Khan Takes Aim at SAT Test Prep

One of the new features in the SAT college-admission exam for 2016 is a partnership between the nonprofit Khan Academy and the College Board that provides students with free online prep tools. The test preparation material will be also offered through the Boys & Girls Clubs of America, making online and in-person tutoring available to students who need more support.

“Our aim is to level the college-assessment practice field,” said David Coleman, CEO and president of the College Board.

Diagnostic tests created by Khan and available to students on the College Board website determine skill level in each section of the SAT and then direct them to videos on the Khan site to review. Students will be able to access four full-length practice tests, personalized practice recommendations, practice questions, video lessons, and quizzes.

“It’s more about learning the material than traditional test prep,” Khan said in a report for National Public Radio. “Not what test prep is traditionally associated with: tricks and ‘When in doubt pick C,’ or test-taking strategies, but mainly the best way to perform well on something like the SAT is to have a mastery of the skills—the math, the reading and writing. That’s the goal. And hopefully it changes people’s perceptions about what test prep actually is.”

Khan Teams with Xbox on Learning Apps

The popular Xbox gaming platform is expanding into education. The Khan Academy is making it possible, launching a free app that makes more than 5,000 of its learning videos available through the Xbox One Live app.

“We’ve heard from many students who want to watch Khan Academy videos in a lean-back experience on their big screen and are excited by the ease of use in Xbox One apps,” a Khan Academy spokesperson told VentureBeat.

Khan Academy already makes its videos available through Microsoft desktop computers, tablets, and mobile devices. The Khan app also helps Microsoft in its multibillion-dollar battle with Sony’s PlayStation 4, which has no learning apps.

The app is available to Xbox One users in Australia, Ireland, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Microsoft also reported that there are 48 million Xbox Live account holders.

Kahn Academy to Offer SAT Test Prep

As part of the redesign of the standardized SAT exam used for college admission, the College Board also decided to provide free test-prep materials through the online learning Kahn Academy. The partnership was created because David Coleman, president of the College Board, considers the test-prep industry “predators that prey on the anxieties of parents and children and provide no real educational benefit.”

Test-prep has become a billion-dollar business, costing parents hundreds of dollars for each course. The services review content and test-taking techniques students should know, along with hundreds of practice questions that help overcome test anxiety, but some research indicates students taking the review classes may only improve their scores by small margins.

Free online test-prep tutorials will make the information more accessible, but will probably not stop parents from paying it. At the same time, firms that offer test-prep services are supporting the College Board partnership with Kahn.

“The free resources supplied by Sal Kahn may actually expand the market now that students know that test prep works and is necessary for them to perform best on the SAT,” Deborah Ellinger, CEO of the Princeton Review which offers test-prep services, told The Atlantic.

Khan Academy Launches iPhone App

The Khan Academy, which started as a way for Sal Khan to help his cousin do math homework, has blossomed into nearly 3,600 teaching videos that have been viewed more than 210 million time worldwide. Now, Khan is expanding his reach with the creation of an iPhone app for viewing the tutorials.

The new app will not allow users to download videos for offline viewing on their phones, as is the case with the iPad app already in use. However, the iPhone app will make it possible for busy students to watch the lesson while on a bus or in a car.

“This might make the app seem undercooked—and in a way it is—but it could actually be a smart move given the limited form factor,” wrote Rip Empson in his TechCrunch blog. “Stuffing the entire Khan Academy experience onto the iPhone’s screen would likely diminish the experience of its visualization tools, interactive transcriptions, and some of its better gamification and progress-tracking features.”

With an Android app to surely follow, the strategy should also expose a lot more potential learners to the Khan videos.

Kahn Talks About His Academy

Sal Kahn has gone from a successful career as a hedge-fund analyst to creating an "academy" that has six million visitors a month viewing his academic videos on everything from algebra to French history. Even Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has been impressed.o:p>

"At 3,000 lessons online, Sal's personal ability as a teacher is remarkable," Gates said in this USA Today profile of Kahn. "Bringing this kind of creativity and new assessment tools for teachers could make a profoundly positive different in education."o:p>

Kahn talks about his Academy an dhow it started in this video.