Free Republic

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Ignorance and rejectionism lie at the heart of the conflict between the Western and the Islamic worlds, the Aga Khan, spiritual head of the world's more than 15 million Shia Ismaili Muslims, said. Prince Karim Aga Khan urged a renewed effort to promote pluralism and tolerance through education, while also addressing festering political disputes and desperate poverty which have contributed to rising extremism. Talking to a small group of journalists in New Delhi, he said the world was grappling with "a conflict of ignorance". "It is not a conflict of civilisations. It is an enormous gap...

Into the future By Udo Gollub at Messe Berlin, Germany I just went to the Singularity University summit. Here are the key points I gathered. Rise and Fall: In 1998, Kodak had 170,000 employees and sold 85% of all photo paper worldwide. Within just a few years, their business model disappeared and they were bankrupt. What happened to Kodak will happen in a lot of industries in the next 10 years – and most people don’t see it coming. Did you think in 1998 that 3 years later you would never take pictures on paper film again? Yet digital cameras...

I've been looking for a homeschool curriculum for my 6 year old. Khan Academy popped as a possibility, so I read through the website information thoroughly. I found a page which described the teachers' backgrounds and post a few below. It seems like these folks have liberal backgrounds. Many come from Google, Yahoo, various non-profits, arts programs, and other non-traditional backgrounds. I like creativity in teaching and learning, but I'm hesitant to use this site after seeing these backgrounds. --- Elizabeth Content Scaling Elizabeth works with math teachers, tutors, and professors to ensure Khan Academy's exercises comprehensively and rigorously cover...

Using Khan Academy as inspiration, Sebastian Thrun decided to bring his Stanford class on artificial intelligence online. Anyone could sign up for free. And 160,000 people from around the world did. He saw the power of creating interactive lectures and distributing them for free. He left Stanford and launched Udacity, a company focused on bringing free university-level education to the world. In the interview above, Sebastian Thrun, Co-Founder of Udacity, talks about how he will help students improve their careers, whether or not the goal is to replace traditional universities, how the classes are different from iTunes U style taped...

Student debt is nearing a record $1 trillion in the U.S. Jobless law school grads are suing their alma maters for false advertising. Needless to say, the cost of higher education -- not to mention the return on the investment -- has become a sore spot for many. With an election on the horizon, the Obama Administration has not been deaf to the grumbling. The president addressed the topic in his State of the Union, and his administration has since launched a campaign to stem the rise in college tuition by tying a school's federal aid prospects to its affordability....

The free Web tutoring service “Khan Academy” has gotten much well-deserved attention, including a feature story in the current issue of Wired. That story includes a quote that literally took my breath away: ~~~"Even if Khan is truly liberating students to advance at their own pace, it’s not clear that the schools will be able to cope. The very concept of grade levels implies groups of students moving along together at an even pace. So what happens when, using Khan Academy, you wind up with a kid in fifth grade who has mastered high school trigonometry and physics—but is still...

The Khan Academy has its roots in a series of educational YouTube videos that founder Sal Khan began making several years ago to tutor his cousin. The videos struck a chord among those who came across them, Sinha said. As the videos became increasingly popular, the organization got a big break last fall, when it received a total of about $3.5 million in grants from Google and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The nonprofit Advertisement now has a Mountain View office and a half-dozen staff members. It's still attracting attention -- NBC Nightly News recently featured the program and...