Hi. My name is SooA Yeo, and I am the CEO of social venture ‘Chalk’ that provides free online education.
Before anything, let us show you the video lectures that the students of KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology) donated for the facilitation of ‘free education’.
So, what do you think?
The videos you have just watched can all be accessed freely online.
Currently, lectures of not only mathematics, science, and English for middle school students, but also those of General Physics and Calculus for college students are prepared.
Are any of you currently a freshman here at KAIST? Oh, yes there you are.
The Calculus lecture videos are being used as a supplementary material in KAIST’s Calculus 1 course. Please take a look at it.
Now, I am going to tell you how this all started.
We were originally an offline educational body.
We started educational outreach for elementary, middle, and high school students in the study room in Sedong in Yousunggu, Daejeon of South Korea by founding Team KAIST for STX knowledge-share-volunteer program in 2010.
At first, the team was managed very well, for there were many passionate volunteers.
However, in the year of 2011, as the founding volunteers graduated, took a year off from school, went to study abroad, etc. the problem arose in the supply of volunteers.
So, we had to publically recruit people.
However, because the scene of education was at a rural area, it came as a burden for volunteers to travel more than 40 minutes by car, while the public transportation did not even reach the place.
Although many had the will to participate, due to such pressure, they could not readily volunteer.
Such concerned made me think, “What if we do educational outreach online?’
If we start with online educational outreach, I realized that thousands and millions of people who have Internet access can listen to the lectures anywhere, anytime, while offline we can only teach three or four students at once at the same time.
Yes, anywhere and anytime. And if we record the lectures to post online, there’s a benefit of students being able to revisit the lectures.
Furthermore, if the students learn by using both offline and online materials, studying methods can be much more efficient.
So we looked into how original online education was being conducted.
The majority was through video lectures, and in such cases, the recording equipment, good studio, and pretty lecturers are the necessity.
This could be another factor of barrier for some of the volunteers.
Then, I thought of an idea of using tablet penpad to conduct lectures.
If tablet penpads are used, materials can be taught as if teachers are teaching them by handwriting right next to them offline.
Also, the lectures can be very effective, since because the screen of the computer screen is being recorded, various things that can be only expressed in computer can be used.
If tablet penpads are used, the online educational outreach is feasible, since the production cost is reduced; however, is it really worth it?
Even if it’s less expensive, each tablet penpad cost about 300,000 KRW. Wouldn’t it be better to rather donate such money to another charity?
Wouldn’t that be a better way to help the world? These questions arose in my head.
When I searched if there was anyone who was doing the penpad lecture already online, I found the story of Salan Khan from TED video.
Salan Kahn is someone who was donating lecture videos made by tablet penpad online since 2008.
Do you recognize the person next to him? Yes, he is Bill Gates.
Bill Gates was standing right next to him, and was speaking very highly of his ideas. AND Google was also praising his ideas.
Seeing this, I realized that the idea was worth a try.
Back then, I was doing a TA for undergraduate General Physics at KAIST.
So I tried recording a video lecture using a 20,000~30,000 KRW tablet penpad and showed it to the students.
The reaction was beyond expectation. Maybe it was because they did not see my face in the video (haha).
But the fact was, I had to prepare a lot more than I would when I taught offline.
That made the content be transmitted more effectively as well.
The video lectures allowed students to not waste time, because they did not have to sit in lectures that were made mandatory, rather, all they needed to do was to push the play button when they wanted to and needed to.
When the exam period approaches, they could revisit the lectures on materials they have forgotten and could skip unnecessary materials as well.
But this was something that I could not do alone. I needed a lot of people’s help, and I needed those who can join me in this outreach.
So I started off an online education outreach club and collected many lecture videos by recruiting a lot of volunteers.
The idea of the club is as follows. College student would join the club, donate lectures, and the lectures will be seen by many.
This student will later graduate, get a job, get married, and have children.
Those children will grow up watching and studying with the video lectures of his/her mom/dad.
They will then go to college and repeat what their parents have done. I drew the picture of this good circulating pattern.
And now, more than 70 students from not only KAIST, but from Seoul National University and Sookmyong Women’s University, are donating video lectures.
An important feature of the video lectures is that they have to be less than 10 minutes long.
This is because it is known that students can concentrate the best in between 8~12 minutes.
The existing video lectures are usually 40 minutes to an hour long, so students cannot access the materials they want to listen to quickly.
10 minutes lectures can be searched quickly, so that the students can find the necessary materials fast.
Don’t give up because you don’t know the material when studying.
When you are participating in an offline educational outreach, you see students who study with passion solve the problems despite anything.
However, those who do not have as much of a motivation easily give up when they face difficult problems and become frustrated.
Usually, teachers are those who help lost students find their paths, while realistically, there are many who cannot get enough help.
So we came up with this ‘concept tree’, something beyond merely showing the video lectures.
For example, let’s say a high school student listens really well during his math class.
His tests scores, however, aren’t as good. This is because he is missing a piece of concept from his careless days in middle school.
Let’s say a student does not understand the video lecture of ‘X’.
But if he watches video lectures of A, B, C that are related to ‘X’, and revisit the ‘X’ lecture again, he would not have to give up learning the material just because he was missing a piece of concept from the video, due to a hole resulting from his past
This is so-called learning without giving-ups.
These all build up to grow students’ integrated thinking abilities through huge conceptual network that connects the concepts of math and science, science and arts, etc. related things systematically.
If you don’t know from which video lecture you should start off with, our curation system can be used.
Based on the diagnosis test, it suggests the video lectures on topics that you are week at or the questions you got wrong in the test.
In February 19th, 2013, this year, there has been a special report on a newspaper about us, Chalk.
That day, our server was down due to the pressure of access of millions of people.
This is a case that indicates the people’s needs for the free education system.
Not only that, a lot of bloggers started to post and share about who we are and what we do.
Some of the parents and students sent us a Thank You letter through e-mail and comments.
What was surprising was that people who were 40-50 years old told us that they found our videos helpful, when our materials were on middle school through college curriculum.
They were those who were just beginning to study.
These Thank You messages really help us and the volunteers feel worthy and happy.
Also recently, a professor of KAIST has financially donated to us, and based on the amount, we are constructing and developing our web services.
Now, education should leap to the next level.
Do you remember the traditional classroom where they use black boards and this, if you remember, the OHP films?
OHP films, and what do we use these days? PPTs.
It seems like these are everything in education development.
When other business such as semiconductors are developing exponentially, these are all there is in education.
Some professors still brings in thick notes to class, where they start writing on the black board what is in their notes.
Students jot them down. The lecture ends.
Why do we go to classes?
Why don’t they just make copies of their notes and pass them out?
I might have jumped too much, but it is indeed true that changes need to be made.
In middle school today, a teacher teaches about 30 students in a class.
It is really impossible for the teachers to coach each and every one of them.
I am hoping that this online educational outreach contents can support public education.
Basic materials can be studied with our videos before class, and in the actual classes, so that students can ask deeper questions,
create tighter relationship with teachers, and create discussion-based learning culture amongst, so that humanity can be implemented in classrooms.
We have yet materialized only 10% of services of what we are trying to make.
However, we will do our best in providing interactive, smart online education outreach.
We are going to make a better world with you through talent donation and educational renovation.
Thank you.