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Now, the story of a young man teaching math -- to the world.
News Hour correspondent Spencer Michaels reports.
Sal Khan: So this is a quadratic equation, essentially.
We're trying to find the zeroes of this...
Reporter: This disembodied voice is heard every day
by tens of thousands of students struggling with math --
both in the US and around the world.
Sal: So what is x squared + 4x + 4?
Well, that's (x+2) times (x+2).
Reporter: 33-year-old Salman Khan recently quit his job
as a hedge-fund analyst to devote himself to an unpaid job
teaching math on the Internet.
Sal: Welcome to the presentation on basic addition.
I know what you're thinking. 'Sal, ...'
These are cancers or cancer cells.
As the investors in the mortgage-backed securities provide ...
Reporter: He has posted twelve hundred (1200) lessons on YouTube, which appear on an electronic blackboard,
and range in subject from basic addition and advanced calculus to science and finance.
And they are free.
Sal: Introduction to trigonometry -- this is where I teach people about the trig functions.
This is one of the more popular videos.
This has a 179,000 views.
This is just what "sine," "cosine," and "tangent" are.
Reporter: Khan lives in California's "Silicon Valley" with his wife, a rheumatologist in training at Stanford, and their new baby.
He got the idea for Khan Academy four years ago when he taught a young cousin how to convert kilograms to grams.
Many American students have trouble with math;
and studies show they lag behind their counterparts in Asia
and Europe in both math and science.
With Khan's help, his cousin got good at math,
and he eventually had a new career tapping into anxieties around the world.
Now, he records his lessons from a converted closet in the back of his bedroom.
He never goes on camera.
Sal: It kind of feels like the voice in their head.
You're looking at it.
It kind of feels likes someone's over your shoulder talking in your ear,
as opposed to someone at a blackboard that's distant from you.
Sal: [Coughs.] Sorry for starting the presentation with a cough.
But now I want to continue with the 45-45-90 triangles.
Reporter: Although he is not the first person to teach on the Internet,
his simple operation has attracted more eyeballs than most university sites, and his fame has spread.
The all-girl Castelleja School in Palo Alto invited Khan to speak;
and he immediately connected to the student body.
Sal: You tell me that you really don't know how -- you know --
dividing decimals is still kind of this little gray area.
And if dividing decimals actually is, you're not alone.
Dividing decimals is kind of the one thing that no one wants to admit that they kind of forgot how to do.
Reporter: He exuded pride in his expanding online audience.
Sal: The more and more people kept watching it.
And now it's reaching actually on the order of about 100,000 students, now, a month, and 40,000 video views a day.
Reporter: It was the concept of short, repeatable lessons that attracted high-school senior, Bridget Meany,
who admitted she'd had trouble with seventh-grade algebra.
Bridget Meany: I think the teachers are good; but they can't go at a pace that's perfect for everyone.
But, I like the concept of knowing something in class,
but then going back and pressing pause or rewind,
and actually getting a deeper understanding of it.
Shy students who don't ask questions in class may benefit the most from Khan's videos,
says Kimberly Knapp, who teaches math at Castelleja.
But his lessons aren't a substitute for the classroom.
Kimberly Knapp: I don't think that there's a perfect replacement for the work that we do,
and just the kind of conversations that students and teachers engage in together.
Reporter: But Khan thinks maybe lecture halls and classrooms have their limitations.
Originally, he kept his lessons short because of YouTube restrictions.
Now, he thinks short is better.
Sal: I've gotten researchers telling me that "You don't realize.
Ten minutes -- we've done studies - is how long someone can have a high level of concentration."
And anything beyond that, you kind of lose it.
And I think we've all had that experience in sitting in college
where, you can be with a professor for about ten or fifteen minutes, and then you kind of lose it.
Reporter: A lot of math students apparently agree.
I talked via the Internet with Cody Woodward in Anchorage, Alaska,
who uses Khan's lessons at college.
Cody Woodward: It has helped me immensely,
and the grades for my math classes.
And I've also learned a lot.
Reporter: Internet instruction, be it the Khan Academy, or taped university lectures,
could revolutiionize education in remote third-world locations,
where access to high-quality instruction is frequently unavailable.
That's the hope of Neil Radia, a young software programmer at Cisco Systems.
He and fellow volunteers at World Possible, working on their vacations,
are bringing online teaching to Africa and India for starters.
When [Neil] Radia and Megha Jain first traveled to Ethiopia,
they found thousands of brand new computers sitting idle,
because they couldn't connect to the Internet, and therefore, couldn't get online instruction.
Neil Radia: A great thing to do would be putting a lot of these resources on a single local server
that we could bring to the colleges, to the universities, to community centers.
And we came across the Khan Academy,
and we emailed him and asked him if we could reproduce some of his material on our servers;
and he was very willing to help us out.
Megha Jain: You'd be surprised how fast these kids learn and pick these things up.
So, it isn't strange to them.
They've heard of this and they are excited to use it.
Reporter: For Khan, teaching math and science and finance is just the beginning.
He's ready to expand his YouTube site to include whatever strikes his fancy.
Sal: I want to do everything. I wanna do history; I wanna do grammar. I wanna do literally every subject.
Reporter: So far, except for a little advertising revenue, he is donating his time and equipment.
It's a one-man operation.
But it's gotten so big, he expects to start soliciting outside support to keep his academy growing.