An internationally-successful initiative, created to help students learn online at home, is being translated into Hebrew and aligned with the Israeli curriculum and textbooks
Khan Academy is an international initiative which was originally created to help students with their homework assignments. Founded by Salman Khan, a former high-tech engineer, the US-based project started by uploading ten-minute video clips to You-Tube, in which Khan himself presents and explains a number of different subject areas in a fun and interesting way. Today, with support from Bill Gates and Eric Schmidt, the popular library includes more than 3,200 clips, with a focus on Mathematics, Biology, Chemistry and Physics, but also features Finance and History.
At the end of 2011, Shenkar College received permission from the Khan Academy to officially represent the initiative in Israel and to translate the video clips into Hebrew. Since then, they have enlisted volunteers to produce a translated, dubbed and subtitled version of 270 of the Khan clips.
In collaboration with the Trump Foundation, Shenkar will now focus its efforts on the translation of Mathematics clips that are suitable for the advanced learning tracks in Israeli high schools. It is estimated that approximately 800 such clips suit this criteria. They will collaborate with an educational institute in order to identify the appropriate clips, arrange them to align with the Israeli curriculum and textbooks, and pilot test them with teachers and students in Israeli high schools. The project will also include the adaptation to Hebrew of the on-line ‘flipped classroom’ learning management system which was developed by Khan Academy in order to allow teachers to monitor the learning progress of their students who use the clips.
* The text above shows the grant as approved by the Foundation’s Board of Directors / Grant 55