Behind-The-Scenes Video: President Obama Meets With “Waiting for Superman” Students ED.gov Blog

ED.gov Blog

Behind-The-Scenes Video: President Obama Meets With “Waiting for Superman” Students

October 13, 2010 – 8:50 am

Cross-posted from the White House blog.
Watch a behind-the-scenes video with President Obama and students from the film Waiting for Superman. Yesterday, the children, their families and others that worked on the movie met with President Obama in the Oval Office and watched him depart in helicopter Marine One from the South Lawn of the White House.

By jjohnson | Posted in News | Comments Off

That’s NFTE: Award-Winning Teen Entrepreneurs Visit Oval Office

October 13, 2010 – 8:47 am

Cross-posted from the White House blog.

President Barack Obama meets with the student finalists of the NFTE National Youth Entrepreneurship Challenge in the Oval Office. These students – four of who are still in high school – have all started new businesses and competed against 24,000 other young people in the competition.

President Obama is the first to recognize that not all good ideas come from adults, and that’s why for the second year in a row he offered his personal congratulations to the winners of a challenge organized by the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE).
NFTE organizes the National Youth Entrepreneurship Challenge and has for years helped young individuals from low-income communities unlock their potential for entrepreneurial creativity. In a show of his support for the youthful innovators of our Nation, President Obama—as he did for last year’s NFTE winners—welcomed the five young winners of this year’s competition to the White House for a meeting with him, where he not only congratulated them but also picked their innovative brains. View the full press release from NFTE here (pdf).
The five winners of the Challenge are:

• Nia Froome, a 17-year-old student from Valley Stream, NY, who won the grand prize for her business, Mamma Nia’s Vegan Bakery. Inspired by her mother’s battle with breast cancer, she says she plans to donate a portion of her winnings to Susan G. Komen for the Cure, in addition to investing in her business and education.
• Bosnian immigrants Zermina Velic and Belma Ahmetovic, from Hartford, CT, who took First Runner-Up for their computer services company, Beta Bytes.
• Crystal Vo of San Jose, CA, who won Second Runner-Up for her cake ball company, Sweet Tooth Bites,
• Steven Gordon of Brooklyn, NY, who won NFTE’s first Online Elevator Pitch Challenge for his business, TattooID.

Since NFTE began in 1987, more than 330,000 people have been part of the program, which has activities going on in 21 states and ten countries.
Kudos to this year’s winners!

By jjohnson | Posted in News | Comments Off

How Technology Can Transform Education

October 12, 2010 – 12:00 am

At New Salem-Altmont High School, Secretary Duncan and Representative Earl Pomeroy watched as students attended an anatomy class where a lead instructor teaches students in five schools at once through satellite television. It is one way the school is using technology to overcome distance and increase access to quality instruction. The video technology empowers the different classrooms to see and hear one another, and students can interact with the teacher and one another.
The program is available to even more communities, preparing students for college and careers in places where certain courses may not be available otherwise, given the struggle to find science teachers in North Dakota as it is nationwide. This distance learning classroom is one of many innovative approaches rural schools are using to boost learning and accelerate achievement.
Secretary Duncan recognizes that small towns and rural schools face unique challenges and unique opportunities. They may have difficulty recruiting and retaining great teachers and offering a diverse array of courses, but the close-knit nature of their communities enables them to adopt changes quicker, get speedy approval to expand or replicate successful programs, and deliver more personalized instruction than in most urban districts.
The Obama administration’s proposal to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act would reauthorize the Rural Education Achievement Program and other programs that support reform in rural schools. Representative Pomeroy has introduced a bill to reauthorize REAP. The Department makes sure the federal government better supports schools in rural areas by promoting the use of technology to deliver content, giving schools and communities support for programs that meet their specific local needs, and improving technical assistance to ensure that rural districts aren’t disadvantaged in competitive programs.
Secretary Duncan challenged his audience at New Salem-Altmont High School to be a part of the solution. “I want to challenge you to think about what else can be done at the local level to prepare all students to be career-and college ready, to prepare all students to have the skills necessary to succeed in the global economy of the 21^st century. … The challenges facing our small-town districts and schools are considerable, but so is the opportunity to reshape the status quo for the better for our children.”

By jjohnson | Posted in Headlines | Tagged rural, technology | Co