The Karnataka Government has finalized an agreement with the well known US based Khan Academy which would clear the way for the Government to offer customized online learning courses to the schools.
Well known Educator Salman Khan was the brain behind the formation of Khan Academy in the year 2006. Since then, the academy has been constantly broadening the educational resources available on its website which currently comprise of more than 1,00,000 practice questions along with more than 6000 short lectures.
The program is known as MOOC (Massive open online course) and includes courses in varied fields including arts, humanities, math, science, computing, finance and economics. The short lectures uploaded on the website have more than 468 million views.
The state Government quoted that "So far, Khan Academy has refused to move out of the US. Bengaluru will be the first home for the academy outside the US and they will start a pilot project with us shortly," The project would begin with 12 schools in Bengaluru and if found to be successful, would be spread across the state.
The academy would modify the existing content based on the curriculum run in the Indian schools. It would also translate most of the relevant content in the Kannada language.
Reacting to the teachers' concern that these online courses would kill the need for teachers, a Government official quoted that "But the experience has been that MOOCs don't do that,"
Tags: Khan Academy
Karnataka Government
Salman Khan
Mooc
Online Courses
