A 16-year-old German high school student has written a paper that purports to have solved two mysteries that were beyond the intellect of the great Isaac Newton.
Shouryya Ray, an Indian-born student who won second prize this month in the math and informatics category for Germany's Jugend Forscht student science competition created formulas to answer the following questions that have puzzled scientists for centuries:
How do you account for air resistance in calculating the trajectory of ball thrown out at an angle?
Precisely how does a ball thrown against the wall rebound?
Because Ray's paper was a school-based project and was submitted for a contest, it is not subject to the publication process and peer review that professional work typically goes through. That has led some experts in the field to reserve jugement of the work until they've seen it for themselves.
However, everyone who has commented about Ray's paper has said it is an achievement that very few high schoolers could duplicate.
This month in The Global Search for Education, I had the pleasure of interviewing both the Minister of Education and Culture for Finland, Sanni Grahn-Laasonen, and President of the National Center on...
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development calls on countries to begin efforts to achieve the 17 SDGs over the next 15 years. The goals address the needs of people in both developed and developing countries, emphasizing that no one should be left behind. Protecting the Planet is one of the major focuses of these goals...
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This week, Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland) and co-sponsor Senator Ben Cardin (D-Maryland) have introduced a bill to have a statue of Harriet Tubman placed in a "prominent location" in the U.S. Capitol. In 2012, a commission was set up to raise money to pay for a statue of Harriet Tubman. In order for such a statue to be in the Capitol, lawmakers must...
It's no secret in the education world that gifted education training is not a priority for new teachers. In teacher preparation programs, if preservice teachers receive any kind of training, it's generally short discussions or readings in their existing education courses (Chamberlin and Chamberlin, 2010). As Troxclair (2013) writes, "[h]istorically, preservice teachers have had little exposure in their teacher training programs regarding the nature and needs of gifted learners, theories of...
Sanni Grahn-Laasonen says her...
When an aspiring fighter visits a boxing gym, the potential coach does not start teaching him or her all the techniques. The first thing a wise coach will do is say, "get in the ring and show me what you got." The coach will carefully examine what the fighter can already do, then design a training regimen to build upon those strengths.
I'm interested in taking a similar strength-based approach with the emerging teachers I work with each week. I want to know what natural...