- Hello, everyone, welcome to the Khan Academy
Daily Homeroom livestream.
For those of y'all who are new to this.
This is our way of staying connected
in times of school closures.
Obviously Khan Academy is a not for profit
with a mission of providing a free world class education
for anyone, anywhere.
Over the last many years, we've been building resources
in math, the sciences, English and language arts,
the social sciences, to help you feel supported,
whether you're a student
who's learning outside of the classroom,
or whether you're a teacher trying to support students
in the classroom, differentiating instruction, et cetera.
But when we saw the school closures happen,
we realized that we have a fairly unique role to play,
to help keep people learning to support
all of you as parents, as teachers and as students.
And as part of that,
beyond just putting the resources out
that we've already had.
And the calendars, the schedules, the learning plans,
we've been running parent and teacher webinars.
We also wanted to do this
as just a way to answer questions,
feel connected and bring on some really interesting guests
who can give us more perspective on
how do we keep learning and the world as a whole.
And we have a really great guest
I'm going to introduce in a little bit.
I do like to remind everyone,
Khan Academy is a not for profit,
we only can exist through philanthropic donations
from folks like yourself,
I want to give a special shout out to several corporations
that have stepped up in the last few weeks
to to help our COVID response.
We were already running at a deficit before this.
And now we're seeing our traffic at about two to three ex
of what it typically is
and we're trying to actually accelerate
a lot of programs and do new things.
So special thanks to Bank of America, AT&T, Google.org,
Fastly and Novartis for making that happen.
With that, I'm excited to introduce our guest,
Laura Overdeck.
Laura, there's a lot of different,
many interesting things to talk about with Laura, today.
One of is, you know I have to thank Laura
she's a longtime supporter of Khan Academy.
She makes a lot of what we're able to do possible
hopefully all of you are able to enjoy.
And Laura, I don't know if I'm hearing,
I'm hearing like my own voice through...
Oh, it's fine I'll just power through it.
- I'm hearing an echo too, but...
- Okay, anything we can do to, on the echo side.
- You know what, let me, I'm gonna try one thing.
- That got rid of the echo.
- Is that a little better?
- That's a lot better.
It's still going on a little bit in the background,
but we'll power through this.
Anyway, as I was introducing Laura.
Laura has been a longtime supporter of Khan Academy,
through the Overdeck Family Foundation
we definitely sent her positive karma
for making all of this possible.
But also to this conversation.
Laura is the founder of Bedtime Math and Fun Factor.
And Bedtime Math and Fun Factor are very relevant
even before COVID crisis.
But I think in this crisis when a lot of kids
are learning from home and parents
are trying to figure out what are enriching activities
to do with them that are that more relevant.
So Laura, thanks for joining us.
I hope you and your family are doing all right
in these crazy times.
Tell us all a little bit about Bedtime Math
and now this new project, Fun Factor.
- Sure, so we...
Bedtime Math I started about eight years ago,
it really is truly one of those things
that started in the garage,
except it was in the bedroom,
although not that kind of bedroom, a kid's bedroom.
But basically, my husband and I
would read our kids a bedtime story
and then almost without thinking about it,
we'd give them a fun math problem
just something we'd make up on the fly.
And when we started sharing these
with other people, it grew really fast.
And I think that's because people
were very hungry for math to be fun.
And also to be real life for kids.
You know, a lot of times we take math
and try to make it fun.
At Bedtime Math, we find the thing
that's already fun for kids,
and then find the math in it
and that's a very different way of thinking about it.
Once we started that,
we have an app, we have a website,
the math problem goes out every day.
We also started an after school math club
called Crazy Eights, with hands on games.
And what's happened with this crisis
is we're actually now adapting those games
for teachers to use with their students from afar.
And that's what Fun Factor is.
That's our new initiative.
- And make that a little more tangible.
What age groups is this appropriate for?
I guess, you could say skill levels and what is it like?
Are these the standard math problems
that you might see as part of your curriculum?
Are they that plus other things?
- Yeah, so it really started off because
it was parallel with reading a bedtime story.
It's really for those ages
when you would read a book to kids.
So we say ages two to nine
two sounds aggressive, but it's not.
