrupt them with in-app purchases and subscriptions while they're learning.

Michael and the team deserve a lot of credit; you had other financial options where you guys could have gotten bought out and it could have been very lucrative for y'all, but this is something you just decided as humanitarians you wanted your life's work to be accessible to as many people as possible. Caroline, her Michael, and her team passed up a lot of money that a lot of us would have thought twice about to make Khan Academy Kids a non-profit effort.

We were able, obviously, to donate their organization to us, which was frankly worth many millions, arguably tens of millions of dollars. But then we had to go find funders, and that's where, at the time, it was called the Omidyar Network. Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay, famously his foundation was one of the major funders that allowed us to do this work. And then the Winsong Trust. Those are the two really big funders that allow us to do this work.

But, once again, we're also running it at a deficit at the Khan Academy Kids level. So especially if you’re a parent and you've really enjoyed it, please think about donating. If you're a corporation or a foundation, please think about helping us to support this work.

So from YouTube, Wendy Oliver, this is more of a comment, but it's a good comment: "The offline is a great feature for those families who are remote or do not have access to the internet." Caroline, tell us more about the offline functionality, and you know what kind of devices can this be used on? If people just have a cell phone, is that sufficient?

Yes, so we designed Khan Academy Kids to be accessible as widely as possible on Android and iOS, as well as across different devices: phones and tablets. It was very important for us to design so that folks with intermittent Wi-Fi could use it. We have an offline mode where a substantial portion of our content in early literacy and math can be accessed when you're offline, so you can use all of those lessons for the complete library and the learning path.

You do need an internet connection just because there are thousands of lessons—there is no way we could pack it into a mobile app, nor would you want it all on your device. However, we've also designed the technology so that it downloads in small packets when you do need new lessons for your learning path, and then it purchases them. It's designed to be efficient so that anybody on any devices can use it.

Yeah, and I think that's—you know, it really obviously the whole reason why Khan Academy exists, Khan Academy Kids exists is to level the playing field as much as possible. There's all sorts of inequity right now on device access, and we're trying to work with others to solve it, but Khan Academy Kids goes arguably further.

I mean, our Khan Academy main app also has some ways to download content, but you all do a really great job. As long as you have at least a reasonable smartphone and have some time to download some of the materials, you can go pretty far.

There's a question from Susan Garcia Dominguez on YouTube: "Is it available on laptops, or is it only tablets and phones?"

It is only on mobile devices right now, and the reason for that is that we found in testing with young children that the form factor of mobile devices, where they have the touch screen that they can directly manipulate, is much more effective for learning. It's tough for two-year-olds and three-year-olds to navigate, before they can read, on a computer with a mouse.

Yeah, and even the five- and six-year-olds; I mean they can do it kind of, but it’s— and that leads to another question from Nikhil on YouTube. He says, "Hi Sal and Caroline, what are the best studying methods while simultaneously using Khan Academy?"

You know, I'll interpret that as how Khan Academy Kids transitions to Khan Academy. I have a view there, but I'd love your take on what it is today and maybe where what it could be in the future.

Yeah, I think right now, we cover up through the end of first grade, and then Khan Academy does take over from there. We're hoping to scale up through the end of second grade at least, and then Khan Academy takes over from there, but we're building those critical skills in pre-literacy and math before you get into Khan Academy.

Yeah, and if you go to Khan Academy, there is content for kindergarten, first grade, second-grade content, but it does require using a mouse and has things like “select all that apply.” We view that content especially in the world of where Khan Academy Kids exists as valuable if you're a fourth grader or third grader or if you have a student who needs to remediate or review some of that content. But ideally, if you are working on first grade standards or below, Khan Academy Kids is the place to go.

I see it in my own son when I when I put him on Khan Academy—he's using the mouse; you know the motor skills to click on the radio button is a little bit more difficult than with Khan Academy Kids. He has no problem at all.

I see more questions coming in, so this is from Madeleine Boudreau on YouTube: "I love that you see the super simple songs and interactive component. Cheers to you and your team!” That’s a good reason to talk more about all the content and the partners that we’ve been able to work with.

