After two space shuttle flights in the 1980s, astronaut Sally Ride spent much of the rest of her life trying to encourage children, particularly girls, to give the sciences a shot.
Almost everyone, from educators to government officials to industry experts, laments the lackluster abilities and performance of our nations' students in science, technology, engineering and math (know as STEM education).
President Obama just couldn't resist a marshmallow cannon while touring science fair projects at the White House.
Editor's note: Matt Walton a technology and engineering education teacher at Glen Allen High School in Henrico County, Virginia. He has a master's degree in education and a bachelor of science degree in technology education from North Carolina State University.
Editor's Note: Pamela Greyer is a K-12 science educator, STEM education consultant and NASA solar system ambassador. She is the former site director of NASA's Science, Engineering, Mathematics and Aerospace Academy Chicago Program and continues to mentor and engage youths in NASA engineering competitions and contests.
Fourth and eighth grade students scored higher in mathematics last spring than anytime since the Nation's Report Card began measuring their performance decades ago, data showed Tuesday.
This year's Nobel Prize for Chemistry was awarded to an Israeli scientist who "fought a fierce battle against established science" and "fundamentally altered how chemists conceive of solid matter," the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced Wednesday.
Last Thursday, as I walked into the house after a business meeting followed by a 30-mile round-trip car pool, I smelled something delicious wafting from the Crock-Pot. On my way to the kitchen, I looked in the mirror, gave a thumbs-up to my dependable black pants, and thought, There now, being a working mother isn't so hard.
Every day the news hits of another company, website or long list of credit cards that's been hacked. But what if there was a foolproof technology to fend off cyberattackers by keeping secret information secret?
Over the next decade, more than half of the country's 3.2 million teachers will retire. CNN's Natasha Curry reports.
This is Linda DeRegnaucourt's last summer off. When school starts in August, it will be her last year to think about high school classes, advanced placement tests and calculus.
On the Internet, anything can be the basis for a holiday -- even a number.
Eight years after troops in Afghanistan were outfitted with new uniforms, the Army is shopping for a different camouflage for its fatigues and equipment.
Amenah Ibrahim vividly remembers her first introduction to thermodynamics. It was her freshman year at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and she sat in a large auditorium filled with students aspiring to degrees in chemical engineering.
Scientist Neil deGrasse Tyson tells CNN's Soledad O'Brien what he believes will drive tomorrow's economy.
Watch or record "Don't Fail Me: Education in America" when it airs on CNN on Saturday, May 21 at 8:00 p.m. ET. By recording the documentary, you agree that you will use the program for educational viewing purposes for a one-year period only. No other rights of any kind or nature whatsoever are granted, including, without limitation, any rights to sell, publish, distribute, post online or distribute in any other medium or forum, or use for any commercial or promotional purpose.
In CNN's documentary "Don't Fail Me: Education in America," Soledad O'Brien followed three high school students in a national robotics competition created to kids involved in math and science. The documentary airs at 8 p.m. ET Sunday and May 21.
It's her lunch break on a sunny afternoon in Phoenix and instead of chatting with friends in the courtyard, 17-year old Maria Castro is standing in front of a white board inside Carl Hayden Community High School. She has a fat red marker in her hand and is furiously scribbling around a triangle while muttering about sine and cosine.
Will year-round school help American students compete better at a global level? CNN contributor LZ Granderson weighs in.
Michigan State University Distinguished Professor Bill Schmidt is the interim director of the Institute for Research on Mathematics and Science Education, and author of the forthcoming book "Inequalities for All: Why America Needs Common Core Standards."
CNN's Soledad O'Brien looks at three students who aspire to learn more than what is offered at their schools.
It might be a stretch to call him the big man on campus. But Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels is getting some presidential buzz at colleges across the country.
CNN's Jim Acosta reports on a couple of college students at Yale trying to swing the 2012 presidential election.
A new report on high school course work indicates that students are completing more challenging courses and taking more credits than they did in the past.