It's just that's our mentality
that people are like, "Ooh, math is tedious and dry."
It's not math is wonderful.
And you can totally start with a two year old,
which is what we did with our kids.
And the math problems are pretty different in spirit
from what you would find in a textbook,
because of course, we can talk about whatever we want.
We write them about pillow forts, ninjas, drafts,
chocolate chips, just stuff that kids love.
And then there will be three or four levels of questions
about what we just talked about.
And those range from like a Pre-K level question.
That might be, you know, giraffes or brown,
find three brown things in the room,
all the way up to third graders
doing multiplication and logic problems.
- I have to give a testimonial
I've been using you obviously
through you I learned about Bedtime Math
near the beginning, you know,
many many years ago and my oldest who's now 11.
I was using it with him when he was five, six, seven
years old and he definitely enjoyed it.
And I, you know, then used it with my daughter
and I'm using it now with my youngest,
so a personal testimonial for that.
You know, taking it one step above that,
you know, you are, given all of your focus and energy
and education generally and on Bedtime Math
and Crazy Eights and Fun Factor.
You know, I think you have a good lens
on how do parents deal with this type of situation,
especially with younger kids.
A lot of parents are worried
that maybe my kids aren't learning enough.
What advice do you have?
I know you have, your kids are a little bit older now.
But what advice do you have
for parents trying to deal with this scenario?
- So I would say this crisis has really,
I think shone a bright light on a lot of things
with education and we should
absolutely take advantage of it.
So one thing is that with kids now home
and liberated from their classroom,
you can see your child, where they're stuck
and where they're really flying.
And that's something that when kids
are all together with their classmates in our school system,
which mostly, unfortunately,
is fairly lockstep everybody does
chapter three on September 28th,
everybody does chapter four,
on October 2nd.
Kids have gaps.
And I know you've talked about this so much
the Swiss cheese learning where kids
have their own particular holes that didn't get filled.
Now that everybody's home, and they have more time,
'cause you're not in transit on a bus, between classes.
There's a real opportunity for parents
and kids to figure out where they could use more practice.
And there are so many resources out there
and of course, Khan Academy, I mean, likewise,
my kids of all use Khan Academy, we use it to learn things,
you can fill in any topic that you wanna learn more about.
And I just think that when I really look at what's going on
in our education system, we've really pushed kids through
when they are not ready for the next topic,
when they haven't mastered
and where I've seen this most acutely is,
I actually tutor in our women's state prison
here in New Jersey.
And the insiders, it's women who have a high school degree
and they wanna get their associates.
And I'm working on pre algebra with them.
I mean, someone's given them a high school diploma,
signifying that they have this mastery, and they don't.
And it's not right that we do that.
It's because they've been moved along
without anybody filling those gaps.
What's interesting is these women are so motivated
because of course, they've now got a double whammy.
They know it's going to be hard to get a job,
when they get out.
They've got another strike against them.
But when I sit with them, they do learn
so they didn't fall through the cracks
'cause they couldn't learn out.
They fell through the cracks
'cause there's something in our system
not filling those gaps.
And I'm hoping that with this crisis,
we can really tackle that.
- No that's incredible.
And Laura, I'm getting a message
from the tech team, you might have to tabs open
that are on Facebook or YouTube.
And so they're getting the live stream.
So they're saying if you could close all of your tabs
that are not this one,
that might be where the echo is coming from.
And I'll give a message while Laura is figuring out
if that is the case.
For any of y'all with questions.
We're seeing questions come on YouTube,
ask Laura and I anything
and we have team members who are looking at them.
And we're going to surface them.
And actually, I'll start with a question from YouTube.
And that did help.
Thanks, Laura.
So this is from YouTube. Nekeil Govender asks,
asks us both, but I'm more curious about your answer.
I'm happy to give a little bit as well.
"What was your inspiration to help others
"in terms of education?"
And I guess you know, why focus on education
of all the things in the world?
- Well, again, this was not terribly premeditated.
When we started Bedtime Math.
We were just kinda doing this for fun with our kids.
But when we shared the math problems,
what happened first is basically
there are a lot of hyper competitive parents in my town
and they wanted to know what we were doing with our kids.
