I'm Sal Khan from Khan Academy.

For those of you all who are new to this,

this is a Homeroom that we are doing every day,

as the name implies, to really stay connected

during these times of school closures.

Khan Academy, we realize that we have a role,

we have a duty to step up when we saw the schools closing.

And we said how can we better support parents,

teachers, students around the country and around the world

in these really hard times.

It's we've been running parent webinars, teacher webinars,

putting together all of our content from early learning.

We're gonna talk a lot about early learning today

from early learning all the way through elementary,

middle and high school and ways,

learning plans and schedules that can help folks.

And then also to do this so that we can stay connected

and answer folks questions in kind of a live synchronous way

in this time of social distancing.

I do remind everyone that Khan Academy

is a non profitable organization.

We can only exist through philanthropic donations

from folks like yourself.

So if you're in our position to do so

please think about making a donation to Khan Academy,

every donation matters.

I wanna give special thanks to several corporations

that have stepped up in the last several weeks.

As soon as they saw the COVID crisis was happening,

they said, hey, we wanna make sure that,

you can stay up and running.

We were running a deficit even before the crisis

and we continue to run a deficit.

But the support from these organizations

have made a big difference Bank of America, AT&T,

Google.org, Novartis and Fastly, thank you so much.

And if any of you can are representing corporations,

please reach out to us I'm khan@khanacademy.org

anyone can email me there.

If you think you have an interesting way for us

to get sustainable cause you can imagine,

we're already running in a deficit and then the crisis

our traffic is about three x of what it typically is,

we're trying to do more programs,

so we, we need that support.

So I am super excited about our guest today,

we've had her on before.

But she's got several really exciting announcements

that I have to say, I was just telling Caroline before this,

I'm quite enthusiastic, I'm quite excited

about some of the stuff she's gonna talk about.

So Caroline, maybe I'll let you take the floor,

you know, you have a couple of announcements.

Tell us what's new at Khan Academy Kids.

Or actually remind folks what Khan Academy Kids is,

and then tell us what's new.

- Sounds good, yep.

So I lead the Khan Academy Kids team,

which is a program for children ages two through seven,

so preschool through grade one.

And it's a comprehensive early learning program

that covers multiple subjects,

everything from academic subjects like reading, and math

and also social emotional development

and executive function skills.

And our app includes thousands of lessons, and books,

and interactive activities that kids can learn from.

And so there is an adaptive learning path

that adjusts to a child's level.

And then there is a library,

that has the thousands of lessons in it.

And today, we have a lot of new things

that we've been working on.

One is a big research study was just announced,

and I can go through that.

And then we also are announcing our teacher tools launch

in Khan Academy Kids version three.

- So a lot of good news here, so first of all,

tell us about the research study.

- Sure, so it was very important for us

to get an independent academic study on our program,

to test the effectiveness of it.

And we did a study with Professor David Arnold

from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst,

and he just released his results publicly.

And the study was a randomized control trial study,

which is the gold standard of academic studies.

Were there two groups of randomly selected students,

and one group gets the Khan Academy Kids intervention

and one get is the control group.

And so this was a study of four and five year olds

prior to entering kindergarten.

And they were from low income families

with an median annual income of about $24,000.

And so what we saw was that in a 10 week study,

the kids that were using Khan Academy Kids

saw substantial increases in their pre literacy skills.

So they were tested pre test,

with the test of preschool early literacy, TOPEL test.

And then post test and we saw the gains

were really substantial.

They were at the beginning of the study

about upper 34th percentile likely,

due to the effects of poverty.

And then after the 10 weeks of using Khan Academy Kids

for 20 minutes a day.

They were close to the national average at 47th percentile.

And so the size of these gains are substantial,

they're equivalent to what is typically found

in much more expensive intervention.

So as an example, the phonological gains

were comparable to those found in an intervention of 25,

one to one sessions with a professional tutor.

- I mean there's a lot of what you've just said

that I think is worth unpacking and underlining.

I mean, just the first thing is,

10 weeks is not a lot of time,

it's your point it was 20 minutes per day.

And that essentially closed the gap between the students

who are performing a good bit, below where they need to be.

