Khan Academy founder to host live Google Hangout to discuss the disruption of education http://t.co/6uyfETM4

— Jake Bohall (@jakebohall) October 4, 2012

You may be familiar with the name, Salman Khan is the founder of the Khan Academy, which is an organization providing a large library of educational videos to facilitate self-learning.   I’m really excited about the hangout and look forward the momentum this is helping to build.     This is a pairing with Google as part of an effort to build awareness around education and to discover talent within the space. There was a recent search for “Education Gurus” – http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/2012/09/finding-next-generation-of-talented.html, and it appears Google is working diligently to bring positive attention/change to this sector.

Unfortunately, with getting married, work, etc.. I haven’t quite been paying as much attention to the space as I would like and I’m very grateful for Mark Traphagen bringing this to my attention.

If I were participating in the hangout I would probably ask some of the following questions:

1. In this more global economy, do you see the purpose of education to be preparing children for “life” by continuing to focus in a broad curriculum, or do you foresee a shift in which the curriculum becomes more focused on catering to the specific strengths and passions of the individual students to foster a more specialized individual?   Why?
2. There is a significant gap in learning between single-parent, low-income, light/no involvement households and those in which one or both parents are more involved.  From this, it seems one of our biggest challenges is parents prioritizing their child’s education and overcoming other socioeconomic barriers preventing them from being more involved.  Is it our responsibility to the children to adjust our education system to accommodate for these scenarios, and how could you foresee that being handled?
3. The Kahn Academy is providing a much needed service by facilitating the shift to online education.  As technology continues to improve education, how do you foresee the roles of a teacher shifting?  For example, if each child has a custom curriculum being delivered via videos, etc..  does the teacher role become more of a classroom moderator and facilitator than a traditional teacher?
4. Many educators strongly support the increased learning resulting from online and technology-driven educational strategies, but fear negative social impacts and a decrease in collaborative thinking.  How does your opinion agree/differ, why, and how do you see this being addressed?
5. Ideally speaking, how do you envision a typical day for a kindergartner, 5th-grader, high-school senior in 20 years?