So I started sharing the math problems to people.
And I was stunned at how these college educated parents,
many of them Ivy League, were so nervous
that I hadn't put the answers to the questions.
And they'd say to me, "I know five plus two is seven,
"but I feel better if you put the answer at the bottom,"
because initially, I didn't put the answers.
And, you know, it just really was a wake up call
about what math anxiety is out there.
You know, we have a country of people
who are nervous about calculating the tip.
And this includes high school grads, college grads,
they're nervous about the tip,
and that is a fourth and fifth grade math skill,
as you well know.
It's not that hard, and I truly believe everybody can do it.
And we have to get there
because I think when you talk about the fall of an empire,
I mean, we're doing a lot of things wrong in this country,
but having people afraid of fourth grade math
is not helping.
So it just really lit a fire under me to get out there
and see if I could move the needle on this.
- Now, that makes me think about two things.
One is there is just this so many people's brains
just something happened to them, trauma,
something where math they just shut down.
I mean, your example of, you know, Ivy League grads,
wanting the comfort of an answer to a, you know,
first grade, or kindergarten type problem.
And just for any of y'all who think that tip calculation
is just valuable for calculating tips, which it is,
you know, this is actually an interview question.
We used to use a Khan Academy
for a lot of entry level jobs where we just said,
we just give a little word problem
you in five friends go to a restaurant,
you all order this, this, this,
you wanna pay the right amount of tip,
someone pays this amount, how much should you pay?
Or how much change should there be?
And you'd be surprised how many people
with college degrees had trouble answering those questions.
So you might see this in an interview question.
And I'll just add to Laura, you know,
if you think about education,
it's just a single leverage point
that I think builds on everything else, you know,
human capital is the ultimate capital
and if we can let that grow it'll go to positive uses.
If you don't, not only will it atrophy,
but it could go in a negative direction.
So that's my two cents.
So from YouTube, Gina Guzman asks
"A question for Laura,
"according to different home realities,
"what is the most suitable schedule
"for distance learning?"
So yeah, what advice would you have?
- Oh, I mean, I just think
that we have all been thrown into a situation
we were not anticipating.
And I feel particularly for
kids in grades K through two,
where it is very hard for them
first to focus for very long on a computer.
Secondly, even to use the computer
to touch the mouse to click on the wrong window by accident,
their teacher disappears.
We find when we practice our games
with our staffs, kindergartners, it's very different.
The parents end up being very involved
and that is really a strain on a family
where the parents are working.
It's also a strain.
I know there's a lot of talk about
clearly the inequity where
kids don't have a device at home or Wi-Fi,
you have to add in then all the people
where there is a device in the home,
but everybody needs it, there're multiple kids,
or there's a parent working from home.
So I think as far as what works for schedule,
I think you have every scenario out there.
As a start, though, it seems to me the kids
hit the ground running in the morning,
it is much harder to engage after lunch during food coma.
And I think also that it's really
emotionally healthy for kids to see
their guide, their teacher, if possible,
in the morning at the start of the day, even if it's brief.
And then from there, get their structure for the day
and move from there.
I don't know if that fully answers the question.
But I also think we don't even really know all the answers
because there's just so many scenarios out there
and it's really challenging.
- Yeah, I think that's consistency we're seeing.
I mean, what we're telling very consistent,
we're saying, hey, just gets started
even if you're able to do 20 minutes, 30 minutes a day
of math reading, maybe writing.
That's a start and students won't atrophy.
And that I think lowers the stress level.
And then you can layer on more.
We've, you know, we've published schedules
and things like that as well.
But I think you're exactly right.
It depends on your circumstance.
And this is a time where people
definitely should not put more stress on themselves
if they can avoid it.
So no one should beat up on themselves.
- And I was just gonna add one more point
that's kind of related, which is,
I think the fact that we're not,
kids are not with their teachers
is making us more aware of how powerful that is.
Tools like Khan Academy and all the resources out there
that enable kids to personalize their work
are incredibly important.
But we still need to pair a human with it,
like teachers should never worry
that any of this is gonna make us
not have teachers in the future.
