Khan Academy launches iPad app

Khan Academy’s 2,700+ in-depth lessons are now available on the iPad through their new app, which launched on March 11.

The free Khan Academy app allows offline syncing and downloading so that users can view any and all of the site’s popular lessons on-the-go. Progress on lectures and lessons are saved and synced between multiple devices, allowing users to pick up exactly where they left off on their iPad in class, their Macbook at home, and completely independent of internet access. Though the app doesn’t feature the various exercises on Khan Academy’s main website, the iTunes Store page promises the feature in the future.

The buzz around this app, especially the ability to download and take lessons for use offline, has been major. Much of this buzz has been centered around the idea that the Khan Academy app will replace textbooks as a convention. The sheer number of topics covered with Khan Academy will allows for schools to save money replacing collections of textbooks on a number of topics, either partially or completely.

The syncing functionality and quality of Khan Academy lectures has already inspired innovation in the classroom. A Los Altos, Calif., school district has experimented with a teaching method described as “flipping the classroom,” where students are assigned lectures to listen to at home and then receive instruction on execution of principles in school. This new method of homework at school and lectures at home allows for a more interactive and fun experience for students and is showing promise in the few California classrooms that Khan Academy founder Salman Khan has given the software to. More on the process and its success here, via The Economist.

EdTech Times discussed the possibility of a textbook-less, iPad-laden, Utopian future in a recent article which analyzed a Pearson Foundation survey of college students and high school seniors. That article is available here.

Khan Academy’s iPad app is available in the iTunes Store.