Feels good!
Saturday, 23 October 2010
Ameer Hamza
In these bleak times, when beloved Bangladesh is so beset with bad news and delinquencies all around, it really does the heart a lot of good to find that at least some of our golden boys have been earning kudos rather than contempt. And I refer not only to the latest victory of Bangla's Tigers over New Zealand's Kiwis - which is laudable enough in its place - or the Himalayan conqueror, Musa Ibrahim, but the quiet manner in which at least some other young Bangladeshis have made a name in their field of work.
One is Bangladeshi-born Salman Khan, whose not-for-profit Khan Academy (www.khanacademy.org) recently won a two million dollar prize from the popular search engine Google. And one of the regular users of the academy's video tutorial website is Rori John Gates, the 11-year old son of none other than the great Microsoft icon Bill Gates. We are told, Papa Gates himself visits the site for his son's Maths and Life Science lessons and has gotten somewhat hooked to it. Bill Gates testifies to young Salman's resourcefulness and the website's richness, whenever he gets an opportunity, claiming that he was really struck by the designer's brilliant method of encapsulating vital information in easily accessible form.
Gates does not hesitate to speak highly of Khan's achievement. On one occasion he was found telling an audience of nearly two thousand people that the young man of Bangladesh origin was indeed an extraordinary talent and that his online educational video clips of just 10 to 15 minutes' duration were perfect for teachers and taught alike. Schools in the US generally have to offer five courses a year and teachers who are hard put to complete the syllabus would certainly benefit from hitting Salman Khan's site. Gates recommended using his neat video lectures, which would make the teachers' lives easier!
But the best part of the story is, Salman had no idea at all that he was being talked about in such complimentary terms. He found out only by chance, when he got to see a video on Youtube in which Gates was telling an audience of two thousand or so people about Sal's video tutorials. This website reportedly receives at least 70,000 hits daily. 'Extraordinary' is what Gates calls it, for it is not only Rori who learns from the fare, Bill too admits unabashedly that he gains a lot and has became a fan! On the microblogging website Twitter, Bill Gates' message is that Salman Khan's website is perfect for online education. 'I myself visit it often and recommend that others also do so!' says Gates.
How many of our pundits in the universities here would ever commend such young talent, leave alone acknowledge learning from them? Lifelong learning is not something that most esteemed professors here feel the need for - so fossilised do they become once the job security and its hidden perks and privileges sink in. They become virtually unassailable and most live happily ever after, not bothering much about legitimate duties but becoming overly busy moonlighting elsewhere!
In these bleak times, when beloved Bangladesh is so beset with bad news and delinquencies all around, it really does the heart a lot of good to find that at least some of our golden boys have been earning kudos rather than contempt. And I refer not only to the latest victory of Bangla's Tigers over New Zealand's Kiwis - which is laudable enough in its place - or the Himalayan conqueror, Musa Ibrahim, but the quiet manner in which at least some other young Bangladeshis have made a name in their field of work.
One is Bangladeshi-born Salman Khan, whose not-for-profit Khan Academy (www.khanacademy.org) recently won a two million dollar prize from the popular search engine Google. And one of the regular users of the academy's video tutorial website is Rori John Gates, the 11-year old son of none other than the great Microsoft icon Bill Gates. We are told, Papa Gates himself visits the site for his son's Maths and Life Science lessons and has gotten somewhat hooked to it. Bill Gates testifies to young Salman's resourcefulness and the website's richness, whenever he gets an opportunity, claiming that he was really struck by the designer's brilliant method of encapsulating vital information in easily accessible form.
Gates does not hesitate to speak highly of Khan's achievement. On one occasion he was found telling an audience of nearly two thousand people that the young man of Bangladesh origin was indeed an extraordinary talent and that his online educational video clips of just 10 to 15 minutes' duration were perfect for teachers and taught alike. Schools in the US generally have to offer five courses a year and teachers who are hard put to complete the syllabus would certainly benefit from hitting Salman Khan's site. Gates recommended using his neat video lectures, which would make the teachers' lives easier!
But the best part of the story is, Salman had no idea at all that he was being talked about in such complimentary terms. He found out only by chance, when he got to see a video on Youtube in which Gates was telling an audience of two thousand or so people about Sal's video tutorials. This website reportedly receives at least 70,000 hits daily. 'Extraordinary' is what Gates calls it, for it is not only Rori who learns from the fare, Bill too admits unabashedly that he gains a lot and has became a fan! On the microblogging website Twitter, Bill Gates' message is that Salman Khan's website is perfect for online education. 'I myself visit it often and recommend that others also do so!' says Gates.
How many of our pundits in the universities here would ever commend such young talent, leave alone acknowledge learning from them? Lifelong learning is not something that most esteemed professors here feel the need for - so fossilised do they become once the job security and its hidden perks and privileges sink in. They become virtually unassailable and most live happily ever after, not bothering much about legitimate duties but becoming overly busy moonlighting elsewhere!