I think teachers are incredibly important
and a piece of research, I was so struck by
is work out of the University of Washington I-LABS,
where they do MRIs of babies
they've put, they've created a helmet
that you put on the baby's head.
And they use math to do motion correction.
And you can watch the baby's brain while things happen.
And it turns out if you touch a baby's hand,
or the baby's mom's hand, while mom is sitting there,
Certain parts of the brain light up, if you show the baby,
a video of her mom, with her hand being touched,
those parts don't light up.
We really do react differently,
and in a much more powerful way
when we're with people physically.
And so I mean, I'm looking forward to the end of this
and everybody getting back to school
because I think that
that's such an important part of education.
I'm also hoping though, that we find a way
to pair that with the liberation I was talking about earlier
of having kids really see what they need to be working on
and what they need to master.
- That's fascinating.
I think it's a super worth triply underlining,
I think all of us.
We always knew the power of teachers and the work they did,
but I think this is all driven our empathy,
much, much higher for the amazing work
they do with our children and sometimes
how hard it can be.
And I actually wanna make sure I understand that
that was fascinating.
You said, obviously, you would expect
that if the child's own hand gets touched
that would light up parts of their brain.
But you're saying if their parent is in their presence
or their mother's in their presence,
and someone touched the mother's hand,
that would light up the brain.
- Yes, it's mind blowing, because it shows
that infants even a few hours after birth, have empathy.
I mean, they don't know what a hand is.
They don't know that that's their hand.
And the mom, like they don't know that
that hand matches their hand
that it's the corresponding point.
And yet, when you touch the mom's hand, it lights up.
I think it's just incredible research.
And they're continuing to do more on this
out of I-LABS at University of Washington,
but I think it just has so many implications
for how you want a blended learning package
where you have the content
where a kid can really work on their own,
but you definitely want a human in the picture too.
And we want the best of worlds.
- Absolutely and we have a couple of questions,
which I think is interesting,
especially considering your background, Laura.
From um, we have a question from Nekeil.
Actually, again from YouTube,
"Sal and Laura, what made you interested in mathematics?"
And then for Aditya is asking,
"How do you make children interested in math?"
And I'd love to connect that to your background
you are, if I remember an astrophysicist by training.
- I am.
- So what got you interested in math?
- So, you know, I look back at this
and I think the thing is that when I was a kid,
I had a mom and a dad who loved math
and just worked it into the day.
Math didn't feel like a separate subject
like I never got flashcards or worksheets at home.
My parents both had hobbies
and really would do those with me.
So my mom is an amazing cook.
And she had me very early on measuring with teaspoons
and tablespoons and fractions
and you just get really fluent in fractions
very, you know a lot earlier than you do in school.
And then my dad does a lot of carpentry.
And he had me using unsafe power tools
at a very young age.
And you know what, if you don't wanna take off your thumb,
you better know what a 16th of an inch is.
And you're really, you know, using fractions there too,
as well as tying it with very physical, tangible objects.
And I think that's part of it too is for me,
math was always tangible.
I'm a very visual and kinetic learner
as opposed to auditory.
And that really has led us to do what we do at Bedtime Math,
where now we have these hands on games.
And I see how kids who don't necessarily learn
from hearing a lecture, move things around on the table
and see it in a completely different way.
And that's what Fun Factor is.
So we're now every Monday and Wednesday
running a live a live webinar
where teachers can get on and find out
how to do these games with their students.
But families can get on too
I mean, it's just open for anybody
who'd like to see.
But it's really to bring the hands on object
back in to pair with the other forms of learning
'cause kids have different styles of learning.
- No, that's fascinating.
It sounds like a fun household to grow.
I agree, I was actually doing
some baking with my kids recently.
And, you know, as soon as you go off the recipe,
and it's like,
'We're gonna make a two thirds portion of this,"
the math, the fraction math becomes very, very real.
And like, we like to do half the sugar
and it definitely starts hitting you.
And I'd love to follow up a little bit more
on your background.
I mean, what what got you into astrophysics in particular?
I'm guessing from that period
where you were doing fractions with your mom and dad
to going into astrophysics.
There's a lot more Math, I think you must've gotten excited
explain that, what got you interested?
