All Blog Posts by Carolina Cromeyer

Five links that made us think this week:

Remember those science fairs at school where you had to stand in front of your entire classroom (and their parents) and explain everyone how earthquakes happened? Well if you thought that was intimidating, the White House Science Fair might not be for you. Check out these kids doing some incredibly smart science experiments in front of the President himself. They get an A+ for bravery!

Photo by Unknown via WikiCommons

Five links that made us think this week:

The NRA released a 225-page report on Tuesday defending its proposition that more guns in school leads to more safety. Asa Hutchinson, former Republican congressman of Arkansas, was paid by the NRA to present the report at a news conference with “unusually heavy security.” (Hutchinson even brought along a bomb-sniffing Lab.) The report asserts that if more schools provide weapons to their police officers, security guards, and even staff members, it will increase the security at schools and will lower the response time in the case of a shooting. Because if there’s one thing we need right now is more people with guns, specially more people with guns at school.

Photo by army.mil via WikiCommons

Today’s special edition of the Friday Five is focused on spreading awareness of the collateral damage to education caused by the war in Syria. Today’s story is the children of Syria. 

While some students in the U.S. go to air-conditioned schools, eat organic lunches, and work on electronic books, there are students in Syria who haven’t been to school for over two years since the Syrian War began. UNICEF released a report on Tuesday to help spread awareness about the damage the war is doing to the education system in Syria. Here were some of the findings:

• The school attendance rate in the city of Aleppo has dropped to just 6 percent.
• Many of the schools have been converted into shelters for displaced people, as well as for armed forces and groups involved in the conflict. That makes the schools a target for warplanes.
• More than 110 teachers and other staff have been killed, and “more than half” of the teachers in some areas prefer not to show up to school for their own safety.
• “More than 75 percent” of schools in the country have closed.

Photo by James Gordon via WikiCommons

Five links that made us think this week.

Times are a-changin, not just at the Vatican, but also at Teach For America! The Board of Directors named CEO and Founder Wendy Kopp as board chair, succeeding Walter Isaacson, who will become chair emeritus after more than seven years of service. Kopp will continue her role as founding CEO of Teach For All. The board appointed Matt Kramer and Elisa Villanueva Beard co-CEOs of Teach For America, effective March 1. Villanueva Beard has already gotten some twitter love this week (just in time for Valentine's Day!) for becoming one of the few Latina CEOs in the country. Others took to the blogosphere to thank Kopp for her legacy. Here’s to the exciting org evolution!

For all you stargazers, it looks like something odd is happening in outer space. This morning, a meteorite weighing around 10 metric tons hit Russia’s Ural Mountains. Onlookers captured video footage of the meteorite streaking across the sky and exploding. Unfortunately, it wasn’t just a spectacle. Almost 1,000 people ended up seeking medical attention, some got injured from broken glasses, and around 3,000 buildings suffered damages. Many are wondering if this meteorite presages the Olympic-swimming-pool-sized asteroid passing near Earth later today, but scientists believe this is just a “cosmic coincidence.”  Hmmm.

Photo by C m handler via WikiCommons