21st Century Education Initiative - "You Should Care..."

Think about it. Just maybe a kid armed with that knowledge will find a way to unleash his or her own scientific brilliance. A brilliance that without a friendly shove never would have been unleashed.

In 1972, kids from the bottom quartile of earners participated in roughly the same number of activities as kids from the top quartile. Today, it’s a chasm.

"You have to finish high school in order to get to the next point."

"Should we invest our limited education resources in teaching critical reading skills or in what’s known as STEM — science, technology, engineering and math?"

"This is truly a win for school districts," said Heidi Rizkalla, the Learning Lamp’s education director. "Not only can schools now control the content and course options for their cyber students, they can save a significant amount of money."

Here is my run-down of the leading college classes that serve as launchpads for startups.

"What do we currently do in the first five days of school? It’s usually about control, organization, and administration," Whitby said. "The first thing we do is set the ground rules: This is how you learn. But what if we flip this around?"

Traditional American universities are suddenly running scared of the Internet, and for good reason. They successfully weathered the rise of online, open-enrollment degree programs like the University of Phoenix, but now they’re confronting a much more terrifying enemy: YouTube.

These 50 educational technology products and services are the winners of our 2012-13 Readers’ Choice Awards

"We’re not saying the whole curriculum turns into this big game. We’re saying it’s an adjunct to a serious curriculum." Bill Gates