It is a topic I love as well, but...
- Yeah, well actually, I would say for quite a while
through elementary and middle school.
I really thought of myself as a math kid.
I loved math.
I liked playing with numbers on the side.
Looking at patterns and perfect squares,
and I was really into numbers in a very abstract way.
But then I took physics junior year,
and just fell in love with it
'cause my teacher, Dr. Stoneback was hysterical.
And also just really willing to off road
willing to take our questions
and just throw out the lesson plan
and experiment with whatever we were asking about.
And I just loved the class.
And then that summer I got to go to Governor School,
which is a program that's in many states
and I went for the sciences and took an astronomy class
and was just blown away by it
and, and fell in love with it.
And I'd always loved the night sky and been curious,
but it kind of all came together
when I learned more about how it all works.
So that was...
And I should note that actually...
So what's interesting is when I was a junior,
that was the year The Challenger blew up,
and that was a very emotional thing to see happen,
but it really drove home for me.
What an amazing thing these people were going
to go try to do,
I've always just been fascinated by that.
And for a while I wanted to be an astronaut,
but I have lazy eye, which is not correctable.
So I can't be a pilot.
And at the time very few people were Mission Specialists.
So to go on and get the PhD and hope to be an astronaut,
it just seemed like not a terribly likely path.
So sadly, I did not pursue it.
But I am so excited
that we are hopefully gonna have recreational space travel
for all of us in the next few years.
That's what I'm hoping for.
- Yeah, no space is definitely one of the topics
that I'm fascinated and my astronaut dreams
I squashed them myself.
Once I realized how claustrophobic I am.
I do not have the right stuff, so to speak.
But I wanna discover.
I wanna know what we discover
as we learn more about the universe
and travel to other places
and I'll just throw out you know,
my own quick response for that math.
You know, when you really just peel the envelope
of understanding reality, math is the purest way
of understanding reality.
Everything else has a layer of our senses
and our mental models that we construct.
But math is so pure.
And you know, I've said this other times,
if we ever have to communicate with another alien life form,
you know, staying on the space theme,
the way that we could actually probably communicate
that each of us are intelligent
is probably through math,
I don't know if we'll be able to
communicate well beyond that,
but we can at least say,
"Look, no, we're thinking,
"look, here's some prime numbers."
- Yeah and I should note, also, just one point from that
was that I hit a point
where math connected with something
that I fell in love with.
And I think when we talk about what helps kids love math,
seeing the real life application,
seeing exciting jobs that use math, you know,
kids are so into video games,
all that programming behind the scenes,
there's a ton of math in there
and, you know, just connecting the dots like that for kids,
I think is really important.
I was lucky to have that.
- One interesting question.
You know, I saw this with my cousin, Nadia when I,
you know, this is kind of the famous
how Khan Academy started.
She was 12 years old, she had trouble in math.
And I remember even when I started tutoring her, you know,
this was back in 2004.
You know, she had already convinced herself,
"I'm not good at math, math is not my thing."
I suspect that some of it has to do with gender stereotypes,
maybe messages she got from the broader world.
Clearly, that did not happen to you.
Why do you think that does happen?
And how, if you're a parent, and I do believe,
especially in that middle school age,
that's when people start to perceive themselves.
I'm a math person or I'm this type of person
or I'm not that type of person.
What advice do you have for parents
to kinda, to deprogram that that social programming?
- Yeah, there is so much it is such a systemic problem
coming from all angles, and especially with girls.
I think that, you know,
I think it's simpler than we sometimes make it.
It's really important to taste victory.
And to have another person validate that for you
and say, "You know, you are really good."
It's funny because I've never had math anxiety
and always loved math, but my equivalent, I would say,
was gym anxiety when I was a kid
because I had skipped a grade.
So I was young, and I was also small for my age.
And I did ballet, I was very dainty.
I was not remotely athletic.
And in gym when they'd go to pick teams over and over,
I was always picked last,
Then I would do badly because of course,
I wasn't confident, that would validate for everybody.
Yep, you wanna pick her last.
And this went on for years.
And it was terribly humiliating.
I mean, this was painful.
