Saturday, May 7, 2011

Learning with Sal Khan

From time to time I check in with Bill Gates.

 
I find it's easiest to start with thegatesnotes.com, Bill's place where he lets folks know what's going on.

 
One thing that's going on is education, and within education, Bill is endorsing the Khan Academy, led by Salman Khan.  It's a free academy covering mostly, but not exclusively, technical subjects ranging in complexity from about 1st grade to college.  You might want to follow the link to TED to hear Khan's description of what he thinks is going on.

 
And, it's all free, in two forms:
  • 20,000+ videos of about 12min each, featuring Khan as an offstage instructor.  What you get on the video is the chalk board and the lecture. 
  • And, the second form is interactive exercises.

 
Personally, I like the videos.  They're all on YouTube, but I like to work from the Academy because the course index is there and there is a semi-automatic bread crumb from one subject to the other.

 
There's not a course on project management per se, but there is a lot there on finance, including risk, and statistics. In fact, he has content equal to about two semester's worth of statistics.  For the project manager, try out the one on expected value, and the one on the Normal Distribution.  You might find you'll like them and want to do more, or better yet: improve the skills of your project team!

 


 
And, by the way, Bill also mentions from time to time Academic Earth, a site with full length college courses and also videos of college lectures.

 
Everything I've looked at there is free also.  And, it's the creme de le creme of stuff.

 
For risk managers on really complex projects, you might want to check out this course from Yale University on Game Theory

 

Watch it on Academic Earth

 

 
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