Joel Klein, Sal Khan And Sebastian Thrun On Inventing The Future Of Education, At Disrupt SF

Three trailblazing figures in educational technology are showcasing the future of learning at our upcoming annual conference, Disrupt San Francisco. Former New York education Chancellor, Joel Klein, will get into more of the details about the recently announced Amplify project, News Corp’s ambitious venture to create tailored, digital learning for the American education system. Bill Gates’ “favorite teacher”, Sal Khan, who founded the Youtube-based Khan Academy, will speak about his pioneering work in the “flipped classroom” and launch a new feature to his site. And Google fellow and CEO of Udacity, Sebastian Thrun, will discuss how he opened the walled garden of American higher education free of charge to students around the world.

These education leaders will join an all-star lineup at Disrupt SF Sept 8-12, including Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, Marc Benioff, Ron Conway, Kevin Rose, Matt Cohler, TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington, Vinod Khosla and many others.

Come be a part of this amazing show. Tickets to Disrupt SF are on sale here. If you are interested in becoming a sponsor, opportunities can be found here. Bios of the three education speakers below:

Joel Klein
CEO Education Division, News Corporation

In January 2011, Joel I. Klein became CEO of the Education Division and Executive Vice President, Office of the Chairman, at News Corporation, where he also serves on the Board of Directors.

Prior to that, Mr. Klein was Chancellor of the New York City Department of Education where he oversaw a system of over 1,600 schools with 1.1 million students, 136,000 employees and a $22 billion budget. He launched Children First in 2002, a comprehensive reform strategy that has brought coherence and capacity to the system and resulted in significant increases in student performance.

He is a former Chairman and CEO of Bertelsmann, Inc., a media company, and served as Assistant U.S. Attorney General in charge of the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice until September 2000, and was Deputy White House Counsel to President Clinton from 1993-1995. Mr. Klein entered the Clinton administration after 20 years of public and private legal work in Washington, D.C.

Sal Khan
Founder and Executive Director, Khan Academy

Sal Khan is the founder of the Khan Academy, a nonprofit with the mission of providing free, high-quality education for “anyone, anywhere” in the world. Khan graduated from MIT in 1998 with three degrees: two bachelor of science degrees in mathematics and electrical engineering/computer science; and a master of science degree in electrical engineering. He worked in technology in Silicon Valley until the first bubble burst, after which he attended Harvard Business School. After earning a masters degree in business administration in 2003, Khan became an analyst at a Boston based hedge fund.

In 2004 as a side project, Sal began tutoring his young cousin in math, communicating by phone and using an interactive notepad. When others expressed interest, he began posting videos of his hand-scribbled tutorials on YouTube. Demand took off, and in 2009 he quit his day job to commit himself fully to the not-for-profit Khan Academy. The Khan Academy website now provides self-pacing software and unlimited access to over 3,000 instructional videos covering everything from basic arithmetic to college level science and economics. It’s the most-used library of educational videos on the web, with over 5 million unique students per month, over 150 million lessons delivered, and over half a billion exercises completed. Over 10,000 classrooms around the world are also using Khan Academy to help build student mastery of topics and to free up class time for dynamic project based learning.

Khan was recently profiled by 60 Minutes and recognized by Time Magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

Sebastian Thrun
CEO, Udacity

Sebastian Thrun is CEO of Udacity, and research professor of computer science at Stanford University. He is also a Google Fellow and Vice President .

Thrun is a former Director of the Stanford AI Lab. He led the development of the robotic vehicle Stanley which won the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge, and which is exhibited in the Smithsonian.

His research focuses on robotics and artificial intelligence.