And then in ninth grade, we did presidential fitness.
And one of the events is the high jump
and thanks to my springiness from ballet,
I beat the whole grade in the high jump
never having done it.
And the gym teacher who till then thought it was a loser
said to me, "Oh my gosh,
"we need you on the track and field team get out there."
And that was just life changing.
I went and I ended up being a hurdler.
I never would have done that if I hadn't had a moment
where I actually succeeded at something,
and to have the adults say, "No, you're not imagining that
"you really did it."
So I thought a lot about
how do we bring this to math?
Because I think math anxiety is so similar, you know,
Sian Beilock, who's done amazing studies
on the neuroscience behind all this
has shown that when, if you're afraid of math,
when you do math problems,
that fear actually blocks your working memory,
and it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.
So, you know, it's really important
to feel confident with math.
But this also gets back to giving kids
the right challenge to be working on
so they do master it.
And that's why you don't want those Swiss cheese holes
in the learning, right?
You wanna figure out, what do kids need to fill in,
have them work at it.
And it might mean going back to kindergarten
and starting with the really basic stuff.
This is what we do with our math problem.
Every little fun story about ninjas or flamingos
kicks off with a Pre-K question.
And I think having kids go to the beginning do that.
And it's like "Yeah, you got that see?"
Okay, let's do the little kid question.
"You know how to count to five, see, you've got this,"
and working on up, kids need to taste victory.
And I think that really it is as simple as that,
that that turns it around.
- I love that because, you know,
when you're going through your stories of your life
and me reflect a little bit on my stories,
and I think you're right, you know,
early on, I had probably a little bit
of communication anxiety.
I was actually in speech therapy when I was very young.
And I didn't, and I was very shy, and actually,
I'm still more introverted than most people suspect.
I'm good at acting.
I like being with people.
Actually, I really like conversations like this.
I don't like cocktail parties where you know,
you have to make small talk and then move on to the next
and you kind of have to move into someone else.
That's not, that I'd rather just hide in the bathroom.
But the but you're right.
I mean, those times that I got
my aperture open about times about myself,
maybe I can communicate,
maybe I could be a good writer,
was when I did something
and someone gave that positive feedback.
And I knew it was authentic.
It wasn't just, they were just trying to make me feel good.
But that did feed on itself.
- It does and then it becomes true.
It really does.
- Something there.
And so, when we have these good conversations
time goes by super fast.
But I think we have time for a few more questions.
So from YouTube Esi Sanchez,
"A question for Miss Overdeck.
"What is it like knowing something from a kid's bedroom
"became so big."
You know, so they're talking about Bedtime Math.
And I guess I'll add to that question,
what advice do you have for folks, you know,
both your narrative and my narrative,
Khan Academy and Bedtime Math,
these all started from family projects, very organic,
but something happened in your mind, in my mind,
so like maybe even more people could benefit from this.
So what advice would you have for other folks
to kind of solve big problems like that?
- Yeah, so as far as how it feels, you know,
it really took off very fast.
I started sharing math problems with families in our town.
And the list grew really fast,
people started telling other people about it.
But I got hit by lightning,
The New York Times reviewed my blog
about a month after I started it.
That just isn't fair, right?
And so that brought in thousands of people.
And it then grew very fast.
On the other hand, I am a math person,
I'm always looking at the zeros on the ends of the numbers.
And I know that there are 25 million kids in our country
in Bedtime Math's target market,
and we don't have anywhere near
we do not have enough of those zeros.
So it's big, and yet it's small,
it's really hard to move the needle.
I guess we've had over a quarter million downloads
of our app, but that's 1% of the market.
So I wake, that gets me out of bed every morning
thinking about how to get it to more people.
And as far as like, what clicked
and, you know, again, it was actually external people
because it was other people saying,
"Hey, what are you doing?"
I mean, it's not too different from the gym teacher saying,
"Hey, wait a minute.
"Look what you're doing, go do that bigger."
You know, I think that the more we encourage each other
and unfortunately, you know,
we don't always have opportunities to do this
or don't do it as much as we should.
But when we encourage others,
I think we don't even realize the massive impact
we might be having at that moment without realizing it
'cause it can actually steer people's trajectory completely.
