DAVID GREGORY: Back now at 8:36 with Education Nation Today.
This morning, how technology is leading
to a new kind of learning.
NBC's Craig Melvin is here with a look
at the classroom of the future.
Hey, Craig, good morning.
CRAIG MELVIN: David, good morning to you.
Savannah, good morning to you, as well.
From text books to tablets, have you
ever wondered what our classrooms
will look like 10, 20, even 50 years from now?
Well, some innovative thinkers are
unlocking new and powerful ways to teach our kids,
changing the way we look at our education system
in the process.
The numbers alone are staggering.
JOSE FERREIRA: The thing about the education system
is, it's a very impersonal system.
It's a factory model.
CRAIG MELVIN: One student drops out of high school
every 26 seconds.
Roughly 30% of kids each year will not
graduate from high school.
That's 1.3 million in all, falling
through the cracks of our education system.
Worldwide, the numbers grow exponentially.
A whopping 80% of kids will not get a high school diploma.
Experts say each of those kids is a lost opportunity.
How many DaVincis and Einsteins and Marie Curies and Michael
Jordans are we losing every generation
because we're just not giving them
the opportunities that some of us have.
CRAIG MELVIN: But what if that could be changed?
What if an internet connection was the difference
in getting a world class education.
Today, education is having that internet moment.
And a chosen few are taking some bold steps forward.
JOSE FERREIRA: I'm Jose Ferreira, the founder
and CEO of Newton.
We're trying to revolutionize education across the globe.
CRAIG MELVIN: Newton is an adaptive learning platform
that personalizes education based on each kid's strengths
and weaknesses.
In essence, students go at their own pace
and the software continuously adapts to their learning style.
JOSE FERREIRA: If you learn math best with medium difficulty
practice questions, we know that.
If you learn science best in 24-minute bite sizes,
we know that.
Everybody has a learning experience
that is unique to them.
CRAIG MELVIN: Ferreira started the company in 2008,
using his credit card.
Since then, Newton has grown by leaps and bounds.
They currently reach almost five million students,
and that number is growing.
JOSE FERREIRA: We want to end the access
problem for education.
We want every kid, whether you're in the inner city
or in the developing world, we want
you to have the best possible education you can get.
SAL KHAN: My name is Sal Khan and I'm
the founder of the Khan Academy.
CRAIG MELVIN: In 2004, Sal Kahn was tutoring his cousins
remotely from his then home in Boston.
The lessons started over the phone,
until a friend suggested he upload
educational videos to YouTube.
SAL KHAN: And I immediately said, no.
Videos and YouTube, that's for cats playing piano,
not serious mathematics.
But I gave it a shot.
And those videos took on a life of their own.
CRAIG MELVIN: Those videos became the cornerstone
of Khan Academy, a virtual library
of now more than 4,000 tutorials covering everything
from basic math to college level chemistry.
SAL KHAN: And our goal over the next 5, 10, 50, 500 years
is to go from the six million students that we're
serving every month now to 60 million, 600 million students.
CRAIG MELVIN: One of those students recently sent Khan
a video message from the unlikeliest of places,
an orphanage in Mongolia.
STUDENT: Hey, Sal.
Your lessons are so interesting and funny.
Make more lessons.
SAL KHAN: That by itself is pretty mind
blowing for us, this idea that the work that we get to do
can reach people as far as an orphanage in Mongolia.
CRAIG MELVIN: Two companies led by two visionaries, both
using the reach of technology to reimagine
the future of education.
And now Newton recently partnered
with education publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
As a result, more kids will have access
to their adaptive learning platform.
And we should note, Khan Academy's mission statement,
changing education for the better
by providing a free, world class education for anyone,
anywhere, that means all of their tutorial videos
are free of charge.
SAVANNAH GUTHRIE: That is pretty cool.
DAVID GREGORY: Great stuff.
Great model.
CRAIG MELVIN: Thank you.
Good to see you.
I'm looking forward to seeing you dance in a few minutes,
too.
DAVID GREGORY: Well, you never know.