Over the past year Khan, the founder of the free online education site Khan Academy, has been featured in Wired and TIME magazines, appeared on CBS News, and was a featured TED speaker. Here he tells the story of Khan Academy's creation (it began with a series of videos he posted on YouTube to tutor his niece in math) and explains how this experience led him to question the traditional educational model. Khan advocates reversing, or "flipping," the traditional model by assigning the lecture as homework and using class time to discuss and clarify the information presented in the lecture (a theory also discussed in Flip Your Classroom: Reach Every Student in Every Class Every Day by Jonathan Bergmann and Aaron Sams). Khan uses the second half of the book to detail how he believes his model can succeed where the traditional one fails and to expand on his "one world schoolhouse" vision. -VERDICT An easy, entertaining, thought-provoking read for educators, administrators, and parents.-Sara Holder, McGill Univ. Lib., Montreal (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

The premise behind The One World School House is not new; however, it is radical in today's educational climate. Professional learning communities, teacher effectiveness, and common core (to name a few) are "new" innovations meant to improve education. Unfortunately, these trends have only reinforced the lecture, stay on the page, do not have true interaction with every student mentality. In this climate, Khan's premise, while reasonable and necessary, is radical. Khan (founder, Khan Academy) rethinks and discusses the existing assumptions of education and imagines what education could be if freed from those assumptions. In this book, Khan takes readers on a journey through his own exploration of education, beginning with his tutoring of his niece. The result is a call for free, universal, and global education. The book is a must read for those who see the bigger picture of what education should look like in the future. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduate, graduate, research, and professional collections. G. L. Willhite University of Wisconsin - La Crosse

An exciting concept for reforming education. In today's society, most students learn a variety of subjects primarily by lectures, with the goal of passing certain standardized tests before moving on to another series of subjects. Former hedge fund analyst Khan questioned this educational model, believing it did nothing to show true mastery of a topic. Candidly and enthusiastically, he details how he originally started what is now known as the Khan Academy by creating a series of YouTube videos to help his cousin with her understanding of math. Supported by Google and The Gates Foundation, those videos have evolved at the Khan Academy website to cover math, science, history and art, among other subjects. They have been used by millions around the world. Khan believes in using modern technology via individual video learning with assessments based on a solid understanding of a theme. Students spend classroom time among peers and talented teachers, who help them reach certain levels of comprehension before progressing to the next level of learning. The author stresses the concept that all subjects are interrelated and that learning should be self-paced and self-motivated with mixed age groups helping one another. He includes in-depth analysis of the most common educational models (lectures and testing for certain topics) and compares it to his methods. Khan's excitement is palpable as he imagines future schoolrooms as sources of "true creativity" where "mistakes are allowed, tangents are encouraged, and big thinking is celebrated as a process." His hope is that modern technology and his videos will allow access to a free education to anyone, young or old, around the world. A fresh, welcome approach to education.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.