• How A Typical Teen Did Something Not So Typical To Help Street Kids

    James Okina was being a typical teenager. Three years ago, he was hanging out on the streets of his hometown of Calabar, a port city in southern Nigeria, on his way to watch a soccer match at a secondary school. Read more



  • Want To Help Someone In A Poor Village? Give Them A Bus Ticket Out

     

    The loan was tiny. Just $19 to buy a bus ticket. But for Mariful Islam, the difference it made was immense. Islam is 24. He has lived in the same rural village in Bangladesh his whole life. He doesn't own his own land. So he scrapes out a living working on other people's farms. Read more

  • Teenager Aims To Improve Breast Cancer Diagnosis In Poor Countries

    After a family trip to Afghanistan when he was 15, Chicagoan Abu Qader decided he wanted to do something to improve the country's medical care. "I knew and saw people and friends and relatives in Afghanistan whose breast cancer wasn't diagnosed, and it was fatal," he said. He further noted that the country's health care system is weak, with a high prevalence of breast cancer and limited options for care. He decided, "I wanted to build something that would help." Read more


  • Want To Teach Your Kids Self-Control? Ask A Cameroonian Farmer

    In the the 1960s, a Stanford psychologist ran an experiment to study children's self-control. It's called the marshmallow test. And it's super simple. Kids ages 3 to 5 choose a treat — an Oreo cookie, a pretzel stick or a marshmallow. Then researchers give the child brief instructions: You can eat the treat now, but if you can wait for me to return, you'll get two treats.  Read more


  • Your Bedroom Says A Lot About You

    Your posters.
    The color of your walls.
    The size of your bed.
    Where you sleep says a lot about who you are. That's the idea behind photographer and filmmaker John Thackwray's photo series My Room Project.  Read more

  • Hey Higher Ed, Why Not Focus On Teaching?

    Stanford physics and education professor Carl Wieman won a Nobel Prize for his innovative, break-through work in quantum mechanics. Wieman has since levered the prestige and power of that prize to call attention to the need to transform undergraduate teaching, especially science education.
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  • Switching To Middle School Can Be Hard On Kids
    But There Are Ways To Make It Better

    "I'll be famous one day, but for now I'm stuck in middle school with a bunch of morons." That's harsh language from the downtrodden sixth-grade narrator of Diary of A Wimpy Kid, a blockbuster series of graphic novels.
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  • 'Genius Grant' Winner Is A Genius At Inspiring Students

    When the phone rang, Rebecca Richards-Kortum thought it was a telemarketer. Instead, it was the MacArthur Foundation calling her at home to tell her she'd just won a grant totaling $625,000. And she hadn't even been aware that she'd been nominated for the prestigious award.
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