And getting essentially to the national average,

if I heard that correctly.

- Right because students, particularly low income students,

often enter the first day of kindergarten

and they're already behind

in these critical pre literacy skills.

Which are things like recognizing letters of the alphabet,

understanding letter sounds, knowing their letter sounds,

and understanding phonological awareness skills,

being able to break down sounds and words and sentences.

So these are really critical to learning how to read.

So they start school behind and then they don't catch up.

- Now, I was super excited.

I mean, this is one of those things where I'm,

obviously this is part of Khan Academy's Khan Academy Kids.

But Caroline and her team

are a bit of a mini team on their own.

And so I sometimes I don't know about these things

until I her them, and it was really, really heartening.

You know, we always had an intuitive sense,

this was really valuable.

And I have to say, you know, Caroline,

I was telling you this before we got on the call.

I have a five and a half year old, as many folks know.

And, you know, people might say, oh,

Sal's five and a half year old, he must be super motivated,

in academics, no he likes to dance a lot,

and you know, and make potty humor.

And my wife says he got that from me.

I don't know, I think I'm quite sophisticated,

but he's been on it so much.

And, you know, so intuitively as a parent,

I got to say it feels right.

It is incredibly engaging for children,

but it's not your just your classic edutainment,

it is true standards aligned.

Tell us about kind of the work that's put in,

to make sure that it is standards aligned

and engaging at the same time.

- So Khan Academy Kids, each of our lessons

is aligned with national standards.

So for preschool, it's the headstart

early learning outcomes framework for literacy and math.

And then for kindergarten and first grade,

it's the Common Core Standards.

And we've worked with educators from the Stanford Ed school,

who are who specialized in early learning

and child development.

To make sure that our lessons are aligned with standards

and also taught in a way that reflects

how really experienced teachers teach these concepts

in the real world.

And what we've learned through looking at the research

on the learning of science learning,

is that technology has the power

to really further the learning for children

if it meets certain criteria.

So it has to be active hands on engaging learning,

it has to give kids specific real time feedback.

And then it also needs to adjust

to a child's individual level.

And that's what we've built Khan Academy Kids

around those principles.

- And I wanna emphasize to folks, this is all free,

this is all non for profit.

And I think a lot of people are skeptical

about things like this, they're like, there must be a catch.

I mean, people have thought that about Khan Academy,

but there's other resources out there,

that are more than happy to charge you,

you know, five dollar month, $10 a month, you know,

buy an app for this amount.

And, you know, anyone who doesn't believe me

go download the app and put it in front of a two, three,

four, five, six or seven year old and you will see,

not only does it work and keep them engaged

and is very good for them, but it has a lot more in it

than you would normally expect of an app.

I mean, you touched on it there's a ton of stories in there,

ton of activities.

- Yeah, that's what we've been hearing from parents

is that it's particularly during this time

of remote learning.

They are relieved to find something

that is so comprehensive.

And actually they can see their children building

their vocabulary, learning how to count.

I think we've heard we hear directly from parents

who are saying that they didn't realize

that technology could teach their child so much.

But they're in these desperate situations,

they found Khan Academy Kids,

and now after just a few days or weeks of using it,

they're realizing that their kids

are really building these skills.

And it's not only the academic skills

that are so important for this age,

as Sal was saying, his son is wants to play

And so all kids at this age want to play.

So the way that we approach learning is play based,

and entertaining, as well as engaging for kids.

Is like they wanna learn through stories and songs.

And that's those are really, through play

is how kids build some of those critical early numeracy,

vocabulary and literacy skills.

- And I do wanna remind folks, if you have questions,

start putting your questions on YouTube and Facebook

on the message boards.

We have team members looking at them,

I will get them to Caroline

over the course of our conversation.

But there's a few more things

I wanna just make sure I have a chance

to talk to Caroline about.

I mean, I do wanna double down on this.

You know, my wife is a physician and she was on physician,

some physician moms group.

And people were talking about this age group,

and people saying what should I use,

and a lot of parents were saying

a lot of physician moms were saying Khan Academy Kids,

it's incredible, it's free,

and it has way more than you think.