On Tuesday and Wednesday this week, Sesame Workshop with Google and Common Sense Media are sponsoring Breakthrough Learning in a Digital Age, a conference of 200 thought leaders who will come together to discuss solutions to the literacy and dropout problems facing the nation. This blog focuses on the...

America's literacy problems are as bad as ever.

Sesame Street Workshop, home of beloved characters such as Elmo and Grover, and its research center, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center (JGCC) are teaming up with Google, Common Sense Media, foundations and the Department of Education to tackle two of the pressing...

Here is a pretty shocking statistic.

More than 40% of teachers today are disheartened and disappointed in their jobs according to a study just released by Learning Points Associates. It is hard to be an inspirational, caring teacher if you don't want to be there.

The study showed...

Success is not as easy as it appears to be on first glance, according to noted author Malcolm Gladwell who gave a thought provoking keynote Sunday evening at the National Education Computing Conference in Washington, D.C. before a capacity crowd.

Gladwell, author of the New York Times best sellers...

It looks like Congressman John Conyers needs to do his homework on the impact of science policy on the health care for the average American. Turns out that he introduced a bill that would effectively forbid the US National Institutes of Health from allowing taxpayers (you and me) from reading...

For most of us, it's the time of year to be merry, but for many high school students it tis the season to be stressed out by college applications and SAT scores. If you are a student, or a budget conscious parent of a student, who is feeling the college...

Most adults wonder what teenagers think. Now we have an opportunity to find out.

For the past couple of months, thousands of students across the nation have spent time in the classroom thinking about this country's political and social issues and then writing their ideas down in the Letters...

The Zeppelin is back but it is not the band Led Zeppelin.

This new Zeppelin is a 246-foot helium-filled airship that made its historic maiden voyage in San Francisco Bay Area last Saturday with 12 passengers on board. The purpose of the new airship----sight seeing and airborne scientific experiments....

Student journalists and their teachers in California have good reason to rejoice.

Last week Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed one of the toughest laws protecting journalism teachers against unfair retaliation when they stand up for their students' First Amendment right of free speech. Known as Senate Bill 1370,...

The theme for the Democratic National Convention in Denver is One Nation. Great theme to get everyone involved ....including future voters who will live with the consequences of our decisions.

Would you like to know what the future voters -- today's teens -- think about all this and about...

AlwaysOn Summit at Stanford -- A showcase and meeting ground for new companies in the digital space -- was held last week with about 850 attendees, primarily venture capitalists shopping for new investments and CEOs touting their privately held companies. For the rest of us, this is an...

Anyone in San Antonio, Texas last week would have thought that American education had entered a new digital age. Thousands of teachers and tech coordinators (12,500 to be exact) could be seen blogging on digital devices from computers to mobile phones and packing the 1000+ sessions with standing room only...

Everyday during the school year, 2,500 students drop out of high school in the U.S. Are you aware of this alarming statistic?

We need to get our school principals hopping mad about this.

Summer is here and the last thing most people are probably thinking about is school...

Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger put out an appeal last week in the Journal of Higher Education to donate money to create textbooks online that would be free to children in grades K-12 worldwide. While that is a great idea, the appeal should be re-worded to say "support existing efforts...

Wikipedia co-founder James Sanger put out an appeal last week in the Journal of Higher Education to donate money to create textbooks online that would be free to children in grades K-12 worldwide. While that is a great idea, the appeal should be reworded to say "support existing efforts...

It is hard to believe, but science in America is struggling. Funding for scientific research has been cut back for years, but this year it is so bad that Fermi National Lab in the Chicago area, needs to close down for six weeks in 2008 to make ends...

The well-known luxury designer Zac Posen and DHL, the leading global express delivery company, have joined together to do something most teachers only dream about----publicly thank teachers for what they do.

Zac created a beautiful limited-edition Italian leather bag and DHL bore all the costs of production and...

Over three decades after humanity last put a representative on the Moon, a new era in space exploration begins today, September 13, in Los Angeles as the Google Lunar XPrize launches with $30,000,000 in prizes for the first private group to successfully put a robotic rover on the moon....

Between the ages of 26 and 31, I was in the reproductive phase of life. I was so excited about my ability to create adorable human beings that in five years, we had three daughters: Susan, Janet and Anne. I went from being able to sleep in and to control...

Americans need to remember what Thomas Jefferson once said, "If I had to choose between government without newspapers, and newspapers without government, I wouldn't hesitate to choose the latter."

The education of future journalists is at stake in the U.S. The unlikely culprit is the No Child Left Behind...