TED: Salman Khan of Khan Academy

One of the most important center on learning through online. This is a must-see for those who love sharing knowledge.

Ken Robinson on Revolutionizing Education

A quote on teacher

"The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires."

~ William Arthur Ward

Khan Academy on reinventing education

12-year-old Adora Svitak at TED

Sometimes, we can learn a lot from kids, and sometimes even more than what we can learn from adults...

Harvard Commencement Speech by JK Rowling

Imagine this: To listen to this inspiring speech by JK Rowling, you have to be in Harvard, graduate from Harvard, or be a parent to one of the Harvard graduates. And you can learn so much from this speech.

But the fact is, we didn't have this privilege. And not only we didn't have this privilege, but we wouldn't have the opportunity to know what JK Rowling has to say about what's important in life.

But now you can listen to it for free, courtesy of the internet, Vimeo, and TED (I found this from TED). So, please just spend some of your time to listen to it. Please!

What teachers make?

Found this on TED. You know what they say, "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach". Well, you know, people say a lot of things. And some of the things they say, are just full of sh*t.



My favorite quote from this video: "If somebody ever tries to judge you from what you make, you give them this (the middle finger!)"

American's Large Scale Effort to Promote Science and Math Education

Original article on NYTimes: White House Pushes Science and Education.

To improve science and mathematics education for American children, the White House is recruiting Elmo and Big Bird, video game programmers and thousands of scientists.

President Obama will announce a campaign Monday to enlist companies and nonprofit groups to spend money, time and volunteer effort to encourage students, especially in middle and high school, to pursue science, technology, engineering and math, officials say.

The campaign, called Educate to Innovate, will focus mainly on activities outside the classroom. For example, Discovery Communications has promised to use two hours of the afternoon schedule on its Science Channel cable network for commercial-free programming geared toward middle school students.

Science and engineering societies are promising to provide volunteers to work with students in the classroom, culminating in a National Lab Day in May.

The MacArthur Foundation and technology industry organizations are giving out prizes in a contest to develop video games that teach science and math.

“The different sectors are responding to the president’s call for all hands on deck,” John P. Holdren, the White House science adviser, said in an interview.

The other parts of the campaign include a two-year focus on science on “Sesame Street,” the venerable public television children’s show, and a Web site, connectamillionminds.com, set up by Time Warner Cable, that provides a searchable directory of local science activities. The cable system will contribute television time and advertising to promote the site.

The White House has also recruited Sally K. Ride, the first American woman in space, and corporate executives like Craig R. Barrett, a former chairman of Intel, and Ursula M. Burns, chief executive of Xerox, to champion the cause of science and math education to corporations and philanthropists.

Dr. Ride said their role would be identifying successful programs and then connecting financing sources to spread the successes nationally. “The need is funding,” she said. “There is a lot of corporate interest and foundation interest in this issue.”

Administration officials say that the breadth of participation in Educate to Innovate is wider than in previous efforts, which have failed to produce a perceptible rise in test scores or in most students’ perceptions of math and science. In international comparison exams, American students have long lagged behind those in much of Asia and Europe.

But some education experts said the initiatives did little to address some core issues: improving the quality of teachers and the curriculum.

“I think a lot of this is good, but it is missing more than half of what needs to be done,” said Mark S. Schneider, a vice president at the American Institutes for Research, a nonprofit research organization in Washington. “It has nothing to do with the day-to-day teaching,” said Dr. Schneider, who was the commissioner of education statistics at the Department of Education from 2005 to 2008.

Dr. Holdren said the initiatives, which are financed almost entirely by the participating companies and foundations and not the government, complement the Race to the Top program of the Department of Education, which will dispense $4.35 billion in stimulus financing to states for innovative education programs. The Race to the Top rules give extra points to applications that emphasize science, technology, engineering and mathematics, the so-called STEM subjects.

Continue reading the article at NYTimes.

Teaching Kids - A Passionate Ted Talk

A good site to learn about acoustics...

Here's a good website if you want to learn about acoustics (how sound travels, interact, etc) complete with animations. Plus other animations on other things related to physics.

http://paws.kettering.edu/~drussell/demos.html

School kills creativity

Physical Activity May Strengthen Children's Ability To Pay Attention

ScienceDaily (Apr. 1, 2009) — As school districts across the nation revamped curricula to meet requirements of the federal "No Child Left Behind" Act, opportunities for children to be physically active during the school day diminished significantly.

Future mandates, however, might be better served by taking into account findings from a University of Illinois study suggesting the academic benefits of physical education classes, recess periods and after-school exercise programs. The research, led by Charles Hillman, a professor of kinesiology and community health and the director of the Neurocognitive Kinesiology Laboratory at Illinois, suggests that physical activity may increase students' cognitive control – or ability to pay attention – and also result in better performance on academic achievement tests.

More on this at ScienceDaily.com.