- And one interesting you just made a small comment, like,
you know, "I got struck by lightning,"
implying that you know, you got lucky in New York Times,
but I think there's something there,
which is, in order to get struck by that lightning,
you have to build a bit of a lightning rod
and obviously, literally,
I don't want any of the lightning rods
to get struck by lightning but figuratively,
by putting that out there.
Yes, you wouldn't want to...
Invent it incidentally, by Benjamin Franklin.
He doesn't get enough credit, I think as a scientist,
but anyway, but you don't.
A lot of things, you can't put in a strategic plan
that the New York Times will write about us on this date,
and same thing similar things happen in Khan Academy.
But the fact that you took it as a family project,
you allowed that feedback,
you started scaling it up.
And then it was there to be discovered, I think,
is a interesting layer there.
- Yeah and to that point, 'cause I totally agree with you,
you'd have to just take your thing
and get out there with it and see what happens.
And this reminds me of another point,
which is that you are not looking for perfection,
when you do that, waiting for your thing to be perfect.
You will never get it out there.
There's a great book called Lean Startup.
It's one of my favorite books
and they talk about minimum viable product.
You take basic idea,
don't put a whole lot of effort to it,
just come up with what it is.
Put it out there and let the market say to you,
"You know, we love that.
"But could you make it purple?
"Or could you make it twice the size
"or could you deliver it faster."
Or whatever it is, and all our growth at Bedtime Math
a lot of it has been from people giving us that feedback.
And of course for you,
I know you were doing your videos for your cousin.
And I'm sure you were just kind of
whipping those together for her
and then look at what has happened.
I mean, it's the exact same thing.
If you'd waited for them to be perfect,
and frankly, they were close to perfect already,
but if you wait for them to be perfect,
it might have never happened.
And I think a lot of times
people feel a little bit of paralysis
and it's better to just take the risk
and take the thing 80%, 90% done and just get out there.
- Yeah and I'll add to that,
I think there might be an element that sometimes
what you think is perfect is less perfect
than the thing that's more authentic and a little raw.
I mean, you know, that's why I kind of nodded my head
when you said, you know, the Khan Academy videos,
they still have a little bit of that,
you know, I still make it here at this desk right here
with this microphone.
And there's still these hand drawn things.
We've improved it a reasonable bit,
but I think if someone had given me you know,
a large grant from the government
or if I was working for a large publisher 15 years ago
and said make math videos,
I would have fallen into the trap
that a lot of people have
with making these fairly well produced things,
but they read like, you know,
"Welcome to the next step in quad factoring quadratics,"
it feels like it GPS device
and people don't connect with it
and there's an authenticity around
sometimes the 80% solution so, 100% agree with you.
So maybe finish on one question
'cause you just talked about this paralysis
of sometimes when people wanna do anything
they want the perfect becomes the enemy of the good.
Niashu on YouTube asks,
"What's the trick for not getting afraid
"of the word math?
"I mean how to overcome the problem,
"especially when preparing for some entrance exam,"
like for I guess in their situation, the GMAT.
What advice I mean,
you're someone who's never had math anxiety.
Do you empathize with that
and what advice do you have
and I'm happy to give my two cents as well.
- You know, I do empathize
because I mean math is a four letter word unfortunately
for a lot of people
and I've seen this and I've had fans email in
and just talk about this with their kids.
So I think there are a couple things
one is expanding what we think math is
For instance there's a lot of spatial stuff in math,
spatial relations, rotation of objects,
that's all math too.
And a lot of people, that's a different part of the brain.
And a lot of people are good at that,
and don't ever really get to show it off.
In fact, you can see behind me these little tiles,
this is one of our games
that we're doing on our webinars, these Fun Factor games,
where kids make these squares
and have to match them to patterns.
And sometimes you find that kids
who are not particularly good at math in school,
are just rock stars at this
and saying, you know what, that's math.
You're good at that.
Again, you have to taste of victory.
And then I think also, as far as
how do we make math not a bad word?
We are all in this together.
I hear people say, "You know,
"I'm just not good at math."
Or, "I hate math."
A study showed that something like 72% of moms
think they're not qualified
to help their kids with their math homework.
