educational

President Bush on Thursday signed into law the America Competes Act, which authorizes $33.6 billion from federal coffers for government-sponsored research, education and teacher-training programs in the science and tech arena over the next few years.

The move promptly drew an avalanche of accolades from high-tech companies, who cheered the action as a way of helping the United States stay competitive in science, technology and engineering. But it may not be time to pop the corks yet.

After all, it's still up to the respective congressional appropriations committees to go through the formal process of doling out funding, … Read more

Every June, I am as elated as the next student to have a three-month respite from the confines of school. But, come August, you can find me on Amazon.com, frantically buying an inordinate number of books for every class--in many cases, more than two books per class.

Naturally, my curiosity was stirred upon hearing about a new project from CafeScribe, launched by Salt Lake City-based Fourteen40. The program allows users to buy and download electronic textbooks online. That's nothing particularly groundbreaking, though it could save me some neck and back problems if it cut down on the pounds … Read more

A congressional proposal to throw some $33 billion behind new federal research, education and teacher training programs over the next two years is now headed to the president's desk.

The U.S. Senate on Thursday night approved by voice vote an agreement with the House of Representatives on the so-called America Competes Act (short for the America Creating Opportunities to Meaningfully Promote Excellence in Technology, Education, and Science Act), which the tech industry has hailed as critical to creating the next generation of U.S. innovators. The vote hadn't originally been expected until at least Friday.

Earlier on … Read more

PALO ALTO, Calif.--Crazy parents, pay attention. You'll probably be forking money over to Jason Ma in the near future.

Ma, CEO and founder of VC firm Congruent Partners, is behind Vanteus, an education center that helps high-achieving students boost their SAT scores. Companies like Kaplan and the Princeton Review concentrate on a wide swath of students, Ma said.

Vanteus' courses and education modules are geared at kids who want to raise their score from 1800 or 2100 closer to the 2400 maximum. (There are now three modules on the SAT, so an 1800 is equivalent to 1200 in … Read more

Over the past several years I have watched in dismay as the budgetary consequences of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) force schools to adopt zero-tolerance policies toward education. I have seen in my own neighborhood a "successful" school reduce its science instruction down to 20 minutes a week for 1st-3rd graders because of fears that a single child's lack of performance on a standardized test might result in a budgetary take-down. Mr. Holland's Opus was a poignant and sadly prescient story of a bureaucracy that had its sites set far too low when it came to … Read more

If indie cinema hero Wes Anderson--of Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums fame--directed a quirky courtroom drama, there's a chance that it might bear some resemblance to what could unfold at Wednesday's impending showdown between social-networking sites Facebook and ConnectU.

The backstory of the legal squabble, after all, in which the three founders of college-centric start-up ConnectU have accused Facebook czar Mark Zuckerberg of stealing their business plan and code, reads like classic Anderson.

It's a melange of gossip about upper-crust Silicon Valley, allegations of old-school Ivy League skulduggery and an oddball cast of characters that ranges from … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--Last month, Danah Boyd, a well-known researcher of teen culture online, argued that class divisions in the United States could be split between MySpace.com and Facebook.

In essence, Boyd wrote, MySpace is home to a large population of "burnouts," punks or alternative-scene teenagers whose parents likely didn't go beyond a high school education. Facebook, in contrast, is a bustling hub for jocks, school nerds and prom queens planning for their university years. You get the division.

But what happens to the teens who don't have constant access to technology, unlike those spending hours a … Read more

BOSTON, Mass.--Blackboard, an educational software company, announced a social-networking site for students and professors on Tuesday at its BbWorld '07 conference.

Scholar, the social bookmarking site that Blackboard launched in January, works much like Delicious in that people can see links relevant to articles based on their tagged interests. Scholar is centrally hosted by Blackboard and integrates with any schools or users who subscribe to Blackboard applications.

The company is now expanding Scholar into a social-networking site where researchers of even the most obscure topics can find each other.

As in other social-networking sites, there are different levels of &… Read more

There truly is something for everyone in summer camp these days. Just in time for July 4, The New York Times reports on a summer camp that's a blast. The University of Missouri-Rolla engineering school offers a Summer Explosives Camp that teaches campers how to blow things up.

From watermelons to tree stumps to a 50-foot-high wall of quarry rock, the controlled mayhem serves a purpose, to boost the dwindling ranks of mining and explosives engineers.

And yes, safety is emphasized. Camp adviser and engineering professor Paul Worsey said that