Barack Obama green economy science, technology, engineering, and mathematics-STEM

President Barack Obama will make remarks Monday at around noon eastern highlighting several initiatives designed to boost the number of students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education. Presidents Obama's speech coincides with his green economy initiative that is designed to produce thousands of green jobs based on energy efficiency, renewable energy, and clean energy projects built into the stimulus package. Read Barack Obama's green collar job map: climate change & clean energy. 

President Obama today launched the “Educate to Innovate” campaign, a nationwide effort to help reach the administration’s goal of moving American students from the middle to the top of the pack in science and math achievement over the next decade. EXCELLENCE IN SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, ENGINEERING & MATH (STEM) EDUCATION .

President Barack Obama said, 

I want to acknowledge Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, who is from Texas, and she is one of the members of our Science and Technology Committee and doing outstanding work. NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden is in the house. Where's Charlie? There he is, right there in front. NSF Director Dr. Arden Bement is here, right there. Dr. John Holdren, my Science and Technology Advisor -- where's John? Right there. Melody Barnes, our Domestic Policy Council chair or head, director. And then we've got some students from -- some wonderful students from some wonderful schools: Oakton High School in Vienna, Virginia; Longfellow Middle School in Fairfax, Virginia; the Washington Mathematics Science Technology Public Charter High School here in D.C., and the Herndon High School in Herndon, Virginia.

Public Private Partnerships

Time Warner Cable’s “Connect a Million Minds” Campaign: Time Warner Cable, in partnership with FIRST Robotics and the Coalition for Science After School, is launching a campaign to connect over one million students to highly-engaging after-school STEM activities that already exist in their area. Time Warner Cable will use its media platform, Public Service Announcements, 47,000 employees, and a “connectamillionminds.com” website where over 70,000 parents and community members have already pledged to connect a child to STEM. Time Warner Cable has made a commitment of $100 million over the next five years to support this campaign, and will target 80 percent of its corporate philanthropy to STEM.

Discovery Communications’ “Be the Future” Campaign: Discovery Communications, in partnership with leading research universities and federal agencies, is launching a five-year, $150 million cash and in-kind “Be the Future” campaign. This will create content that reaches more than 99 million homes, including a PSA campaign across Discovery's 13 U.S. networks, a dedicated commercial-free educational kids block on the Science Channel, and programming on the “grand challenges” of the 21st century such as their landmark Curiosity series. Discovery Education will also create rich, interactive education content that it will deliver at no cost to approximately 60,000 schools, 35 million students, and 1 million educators, and through a partnership with the Siemens Foundation, will create STEM Connect, a national education resource for teachers.

Sesame Street’s Early STEM Literacy Initiative: Celebrating its 40th Anniversary, and with First Lady Michelle Obama appearing on the first episode, Sesame Street, in partnership with PNC Bank, is announcing a major focus on science and math for young children and a $7.5 million investment in the effort. Sesame Street’s new season kicked-off with “My World is Green & Growing,” which will be part of a two-year science initiative designed to increase positive attitudes towards nature, deepen children’s knowledge about the natural world and encourage behavior that shows respect and care for the environment. Twenty of the 26 new episodes will have a focus on STEM; 13 focus on science and seven focus on math. In addition, Sesame Workshop, in partnership with PNC Bank’s Grow Up Great Program, is announcing a new math initiative for preschool children entitled Math is Everywhere.

“National Lab Day,” Bringing Hands-on Learning to Every Student: National Lab Day is a historic grassroots effort, online at nationallabday.org, to bring hands-on learning to 10 million students by upgrading science labs, supporting project-based learning, and building communities of support for STEM teachers. The effort is a partnership between science and engineering societies representing more than 2.5 million STEM professionals and almost 4 million educators, with strong financial support from the Hidary Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and industry partners. Collectively, this partnership is committed to working with more than 10,000 teachers and 1 million students within a year, and 100,000 teachers and 10 million students over the next four years.

National STEM Game Design Competitions: The MacArthur Foundation, Sony Computer Entertainment America, the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) and its partners (the Information Technology Industry Council, the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, and Microsoft) are launching a nationwide set of competitions that include the design of the most compelling, freely-available STEM-related videogames for children and youth. The competitions will include the 2010 Digital Media and Learning Competition, a $2 million yearly effort supported by the MacArthur Foundation that advances the most innovative approaches to learning through games, social networks and mobile devices. One of the competitions will be open only to children, to help them develop 21st century knowledge and skills through the challenge of game design. This year Sony will participate in one segment of the competition and encourage the development of new games that build on the existing popular video game Little Big Planet.

Michelle Obama has been giving speeches all around the United States stressing the importance of education to students. The President’s remarks will be live streamed here and then at 1:00PM EDT, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and Office of Science and Technology Policy Director John Holdren will hold a live online chat to discuss the initiatives at the White House.

Barack Obama's plan is to create a green economy but without soldiers his war on fossil fuel energy will not work. Just like the dot.com era and internet craze needed computer science majors to drive the technology the green economy will need environmental engineers, mechanical engineers, and science and math graduates to invent new techniques for harnessing clean energy, Whether it be solar power, hydrothermal, hydroelectric or wind driven this field is wide open for some  young minds to invent some new renewable energy products for the U.S to sell to developing countries in Asia.