That is a thing.
That's a deep conversation we have to have as a country.
To kind of get over that, because really,
I really think anyone can do math.
And what you want is for the parent,
to learn the math with the child, the parent,
the guardian, whoever it is, and get comfortable.
And even if adults are not comfortable with something,
we shouldn't say it in front of the kids.
Like just keep it to yourself
because kids don't start off not liking math.
They love it.
They come to our Crazy Eights after school club,
and they have a great time
and they actually don't even believe
it's the same thing they're doing in school, it is math.
They don't start off not liking it,
we're causing that, so we can solve the problem.
It's up to us.
- Yeah, 100% agree because math at the end of the day,
it's puzzles, it's logic
and all of us are drawn to games, puzzles, logic,
and that's in the math even in the academic math,
but sometimes that gets lost
and so my only two cents to add to what Laura added is
you know whether math is your phobia,
public speaking is your phobia writing is or phobia,
whatever it is gym class is your phobia.
I think it's the paralysis of
sometimes wanting the perfect to be is the enemy of good
Sometimes it's, you feel like the world will end you know,
my son was getting very nervous for a piano recital
and he's like, and I'm like, "Iran it's not like
"it's gonna be the end of the world."
And his response is "What if it is,"
you know, like what if the earth parts and lava erupts
because he makes a blunder on Taco Bell's Cannon.
I mean, it was a fun moment,
but we just have to remember the Earth
is not gonna end you just give your best attempt.
And at the end of the day,
you are not your math scores or,
or whatever else and that will actually liberate you
to do better and to Laura's point
for all these people with math anxiety,
just get started.
Just do, you know, to quote Frozen Two,
"Do the next right thing."
And for all those parents out there,
if you put in even 10, 15 minutes on Khan Academy,
you can learn it for your kids and model it.
So Laura, you know, one last question.
I want to be conscientious of your of your time.
You know, what messages do you have
for all everyone out there
who's socially distanced
families are trying to keep the learning going.
Well, how can they make, what are the silver linings here?
What are some ideas that you you're able to experience
in your own family that maybe other people
can do to cope with what's going on?
- Well, I do think that one silver lining
is that families are kind of now learning together
in a way that they don't when the kids are off at school,
and everybody else is home or at work.
So I think, loosening up what we think learning is
and what we think education is.
There's some funny videos out there saying,
you know, "Household chores can be math,"
or, "Cooking could be math,"
But it's actually, I mean, maybe it's not the chores.
But there are a lot of things that just go on in your house
that involve numbers.
There are a lot of fun things that involve reading.
And I think loosening up what we think learning is
I think we get in a track
where we see what goes on in school and we say,
"Oh, that's what learning is."
And then you leave school and come home
and other stuff happens.
We are learning all the time
and we're just now more aware
that you can do a lot of learning at home
because when you're home all day,
you suddenly have all this time to explore,
it is really hard being home,
it's really hard not being able to get supplies,
food, everything is harder right now.
And to varying degrees for people.
But I think just knowing that this is,
it's temporary, and let's make the most of it
and really get to bond over other kinds of learning.
And I mean, it really is the time to pull out
the board games, the decks of cards, the dice, poker chips,
everything, 'cause all of that is learning too
and let's take advantage of the fun time and do that.
- That's great advice.
Laura, thanks so much for joining
and answering our questions.
- Oh, and thank you so much for having me
and for doing this show
'cause I know you at Khan Academy
have had an explosion of traffic this last month
and have your hands full so it's awesome
you're doing this show and--
- Oh no, this has been a blast for us too, thank you.
Well, everyone another, you know,
always fun to talk to Laura.
Thanks for joining this.
I think we got some good advice today and you know,
stay safe, stay healthy as we go through
these unusual times.
But there are some silver linings
some ways to keep learning
some ways to get even more connected with family
and discover things about the universe
that you might not have had the time
or the space to do in the past
and we hope to help you or help you help others,
if you're a parent or teacher in any way we can.
So we look forward to what is today Thursday?
We look forward to seeing you tomorrow.
Have a good night or evening, afternoon, I don't know.
(giggling lightly)