What Drawing Program Does Khan Academy Use

If you ever tried to larn anything math or physics related over the internet, you've undoubtedly stumbled upon Khan Academy.

What started every bit 1 man making videos to tutor his younger cousins and extended family over the internet quickly became i of the biggest and most comprehensive online educational resources, with courses on topics that range from math to programming, finance and history.

What makes Sal Khan's videos and then special, though (other than his vast knowledge and his knack for breaking complicated subjects down into easily understandable chunks) is the way he uses the medium to deliver data.

A cheap Panasonic ErgoFit pair of in-ear headphones.

If you accept upwardly to $50-$100 dollars to spend and want to purchase a dedicated microphone (which would be the recommended way of doing things for the all-time quality), start looking for a "USB cardioid dynamic microphone".

A Samson Q2U and ATR2100 next to each other.

USB means yous tin plug it straight into your reckoner. "Cardioid" and "Dynamic" are characteristics that ensure your mic will pick up as picayune groundwork noise and keyboard/mouse clicking noises as possible.

Later you lot get your microphone, we highly encourage you to check out our list of 7 tips that volition assist your microphone sound amend when recording. Post-obit the advice in that article should help you sound a little better and help you build dominance with your students by sounding like a broadcast professional.

What cartoon software practice I utilise?

With the abundance of free drawing software available right at present, which program y'all decide to use is entirely upwards to you.

The 'official' software the Sal Khan used for his videos is SmoothDraw3. The app is free, easy to use and is designed to play nicely with drawing tablets, only it but seems to run on Windows computers.

If yous're looking for a gratuitous cross-platform drawing app, y'all can apply one of the many browser-based drawing apps out there, similar Pixlr, Sketchpad.io or PaintZ.

What drawing tablet should I purchase?

If yous don't have a two-in-i laptop, yous're going to need to purchase a drawing tablet if you desire to make Khan University manner educational videos.

Annotation: These aren't similar Android tablets or iPads. A graphics tablet like the ones we talk about hither don't take screens, they're simply like a bigger, pressure sensitive laptop touch-pad that you connect to your reckoner through a USB cablevision. You can and so use the special stylus they come with to draw/write on your computer.

At that place are many types of drawing tablets bachelor out there, but don't let that intimidate you. For our purposes (and even for most people looking to get into creating digital art), the cheapest tablets bachelor are more than enough to get the job done.

Wacom, XP-Pen, Huion and Monoprice tablets are the most reputable brands out at that place, with Wacom beingness the biggest name in this game. Y'all should exist able to notice a beginner level graphics tablet from one of these manufacturers for around $50 at any online store.

How practise I hook the graphics tablet upward to my computer?

With most tablets, all yous need to do is hook it up to your computer via the provided USB cable (although any USB cable should work, actually). Your operating arrangement usually downloads the drivers automatically and takes care of the rest.

On the slim chance that doing simply that doesn't work, await in the user manual to see if there are whatsoever special set up-upwardly instructions for your graphics tablet.

How practice I create my virtual blackboard and start drawing?

Regardless of what drawing program you've settled on, the next steps should be pretty much the aforementioned:

Create a new file/project. Set the Image Size (Canvas Size) to something big, similar 4000 x 2000 (1920 x 1080 is fine too if your estimator tin't handle larger sizes). This volition ensure that you lot take plenty space on your 'blackboard' for all the notes you're going to be taking.
Apply the Pigment Bucket tool to fill the entire canvas with black or whatever other colour you lot want to use as a background for your notes. We recommend that y'all don't go too crazy with the colour though, you want it to be like shooting fish in a barrel on the eyes since both y'all and your students are going to be looking at information technology a lot.
Go to the layers section and click the Create New Layer button. Unless you're usic the basic paint software that comes with Windows, your editor probably has a carte for Layers and information technology looks something like this.

The Pixlr online editor layer management window.

This is going to exist the layer where you do all your writing. Having the writing and the background on different layers is useful because it's going to allow y'all to erase any mistakes without erasing the background color forth with them.

Brand sure yous have the writing layer selected and kickoff drawing/writing away. Your notes might not look very good at first, so take your time to practice and go used to your new graphics tablet!

How exercise I record the actual video?

To record your video, all y'all need to practise now is fire up your screen recording software and get to work.

The most common free option for screen recording is OBS. Information technology'due south free to download from the official software and allows for a lot of fine tuning to get the best video (and audio) quality options.

The downside to information technology, even so, is that the wealth of options available can easily overwhelm most beginners and trying to acquire information technology might exist a little overkill if all y'all're trying to do is create Khan Academy style educational videos for your students.

If you're looking for something much easier and that volition run on all platforms, why not give Flixier a shot?

Information technology runs in your web browser, lets yous tape your screen, microphone and webcam at the same time if you want to and you tin fifty-fifty utilise information technology to machine-generate natural sounding subtitles based off a script in case you're a little microphone-shy and don't feel like using your own voice in the video!

The best part, yet, is that Flixier is not only a screen and camera recorder, but likewise an online video editor, significant that you can easily utilize it to cut, trim and edit your Khan Academy style video tutorials.

The simple and intuitive interface means yous won't have to spend hours online watching tutorials in order to use it and the fact that the whole program runs entirely in your web browser ensures that y'all'll be able to edit videos smoothly even if your computer is a chip old.

On top of that, our cloud-rendering engineering science means that your videos will always be ready in 3 minutes or less and our online video editor works on any operating system, from Windows to Mac or fifty-fifty Chromebooks!

Closing Words

We promise our article helped shed some calorie-free on how to make Khan Academy style educational videos. If you want to learn more almost creating educational and instructional video content, feel free to cheque out the rest of our weblog! Or if y'all're ready to brand your own educational videos, feel gratis to offset creating with Flixier right at present!