What we need is a platform where teachers can upload their videos and the ones that are the best can be featured and those teachers can achieve some Khan-like fame. Instead Khan has a monopoly as the one man show.
I do like this, because while one teacher may excel at math teaching their format may not work so well for other academic studies. A system of user ranking and teacher submissions could be pretty cool. If it where me I would build it so their is a strict topic, such as addition or real numbers and then people can submit videos for that detailed topic. Then an entire math curriculum can be built out of the top rated videos with all the other videos available by rank from best to worst. This would allow for someone that just does not get the recommended teachers style or format to work down the recommended videos until they find one that can convey the format in a manner that they understand. We seem to keep looking for the one pinnacle of teaching formats, which is a silver bullet, it does not exist, they is not one style that can convey every concept to every person. We need to stop believing that their is, and I think the author, in the text I highlighted is very close to understanding that problem.
Teachers already have a platform they can use to achieve Khan-like fame. Its called youtube and its the same thing that Khan used.
The author comes across as jealous and petty. His mentality is pretty much the polar opposite of the average HN reader. Instead of solving a problem or building a product he would rather complain about how he could do a better job but won't.
I understand that the author was being petty, but I do believe that he almost stumbled across a good solution in the article and missed it. I was pointing out that with a little more thought on the part of the author, a platform could be developed to help deal with the need to identify good education with application to a broad amount of people.
I do like this, because while one teacher may excel at math teaching their format may not work so well for other academic studies. A system of user ranking and teacher submissions could be pretty cool. If it where me I would build it so their is a strict topic, such as addition or real numbers and then people can submit videos for that detailed topic. Then an entire math curriculum can be built out of the top rated videos with all the other videos available by rank from best to worst. This would allow for someone that just does not get the recommended teachers style or format to work down the recommended videos until they find one that can convey the format in a manner that they understand. We seem to keep looking for the one pinnacle of teaching formats, which is a silver bullet, it does not exist, they is not one style that can convey every concept to every person. We need to stop believing that their is, and I think the author, in the text I highlighted is very close to understanding that problem.