Ask Michael John Blake how old he is, and says "I am 35, I think, maybe 36" and then tries to do a subtraction involving his birth year.
Whether it's following hockey statistics or calculating the national debt, our daily lives add up to a lot of math. But try explaining that to a room filled with middle schoolers.
The creator of the enigmatic "Kryptos" sculpture at the CIA's headquarters is dangling a substantial clue before code-breakers eager to unravel the work's hidden messages.
Eighteen years ago, Jeff Anderson and Chris Hester were just two roommates at the University of Washington, frustrated with their beloved Huskies always being disrespected in college-football poll rankings.
In science, 15-year-old students in the United States performed about average as compared to their counterparts in other industrialized nations, according to a report released Tuesday by the U.S. Education Department.
Results of a global education survey today show U.S. high school students come in a dispiriting 26th out of 65 places worldwide in combined scores for math, science and reading tests.
President Obama hosts the White House Science Fair and sets goals to improve the nation's rankings in math and science.
Education scientist Sugata Mitra explains how access to the Web could revolutionize how we think about teaching.
The Hole in the Wall experiments, known as HiW, were first implemented in 1999, when a computer with an internet connection was embedded into a wall for children to discover and use unsupervised.
Recent world rankings showing U.S. students failing to make the grade in math and science are "a sign of long-term decline," that will require reform of the country's education system to fix, President Obama told NBC's "Today" show on Monday.
The president announced a new education initiative to make U.S. schoolchildren leaders in math and science.
President Barack Obama on Thursday announced a new initiative led by the top executives of major U.S. corporations that seeks to improve education in science, technology, engineering and math.
The former Wonder Years star gave birth to baby Draco on Tuesday evening
Sal Khan, you can count Bill Gates as your newest fan. Gates is a voracious consumer of online education. This past spring a colleague at his small think tank, bgC3, e-mailed him about the nonprofit khanacademy.org, a vast digital trove of free mini-lectures all narrated by Khan, an ebullient, articulate Harvard MBA and former hedge fund manager. Gates replied within minutes. "This guy is amazing," he wrote. "It is awesome how much he has done with very little in the way of resources." Gates and his 11-year-old son, Rory, began soaking up videos, from algebra to biology. Then, several weeks ago, at the Aspen Ideas Festival in front of 2,000 people, Gates gave the 33-year-old Khan a shout-out that any entrepreneur would kill for. Ruminating on what he called the "mind-blowing misallocation" of resources away from education, Gates touted the "unbelievable" 10- to 15-minute Khan Academy tutorials "I've been using with my kids." With admiration and surprise, the world's second-richest
NASA said Wednesday that it is collaborating with recording artist Mary J. Blige to encourage girls and young women to pursue careers by studying science, technology, engineering and mathematics -- collectively known as STEM.
Danica McKellar is most famous for portraying Winnie Cooper, the childhood sweetheart of series protagonist Kevin Arnold on "The Wonder Years."
Applied Materials had to fly in 100 interviewers just to screen all the job applicants for its new Solar Technology Center in Xi'an, China, last year. The company wanted to fill 260 high-tech jobs. It got 26,000 resumes. A fraction of those applicants were invited to interview. The final selectees, board member Andy Karsner tells me, "were top-of-their-class, English-speaking engineers. They're the best of the best."
In a departure from the current state autonomy for what U.S. children are taught, the National Governors Association and state education chiefs Wednesday announced their recommendations for education standards nationwide.
When I was a child in Adelaide, Australia, I loved games with clear, unambiguous rules; puzzles that were tough but fair; and the clean, abstract, simplicity of numbers and symbols. So it is perhaps not surprising that I have been drawn to mathematics for as long as I can remember.
The East L.A. math instructor who pushed his students to excel was 79
As I walked into the house after a business meeting followed by a 30-mile round-trip car pool last Thursday, I smelled something delicious wafting from the Crock-Pot.
The sound of meditation for some people is full of deep breaths or gentle humming. For Marc Umile, it's "3.14159265358979..."
