Dean Shareski wrote what I consider a thought provoking post on The Khan Academy, a website that provides instructional YouTube videos in domains that range from math to science for students who are young and old. The Khan Academy is the brain child of Sal Khan, an MIT and Harvard-trained engineer/business man, who originally wanted to help his nieces learn content in a manner that he thought was effective. Passionate, articulate, and sometimes funny, Sal Khan’s work is notable and downright impressive. One thousand videos- WOW.

Dean’s concluding statement:

What are the implications here? Could a student learn [borrowing in subtraction] with this without attending [an elementary school]? What does it make us rethink when it comes to school and learning?  Minor alterations of Dean’s quote done to situate the questions in my area of expertise.

The meat of Dean’s questions focuses on the nature of teaching and learning.  As has been said countless times before, learning in the digital age no longer requires a teacher in a school building.  It’s happening on YouTube, Twitter, and blogs like Dean’s, and the new type of communication mechanisms for learning are shifting the “hierarchy of teacher and student, credentialing, ranking, disciplinary divides, segregation of ‘high’ versus ‘low’ culture, and restriction of admission to those considered worthy of admission” (Davidson, C. & Goldberg, D., 2009, p. 10).  In a general sense, the Khan Academy is demonstrative of the power of social media for learning.

Luckily for elementary students and teachers, Sal does not fall into the trappings of teaching procedures- he gets at some of the conceptual underpinnings of borrowing.  Although it’s not necessarily the exact approach or explanation that I would use (I prefer this because it uses tangible objects), it’s impressive that someone without an education degree is able to produce such a solid video even though Dan Meyer would probably hate it.