May 2012
2 posts
2 tags
April 2012
4 posts
January 2012
7 posts
Contact Congress - Talk directly to your...
Today Ben and I are announcing the release of a new iPhone app called Contact Congress. What it does is really simple: grabs your location (or you can give us an address), locates your representatives, and lets you get on the phone with them in two taps.
Why we built it
Like many folks who work on the web, Ben and I hadn’t really thought that much about contacting our...
Efficiency, affordance, & skeuomorphism
There have been many lengthy debates on the value of skeuomorphism in design, and I wanted to put down my thoughts as I’ve purposefully avoided employing it in any broad sense in the design of Khan Academy.
There is nothing wrong with skeuomorphism per se. As a design tool, its primary benefit is the ability to communicate the way something should work by helping a user recall its physical...
September 2011
1 post
August 2011
3 posts
A reaction to the proposed Windows Explorer UI...
The telemetry data here shows that 54.5% of commands are invoked using a right-click context menu, and another 32.2% are invoked using keyboard shortcuts (“Hotkey” above) while only 10.9% come from the Command bar, the most visible UI element in Explorer in Windows 7 and Vista. With greater than 85% of command usage being invoked using a method other than the primary UI, there was clearly an...
Tutorial for creating tileable textures in... →
I used this tutorial to help me create the background on the content area of this very blog. Method and Craft is generally full of awesome. Highly recommended.
June 2011
2 posts
CSS Tricks shows us some cool stuff you can do... →
I just made use of the multi-layered canvas trick for the LESS library I’ve been working on.
May 2011
2 posts
WatchAn enjoyable food-for-thought presentation on some of the things we could change about education through games. A big thanks to Jin Yang for turning me on to this site. All of the Extra Credits videos are fantastic.
April 2011
1 post
Mobile. Social. Local. Pivot. - Well one of those,...
I haven’t really written about the somewhat massive redesign that the Khan Academy site underwent in January/February, but in case you didn’t notice, it changed:
A lot:
The redesign accomplished a ton of goals that the organization had, and also gave us a chance to make typography, layout, and navigation a lot more consistent visually and technically. It’s a bunch easier to...
March 2011
3 posts
My take on common misconceptions about the Khan...
With all of the positive press the Khan Academy has received lately, we’ve also started attracting a bunch of new critics. This is a good thing. I can’t tell you how existing in an echo chamber where everyone loves everything you are doing can make a sane person become really paranoid after a while. While there are a bunch of really valid concerns about what we’re doing, I wanted...
Sal's talk from TED now available
khanacademy:
The talk walks you through everything from how the Khan Academy got started, to what we’re doing today and the feedback we’re geting, to what we’re envisioning for the future. If you’ve got any questions or comments, we’d love to hear ‘em.
Khan Academy and LASD Pilot on Gates Notes →
khanacademy:
A few weeks ago, the Gates Notes team came down and interviewed the team here at the Khan Academy and all of the great students, teachers, and administrators participating in the pilot program over at the LASD. We’re excited to be able to share this with everyone because of how this experience has helped to inform many of the recent improvements to the Khan Academy. The Gates...
February 2011
1 post
Khan Academy Profiles: You are what you know
About a week ago we launched Khan Academy user profiles. Profiles are meant to round out the previous work we’d done on the design of the knowledge map, exercise interface, and badges by bringing all of the information about your performance on the site into a single interface.
There were a few competing design goals here, but the most important one was to flesh out what it means to...
January 2011
3 posts
To learn, quit studying and take a test →
Taking a test is not just a passive mechanism for assessing how much people know, according to new research. It actually helps people learn, and it works better than a number of other studying techniques.
- Pam Belluck, The New York Times
A really interesting article, and quite in line with what we’re developing at the Khan Academy. We’re undergoing a major effort to back up our...
bjk5: Teachers have to be fearless →
Ben writes:
…to dive into a new way of doing things as radical as the Khan Academy. To integrate Khan Academy usage deep into the core of existing class structure requires more than just mental agility. It requires a willingness to experiment and an excitement about being part of something new and big in…
Your challenge, if you choose to accept it...
Our exercises are seeing tons of use, but as you might have noticed they are really bite-sized chunks that closely match our video content. It’s not a one-to-one relationship, but it’s usually one exercise to just a few videos. They’re intended to provide students and coaches with timely feedback about how well a student understands an individual concept. There are no...
December 2010
4 posts
What 5th graders can teach you about design
Day one visiting the class of 5th graders that are participating in a Khan Academy pilot I’m looking around the classroom, and I see a student who’s exercise UI appears to be completely screwed up. The colors are all weird, and the background has turned black. My assumption: this is my fault.
Following standard operating procedure, I walk over and ask him how it happened. He looks at...
This humble pie is delicious
From my first day working on Khan Academy stuff several months ago I’ve felt extraordinarily lucky to be able to work on a problem that I care deeply about. In September, I had a chance to speak with Sal and was humbled to think that I was playing even a small part in his vision for education. When I was offered the chance to work full time, I couldn’t stop telling people how lucky I...
From Ben's Blog: Khan Academy in the Classroom,... →
I’ve now spent two mornings watching 5th graders use Khan Academy in their classroom. The team has been splitting up to observe both 5th and 8th grade classes. It’s been thrilling to see and hear the reactions.
5th Grader: “I got 50,000 energy points last night!”
5th Grader: “I’m already on Adding and Subtracting Negative Numbers, where are you?”
Teacher: “Time’s up” 5th Graders: “Noooooo I...
November 2010
4 posts
First iterations: the new Exercise Dashboard
We started with some pencil and paper sketches, set some design goals and created a concept, and this is what came out of the grape-press-o’-design.
I’m using the grape press metaphor for a reason. Designs are not finished when users get their hands on them; they are really just starting to mature. In other words, this design is grape juice, and by shipping it we’ve really...
Getting and using data
I generally avoid reading Internet comments, but Ben’s post about educators’ fear of technology made me look (Damn you, Ben!). Most of the comments on Sal’s original article can be summed up as “The current system works, you need to prove yours is better before we’ll listen to you.”
First I wanted to point out the “system” that all of these...
October 2010
7 posts
September 2010
2 posts
Shipping: escape the gravity well
When I came back from vacation, we’d finished about 80% of the work we needed to do to the products themselves to ship new versions of FogBugz and Kiln. I found myself thinking, “Phew! Only 80% left to go.” “But but but that adds up to 160%,” you’re saying. Yup, it does, and that’s why this blog is called Ship or Die.
In my experience most projects...
July 2010
21 posts
