5 reasons to set up a coding program in your district

coding pandemic coderz

At Everett Public Schools, we’ve always had a robotics team at the elementary and secondary levels. Last year we were up to 50 robotics teams within the FIRST organization. During the shutdown, we went into a panic over how students wouldn’t be able to physically “touch” and work on the robots on campus anymore. I […]

West Asia war: how finding oil changed the Persian Gulf’s ecology

Dugong

Military ships and oil tankers dominate how we imagine the Persian Gulf today. Yet beyond this familiar imagery of geopolitics and petroleum lies a mosaic of vulnerable ecosystems. It wasn’t always this way. Just six decades ago, these waters were busy not with warships but fishing boats, and the glittering megacities that now line the […]

A ‘Brilliant’ way to learn STEM

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Every now and then, a new resource comes along that’s worth a second–or third, or fourth–look. You might feel that way about Brilliant–a site that helps users learn not through lecture videos, but through hands-on, interactive learning. Brilliant works by helping learners of all ages master content instead of simply memorizing. It also provides instant […]

New initiative targets 10,000 underserved students for in-demand cloud computing careers

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The National Education Equity Lab (Ed Equity Lab) has launched a new initiative with Amazon Web Services (AWS) designed to prepare more than 10,000 students in underserved high schools across the nation for careers in cloud computing by 2025. As part of Amazon’s ongoing commitment to help 29 million people worldwide increase their technical skills […]

Multiplying the impact of math catch-up

math learning covid

Elementary school education is accumulative, building on whatever instruction came during the prior grade. One year you’re learning polynomials, the next how to graph them, while social studies gradually becomes more nuanced and comprehensive. So, what happens when a break occurs in the educational track? Across the nation, despite teachers’ best efforts, students are suffering […]

America’s research engine stalls: NIH funding slowdown rattles labs, careers, and scientific ambition

americas research slowdown waiting for funds waiting for breakthroughs

A midyear slowdown in funding by the National Institutes of Health, highlighted by the Association of American Medical Colleges, has disrupted research timelines across US universities. Fewer grants and delayed disbursements are forcing institutions to cut back, while early-career scientists face mounting uncertainty, raising concerns over long-term scientific progress and funding stability. Something is off-tempo […]

Using robots to help preschoolers love STEAM

science STEAM

In the spring and summer of 2020, Brooklyn Preschool of Science closed down for six months due to COVID-19. During those same six months, almost 300,000 people left New York, so there are certainly fewer families in our zip code than there were in March. Even so, our independent preschools are back to serving 300 […]