Bringing the world forward by innovating for today's needs

- I talk a lot about meeting the needs of students where they are today and teachers where they are today. Sometimes it might be like, oh well what teachers and students need today, they're currently looking at textbooks, they have these worksheets. So, if we're meeting those needs are we just creatiing virtual versions of those things. To be clear we should look at what the use case is, what is their motivation for using a textbook, what is their motivation for a lecture. But then we should always be thinking, well, how can we optimally solve that problem. In fact, I think a problem that's happened in the past is people said, "oh there were textbooks, "let's create virtual textbooks." That's not what the Khan Academy is about. The Khan Academy says, Okay what are the students current needs? Well, there're students out there who are saying, "I'm having trouble understanding calculus "or L'Hospital's Rule for tomorrow's exam, or "I don't understand acid-base titration." We as Khan Academy should say, okay, what can we give that student to optimally solve that problem for them? It should be ways of discovering the content we have. That content itself has to be as engaging as possible. Sure it might be-- The student might be motivated to consume that content because they have a test tomorrow or they have a project they're working on or whatever else. But when they consume the content, they should feel, wow this is cool. I came here just to learn a little bit about acid-base titration, but now I want to be a chemist. I'm excited about this. I have a deeper understanding of the concept than I thought I would. This thing that I thought I had to just kind of go through the motions and learn, is actually really exciting. Whatever our materials are. Whether they're videos or exercises or articles or who knows whatever else, they should ignite that passion in the student for whatever reason they come to us. In my mind, the innovation started five years ago, hopefully. It's not innovation in the ways a lot of people think. A lot of people think innovation should be virtual reality and 3D graphics and super high production value, and that could be innovation. But what we've seen at Khan Academy is a lot of times just hearing another human being who's authentic and authentically passionate about that subject can be far more infectious and motivating than the fanciest software. If you see something that actually connects the dots between concepts and you feel like it's meeting your needs, once again that can be far more powerful than a fancy CGI movie, whatever else. We might explore those things, but anytime the investment is 10 or 20 X in terms of resources, we need to prove to ourselves that it really is having that intended impact. The simple answer is, we're innovating today and we need to continue innovating. By meeting students needs and teachers needs where they are today, we're going to get that usage and they'll have the better experience, the more innovative experience, and then we can slowly bring them to a more systemically innovative experience where it's more about project based learning, portfolios of your work, and competency and master based learning.