Yeah, we're so grateful to partner. A lot of our content is homegrown, so we have our own books that are illustrated by our own illustrators. But we collaborate with children's book authors to author an original series of books, and then we also collaborate with Super Simple Songs, which is an amazing animation company that has, I think, I don’t know how many billions of views on YouTube but favorites classic nursery rhymes and great animations coupled with these songs. We integrate them into Khan Academy Kids and then make them interactive.

In addition, we partner with National Geographic and Bellwether, which have non-fiction books on animals and nature, and so that's how we have some of our science content.

Yeah! So, more questions here. Marie E. says from YouTube, "Sal, are you okay? You look tired." Are you okay? I think it's just relevant because Caroline looks so energetic and well-lit and, yeah, I'm looking at myself now and I'm like, "Yeah that guy; he needs something." I think it's all relative. I think when you don't see Caroline, I look fine!

No, no, it's my background; I do circle time here, so I have to look perky for the kids who have lots of energy. Marie, I think you're onto something. I need to introspect a little bit! [Laughter]

Rishika Telemseti from YouTube says, "I literally did my Khan Academy homework right now. Love the detailed video." It’s good to hear that Rishika! Let's see, other folks! There are some people—Scott asking a lot of questions, "Hey Caroline, would you like to invite Sophie into a live stream with Sal someday?"

Yes, we'd love to have Sophie! We would love to have Sophie; she would only reinforce me looking tired and aging! Oh yeah, she’s another level!

And you need parent and teacher webinars as well, Marie; you've confirmed some of my insecurities! So, I don't know. I'm feeling a little—I'm having a good time with these conversations until someone points out that I look old and tired!

But Caroline, tell us a little bit more. I mean, what are your hopes—just to finish up? What are your hopes and dreams for Khan Academy Kids?

Yeah, I think we are just grateful right now that we have a role to play in our way to help families and teachers during this time in particular. We're kind of just very focused on the current moment and everything that we can do. This new teacher tool is extremely exciting for us to see. We are already seeing districts and teachers use it from California all the way across to New Jersey.

I think we’re just at the beginning of our classroom entry and we'll continue that as well as with new features for teachers and classrooms. We're very excited to continue with the content. We're seeing that kids grow, and they want to grow more with us, and so we’ll continue on to second grade.

Awesome! Well, I just want to thank everyone. I want to remind everyone; go try out Khan Academy Kids! Even if you don't have early learners at home, proselytize it! Tell other people because it's a shame that there are families, especially families in need, that don't realize that there are resources out there for them and their children and for their children's teachers to keep folks learning!

Not only are these resources free, but there are more research studies done on Khan Academy and Khan Academy Kids than almost all of those for-pay products that frankly are spending probably more on marketing than they are on product development, content development, and research and development. So get the word out!

It's really a shame that people aren't accessing these things or that they are paying for things that are inferior, frankly. But I want to remind everyone that the way we are able to do this and kind of do what's right on a principal level is through donations. So if you're benefiting—your family—or if you just want other kids around the country and eventually the world to benefit from Khan Academy Kids, please think about making a donation. It makes a huge difference!

You know, one way to think about it is if you were to go to a not-as-good-for-pay product, it could easily cost ten dollars a month or five dollars a month. If you’re able to support Khan Academy at those types of levels, it makes a difference. It allows us to support a lot more folks.

So thank you so much for joining! Caroline, thank you so much! Michael and your entire team—really amazing work! Thank you for dedicating your life to this. You did not have to do this; this is not the way that the world normally works, but y’all decided to do what’s right for humanity.

Yeah, we’re grateful for the opportunity! Thanks everyone, and we’ll see you all next week! We have a lot of really good guests next week. We’ll be sending out emails and stuff, but you know, we have really cool folks like Angela Duckworth and other folks next week to talk about grit and resilience.

So, see y’all later! Have a great weekend, and take care of yourself! Clearly, Marie thinks I need to!