Khan Academy: $5 million grant to Khan Academy from the O'Sullivan Foundation. The virtual is getting physical: this grant will let Khan build a genuine bricks-and-mortar school, along with curating content created by others. (Here's the official press release.) Seem counter-Khan? (We wonder what Sal's niece, Nadia, who so famously told him that she liked him better on YouTube, would say about this.) The O'Sullivan funding will let Sal test out ideas, experiment in project-based learning, and broaden the number of contributors to his Academy. First iteration begins this summer with a camp in Silicon Valley. (Apply now!) What else we hear: rumblings on the street that even Khan can't survive on the kindness of strangers forever and that his team is exploring models to generate revenue. We're betting that the ebullient Khan videos will indeed always be free. But software programmers cost money, especially smart guys like David Hu who are digging deeply into how to assess mastery.