Sheikh Dr. Tahir ul-Qadri: At a news conference in London, England, on Tuesday, the renowned Islamic scholar issued a fatwa -- a religious ruling -- condemning suicide bombers as destined for hell, removing extremists' certainty of earning paradise after death.
Public school students in major metropolitan areas are showing improvement on test scores in mathematics compared with scores from previous years, according to a report released Tuesday by the Department of Education.
A conversation last week with South Korea's president apparently showed President Obama the stark difference between how Asian nations and the United States value education.
President Obama talks about the world's hunger for knowledge and America's need to refocus on education.
In elementary school, there are classes you always look forward to -- gym, home economics and choir -- and classes you don't -- like English, science and geometry.
Can you "graph the solution set of a linear inequality in two variables on the coordinate plane?"
U.S. schoolchildren still have work to do when it comes to mathematics, the secretary of education said Wednesday.
This story originally appeared in the Set. 21, 2009 issue of Sports Illustated.
Teachers unions and politicians are constantly claiming that K-12 public schools need more money in order to produce good academic results. But does the data support the argument that our schools need more money to succeed?
American children aren't necessarily getting smarter or dumber, but that might not be good enough to compete globally, according to numbers cited Tuesday by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.
From winter to spring 1720, London, England, was delirious, entranced, rolling in money.
So what does the U.S. Supreme Court gain and lose by exchanging Justice David Souter for Sonia Sotomayor?
Jet lag is the bane of the global traveler, but could your laptop hold the cure?
In a recent interview, CNN's Becky Anderson spoke with scientist Stephen Hawking about his views of the world.
Scientist and author Stephen Hawking is "very ill" and has been hospitalized, according to Cambridge University, where he is a professor.
Distinguished scientist Stephen Hawking was said to be in a "comfortable" condition Tuesday after spending the night in hospital, Cambridge University said in a statement.
We all make bad decisions sometimes. In some contexts, to a certain extent, psychologists know why.
This was the year that businesses finally embraced the social Internet, setting up blogs, wikis and other Web 2.0 services. But for all their experimentation, relatively few companies have figured out how to be strategic about these new technologies.
Imagine a world without zero: The magic number that has given us everything from simple algebra to quantum physics, which forms the basis of modern computing in binary code and which, less profoundly, but perhaps more importantly, lets us know when we've drained our bank account with one too many shopping trips.
The 10-year-old actor's famous parents have taught him to "be in the moment"
Cosmologist Stephen Hawking will retire from his prestigious post at Cambridge University next year, but intends to continue his exploration of time and space
CNN's Becky Anderson holds an exclusive interview with scientist Stephen Hawking on his views of the world.
Professor Stephen Hawking, one of the world's great scientists, is looking to the stars to save the human race -- but pessimism is overriding his natural optimism.
Volunteers and NGOs are setting up classrooms across India to try supplement a national education system that they say does not make the grade
Mathematicians at UCLA have discovered a 13-million-digit prime number, a long-sought milestone
Business school is back in session, and teachers are re-evaluating how to better train the post-Lehman generation of risk managers
Despite the enduring stereotype that girls are less proficient with numbers than boys, a new study suggests there is no longer any such difference
Sixteen years after Barbie dolls declared, "Math class is tough!" girls are proving that when it comes to math they are just as tough as boys
A Brown University professor said Monday that he is donating his share of a prestigious Israeli mathematics prize to advance the education of Palestinian students
Connecticut public high schools will begin offering online courses to students next month, according to Gov. M. Jodi Rell.
Being a child prodigy is no guarantee that you'll grow up to be rich, famous or happy. You might have a breakdown and fade into obscurity (like that guy in the movie "Shine"), quit the scene altogether (like chess maestro Bobby Fischer), or turn to a life of petty crime (insert the name of your favorite child actor here).
Bryan Berg spends much of his life in a house of cards. Literally. Berg, the Guinness World Record-honored "Cardstacker," has devoted his career to building houses of playing cards -- and skyscrapers, domes, cathedrals and stadiums, too.
