I look to do one blog a month, not  that demanding I know but enough for me. However I am so excited about what I am going to show you next I wanted to post something now!

Check out this link to something called the Khan Academy. The Khan Academy is a not-for-profit organisation with the goal of changing education for the better by providing a free world-class education to anyone anywhere, okay their words not mine but an impressive mission none the less. All of the site’s resources are available to anyone. It doesn’t matter if you are a student, teacher, or parent. The Khan Academy’s materials and resources are available to you completely free of charge.

This is a great example of open or free content, knowledge that is available on the internet for free, so now you have no excuses you can learn anything for free………

Okay you can’t learn everything, there are ONLY 2,100 videos and there are issues, how good are the lessons, are they of the right standard and quality, are they up to date, how relevant are they in helping you pass your exam?

Equally the Khan Academy is not meant to be a substitute for structured learning. There is more to a course or a well written text book than simply knowledge.  Teachers motivate and focus attention, they identify what is important and what is not, they will link topics together in such a way that makes the whole subject easier to understand and follow. But this material can really help, it can complement a structured course so that teachers can free their time to support and show how the knowledge can be applied. And if there are specific topics that you have never understood, just check out one of the lectures from the library.

This is not of course the first website to provide free content and it is American, do they not know that Math’s has an S on the end! But it is pretty good and it’s not just me who thinks that, Bill Gates does too.

In a time when universities are increasing their fees to teach stuff, it might be that they need to reassess exactly what they are charging for, because if its knowledge, well why pay for that when you can get it for nothing! 

Watch this TED lecture given by Sal Khan the founder

And for my students not sure about earning per share EPS

Or the PE ratio

Or what market capiltalisation (wth an S) might mean