School choice is a term for education options that allow students and families to select alternatives to public schools. It is the subject of fierce debate in various state legislatures across the United States.
Melinda French Gates is an American philanthropist, former multimedia product developer and manager at Microsoft, and the ex-wife of its co-founder and billionaire Bill Gates. French Gates has consistently been ranked as one of the world's most powerful women by Forbes magazine.
Educational entertainment, also referred to by the portmanteau edutainment, is media designed to educate through entertainment. The term was used as early as 1954 by Walt Disney. Most often it includes content intended to teach but has incidental entertainment value. It has been used by academia, corporations, governments, and other entities in various countries to disseminate information in classrooms and/or via television, radio, and other media to influence viewers' opinions and behaviors.
Donald Jeffry Herbert, better known as Mr. Wizard, was the creator and host of Watch Mr. Wizard and Mr. Wizard's World (1983–90), which were educational television programs for children devoted to science and technology. He also produced many short video programs about science and authored several popular books about science for children. It was said that no fictional hero was able to rival the popularity and longevity of "the friendly, neighborly scientist". In Herbert's obituary, Bill Nye wrote, "Herbert's techniques and performances helped create the United States' first generation of homegrown rocket scientists just in time to respond to Sputnik. He sent us to the moon. He changed the world." Herbert is credited with turning "a generation of youth" in the 1950s and early 1960s onto "the promise and perils of science".
Watch Mr. Wizard was an American television program for children that demonstrates the science behind ordinary things. The show's creator and on-air host was Don Herbert. Author Marcel LaFollette says of the program, "It enjoyed consistent praise, awards, and high ratings throughout its history. At its peak, Watch Mr. Wizard drew audiences in the millions, but its impact was far wider. By 1956, it had prompted the establishment of more than five thousand Mr. Wizard science clubs, with an estimated membership greater than one hundred thousand."
Cyberchase is an animated sci-fi children's television series that aired on PBS Kids. The series centers around three children from Earth: Jackie, Matt and Inez, who are brought into Cyberspace, a digital universe, in order to protect the world from the villainous Hacker. They are able to prevent Hacker from taking over Cyberspace by means of problem-solving skills in conjunction with basic math, environmental science and wellness. In Cyberspace, they meet Digit (Gilbert Gottfried, Ron Pardo, a "cybird" who helps them on their missions.
Joseph Samuel Nye Jr. is an American political scientist. He and Robert Keohane co-founded the international relations theory of neoliberalism, which they developed in their 1977 book Power and Interdependence. Together with Keohane, he developed the concepts of asymmetrical and complex interdependence. They also explored transnational relations and world politics in an edited volume in the 1970s. More recently, he pioneered the theory of soft power. His notion of "smart power" became popular with the use of this phrase by members of the Clinton Administration and the Obama Administration.
Bill Nye the Science Guy is an American science education television program created by Bill Nye, James McKenna, and Erren Gottlieb, with Nye starring as a fictionalized version of himself. It was produced by television station KCTS and McKenna/Gottlieb Producers and distributed by Buena Vista Television with substantial financing from the National Science Foundation. The show aired in syndication from September 10, 1993, to February 5, 1999, over the course of six seasons and 100 episodes; beginning in season 2, a concurrent run was added on PBS from October 10, 1994, to September 3, 1999, with the show's first run remaining in syndication. After the show's first run was completed, Nye continued to portray the Science Guy character for a number of short interstitial segments for the cable television channel Noggin, which aired during rebroadcasts of Bill Nye the Science Guy. A video game based on the series was released in 1996, and a subsequent television show for adults, Bill Nye Saves the World, was broadcast two decades later.
Almost Live! was a local sketch comedy television show in Seattle, Washington, USA, produced and broadcast by NBC affiliate KING-TV from 1984 to 1999. A re-packaged version of the show also aired on Comedy Central from 1992 to 1993, and episodes aired on WGRZ-TV and other Gannett-owned stations in the late 1990s. The show was broadcast in Seattle on Saturday nights at 11:30, pushing Saturday Night Live back to midnight, while other Gannett stations aired it after Saturday Night Live.
Geraldine Laybourne is an American entrepreneur and former TV executive. She worked at Nickelodeon from 1980 until 1996, when she became the president of Disney-ABC Cable Networks. She is also the co-founder of Oxygen Media and a tech startup called Katapult. In 2020, she was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame.
Robert Owen Keohane is an American academic working within the fields of international relations and international political economy. Following the publication of his influential book After Hegemony (1984), he has become widely associated with the theory of neoliberal institutionalism in international relations, as well as transnational relations and world politics in international relations in the 1970s.
The USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism comprises a School of Communication and a School of Journalism at the University of Southern California (USC). Starting July 2017, the school's Dean is Willow Bay, succeeding Ernest J. Wilson III. The graduate program in Communication is consistently ranked first according to the QS World University Rankings.
The Annenberg School for Communication is the communication school at the University of Pennsylvania. The school was established in 1958 by Wharton School alum Walter Annenberg as the Annenberg School of Communications. The name was changed to its current title in 1990.
William Sanford Nye is an American mechanical engineer, science communicator, and television presenter. He is best known as the host of the science education television show Bill Nye the Science Guy (1993–1999) and as a science educator in pop culture. Born in Washington, D.C., Nye began his career as a mechanical engineer for Boeing in Seattle, where he invented a hydraulic resonance suppressor tube used on 747 airplanes. In 1986, he left Boeing to pursue comedy—writing and performing for the local sketch television show Almost Live!, where he regularly conducted wacky scientific experiments.
The Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) was a Chicago public school reform project from 1995 to 2001 that worked with half of Chicago's public schools and was funded by a $49.2 million, 2-to-1 matching challenge grant over five years from the Annenberg Foundation. The grant was contingent on being matched by $49.2 million in private donations and $49.2 million in public money. The Chicago Annenberg Challenge was one of 18 locally designed Annenberg Challenge project sites that received $387 million over five years as part of Walter Annenberg's gift of $500 million over five years to support public school reform. The Chicago Annenberg Challenge helped create a successor organization, the Chicago Public Education Fund (CPEF), committing $2 million in June 1998 as the first donor to Chicago's first community foundation for education.
Deborah Forte is an American producer of family television series and movies, websites and digital media including Clifford the Big Red Dog, Clifford's Puppy Days, Maya & Miguel, WordGirl, The Magic School Bus, the series Goosebumps, Sony's films Goosebumps and Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween, Horrible Histories, Dragon, I Spy, The Baby-Sitters Club, The Golden Compass, and Astroblast. She created Scholastic Media, a division of Scholastic Inc. She is the founder of Silvertongue Films and under that banner is currently producing a television adaptation of His Dark Materials. She is attached to produce The 39 Clues and Spirit Animals for Universal and Clifford the Big Red Dog for Paramount. Her productions have won six Emmys, one Academy Award, the Humanitas Prize, and the Annenberg Public Policy Center Award for Outstanding Educational Program on a Commercial Broadcast Station.
Geoffrey Cowan is an American lawyer, professor, author, and non-profit executive. He is currently a University Professor at the University of Southern California, where he holds the Annenberg Family Chair in Communication Leadership and directs the Annenberg School's Center on Communication Leadership & Policy. In 2010, Cowan was named president of The Annenberg Foundation Trust at Sunnylands, a position he held until July 2016. In this role, Cowan was commissioned with the task of turning the 200-acre estate of Ambassador Walter Annenberg and his wife Leonore into "a venue for important retreats for top government officials and leaders in the fields of law, education, philanthropy, the arts, culture, science and medicine." Since Sunnylands reopened in 2012, Cowan has helped to arrange a series of meetings and retreats there. In 2013–14, President Barack Obama convened bilateral meetings at Sunnylands with President Xi Jinping of China and with King Abdullah II of Jordan. In 2016, President Obama hosted the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) at the site, where they released the Sunnylands Declaration. Prior to his time at Sunnylands, Cowan was appointed by President Bill Clinton as Director of Voice of America.
Cara Louise Santa Maria is an American science communicator. She hosts the podcast Talk Nerdy and co-hosts The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe podcast, and was a co-host of TechKnow on Al Jazeera America.
Derek Alexander Muller is a science communicator and television personality, best known for his YouTube channel Veritasium, which has over 14 million subscribers as of October 2023.
Bill Nye Saves the World is an American television show streaming on Netflix hosted and created by Bill Nye. It is both a sequel and a revival of sorts of Bill Nye the Science Guy, which is also created by Nye. The show's byline was, "Emmy-winning host Bill Nye brings experts and famous guests to his lab for a talk show exploring scientific issues that touch our lives", with the series' focus placed on science and its relationship with politics, pop culture, and society. Unlike Nye's previous show Bill Nye the Science Guy which was intended for children, Bill Nye Saves the World is intended for adults. As such, some episodes have Nye discuss topics that would be considered inappropriate to mention to minors.