Professional cardstacker Bryan Berg attacks his card city and his world record-setting card tower with a leaf blower.
America's once-proud public school system -- the great equalizer of our democratic society -- is failing an entire generation of students. Millions of high-school students are donning their caps and gowns this month, but a new Education Week report reveals that more than 1.2 million students will fail to graduate high school this year. Half of our black and Hispanic male students are dropping out of public high schools.
Seat and head restraints in more than 60 percent of car models fall short of state-of-the-art protection for neck injuries and whiplash, a new study has found.
The tone of the headlines following Florida's 85-72 win over Kentucky on Sunday was uniformly sanguine: "Gators Reclaim Mojo," proclaimed the Tampa Tribune; "Revived Noah, Gators enter March with a rout," said the Palm Beach Post; and "Gators dunk the doubts," stated the Florida Times-Union. Such optimism was an abrupt, 180-degree turn from the doom-and-gloom descriptions that had accompanied UF's three-loss slump, which ended with the walkover of the Wildcats. Should the defending champs maintain their mojo and win the SEC tournament this week in Atlanta, I suspect the Gator repeat bandwagon will be completely rebooked in time for NCAA tournament pools to begin.
With many franchisors capitalizing on the convenience trend, you can find services that help you do everything from cooking, cleaning, day care and even teaching your kids some shortcuts to get ahead in their toughest classes.
A more precise measure of the Consumer Price Index could be instituted next year, according to a published report Monday, a move that could see the closely watched inflation reading roil markets less.
Your money is at risk. No matter what you've put it in--stocks, bonds, derivatives, hedge funds, houses, annuities, even mattresses --there's always the chance that you could lose it or miss out on...
I think that The Count from "Sesame Street" is in charge of programming all the cable networks. They just can't get enough of ranking things and then counting them down.
In 1989, ex-Fidelity Magellan fund manager Peter Lynch published One Up on Wall Street, which preached the mantra that, over time, prices in the stock market dutifully mimic changes in corporate ea...
For thousands of years people measured the weight of precious stones by comparing them to a qirat, the Arabic word for the weight of four grains. Sound like a vague measure? Well, it used to be, bu...
In the early 1970s the Egyptian government asked Tom Saaty, a pioneering mathematician with a fistful of awards, to help clarify the Middle East conflict. The Egyptians needed a coherent, analytica...
This year, beginning in our annual summer Retirement Guide and continuing in this year-end investment issue, we've introduced into our list of best mutual funds a statistical measure called "standa...
Dear Oddsist: As a lifelong devotee of the weird, outre, and paranormal, I was naturally all aquiver on August 1 when the Dow Jones industrials rose by 33.67, a figure that "eerily matched" the gai...
CAN ECONOMISTS teach business people anything useful about the day-to-day running of companies? About such meat-and-potatoes problems of managerial life as how to restructure your company, how to m...
Tim McCormick's march to college began in seventh grade, when teachers at his Portland, Ore. middle school chose him to take the Scholastic Aptitude Test, which is usually given to college-bound hi...
AS THE WORLD of work turns ever faster on its computer-imaged, digitally controlled, microprocessed axis, companies increasingly need a numerate and technophilic work force. What they face is this:...
Sometimes less is more. That's the basic principle behind RISC, or reduced instruction set computing, the technology that is paving the way for a new generation of super-quick computers. RISC techn...
BLACK MONDAY discomfited not only stockbrokers and portfolio managers, but also an influential set of academics whom they have long considered their archenemies -- the efficient market crowd. These...
RARELY DO conventional people produce innovation in business or technology. Almost invariably, innovators have a wild gleam in their eye, metaphorically if not literally -- and they can be a real h...
Looking at the rate of change that has buffeted, battered, whacked, slammed, and shocked American managers over the past decade, one would have to conclude that any executive who seeks a competitiv...
''Why must we learn this stuff, and where are we ever going to use it?'' According to Alfred S. Posamentier, professor of mathematics education at New York's City College, that question endlessly h...
© 2013 Cable News Network. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
|