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Khan Academy's mission

Khan Academy’s Mission is part of Khan for Educators, a free course for teachers to learn more about Khan Academy, the content and tools available for teachers and students, and best practices for implementing technology with students. Created by Khan Academy.

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Video transcript

- I am Sal Khan, founder of the not-for-profit Khan Academy. As you probably know, we have a big mission, to provide a free world-class education for anyone, anywhere. And we know that the most important people in that mission are you, the teacher. And so that's why from the beginning, Khan Academy has always worked closely with teachers to be able to create tools for teachers so that they can use it with their students and allow the students' learning to happen as well as possible. And so that's why we're excited that you are a part of this training. Because I've always said, if I had to pick between an amazing teacher and amazing technology, I would pick the amazing teacher every time. The good thing is we don't have to make that trade-off. And so, here at Khan Academy, we are trying to build tools for you, tools that will make your life easier, that will save you time, and will help you serve your students better. - So Khan Academy is an online educational set of resources. It is a combination of world-class content that spans from kindergarten all the way to 12th grade, and in some cases, the first and second year of college. And then we span across many subjects. There's two pieces that I think makes it very unique. One is not just world-class content, but it's taught in a way that is very easy to understand. We also build a lot of what we call social-emotional learning elements into the platform. 'Cause learning is hard. It can be intimidating. You could feel under-confident, you could feel not very smart, learning something that's very new to you. So our product of content and software, the combination of both, we try to make it so it's easy to understand, that it's fun, that's it's engaging, that it motivates you, that it helps build your self-confidence so that you can start to be a self-motivated, independent learner, to be a lifelong learner. And what makes us unique is those elements of not just the content but the social-emotional learning part of the software, as well as we have a lot of built-in intelligence to know exactly where you are and all the steps that you need to learn. So we have this thing called a Knowledge Map inside our product that let's you say, "Gosh, if I wanna learn calculus some day, "I need to know these foundational elements first, "and then I can build on top," sort of like a house. We have the foundational elements, and then you know how to build the first story, and then you put the second story, and we connect all those dots for you. Our reach and our scale today, we are in over 190 countries across the world. We are translated in over 30 languages across the world by amazing advocates, volunteers that help us do this because they believe so much in our mission. And it does really take a village to make that happen. It is unfortunate there's a misconception of us wanting to replace the teacher. Absolutely not. There is no way that we can replace the teacher. They are such an important part of the student's life. For us, it's about providing tools and functionality for the teacher to empower them, to give them agency, to be better than they can ever be, to be more efficient, to be more effective. So tools and insights that we can do to help the teacher so that they can be the best that they can be for these students. The people at Khan Academy are amazing. I am so blessed to run this company because the people, I have 200 plus people whose sole goal is to enable this mission to happen. They just want to really transform the educational industry to really help those under-served children. And that's what they eat, breathe, and sleep, every day. - So we're excited that you're part of this training. Hopefully, you will find everything that we are able to provide to you to be of use. And we are looking forward to getting your feedback about how together we can better serve you and your students. Thank you.