Here Are Your 2016 Inherent Prize Finalists

One of these movers and shakers will be awarded with the Inherent Prize in recognition of their social entrepreneurship. The grand-prize winner receives $50,000, with the runner-up nabbing $25,000. Get to know more about each below, and check back after November 15th to read about the winner.
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Meet the Mastermind Behind an Innovative, New Way to Teach Math

In elementary school, Matthew Peterson struggled mightily with math. When an instructor explained a problem, Peterson would be so focused on figuring out the language that he forgot the beginning of the question. In a traditional classroom setting, “If you couldn’t follow the instructions from the teacher, you were lost. You had no way to learn on your own,” Peterson, who suffered from dyslexia, says. It wasn’t until Peterson’s dad started drawing pictures to help his son visualize math equations that he had the breakthrough that turned him onto how exciting, creative and fun the subject can be.
Seeing his challenges in school as an opportunity to be solved, the boy who once hated math went on to study engineering, biology and neuroscience in college. From there, Peterson began to think as an entrepreneur — creating, innovating, problem solving and ultimately, transforming the way mathematics is taught in American schools. “To me, it’s not acceptable that so many students exit the school system afraid of math,” he explains. Starting with a summer research program in 1994, Peterson spent a decade working to prove that math could be taught without language, which can create a barrier to understanding the concept. This is true not only for kids who struggle with language like he did, but for any student since talking about math using words layers two completely different ways of thinking on top of each other.
That mission ultimately became the Irvine, Calif.-based MIND Research Institute and its ST Math program, a series of games starring Jiji, an animated penguin that introduces math visually. Students must figure out how to help Jiji get past a variety of obstacles (each representing an important mathematical concept) by building bridges, filling in holes, and so on. “It is very difficult to create software that will translate into improved test scores,” Peterson, MIND’s co-founder, says. “People have been trying to do that for many years, and there is very little to show for it. But there is a very consistent result that games, especially visual games, can build spatial-temporal reasoning. What our approach does is build spatial-temporal reasoning, and then connect that spatial-temporal reasoning to mathematical understanding,” accomplishing what other software companies haven’t. In fact, schools that fully implement ST Math see up to three times growth in math proficiency.
Alex Belous, education portfolio manager for the Cisco Foundation (which has supported MIND Research Institute since 2004), says that when he initially reviewed their program, its installation and training strategy was predominantly in-person, which wouldn’t scale. “It was an ideal partnership, as we were able to assist with their conversion to a web-based and more scalable delivery method, adding courses and grade levels, as well as creating a teacher-dashboard that allows them to see where students are most challenged and give them relevant help to keep learning,” Belous says. “We’re proud to be part of something that is providing large impact and pleased that ST Math is likely to scale much further in the next five years.”
The United States lags behind other nations in math and science performance, ranking 29th in math and 22nd in science, according to the Program for International Student Assessment. By harnessing the power of the digital revolution, MIND Research Institute and Cisco are able to address this problem and prepare young people to succeed in science, technology, engineering and math fields that are critical to economic growth and global competitiveness.
That formula has proved to be remarkably — and consistently — successful. When MIND’s ST Math software launched, only 12,000 students used it. Today, the program reaches more than 1 million children in more than 3,000 schools across 45 states (including about 70 percent from traditionally underserved backgrounds). In the U.S., only 30 percent of kids leaving middle school are proficient in math. Impressively, students’ math proficiency has doubled or even tripled when using ST Math. “It’s not the students who are incapable of learning, it’s the environment,” Peterson says, going on to explain how the software creates a setting where students from all backgrounds can not only become skilled in math, but learn to enjoy it.
“Many people have this misconception that experiences are fun, but learning isn’t really an experience,” says Brandon Smith, MIND’s lead mathematician. A lot of learning software essentially takes the approach of designing a fun game and then trying to shoehorn some math into it, Smith explains. MIND’s games are designed from the ground up to focus on core math principles. They’re entirely visual — no words or numbers at all — and feature deliberately simple animation. “We don’t want you to be distracted by anything that is not the heart of the matter,” he says.
The result? A fun game where simply uncovering what the next puzzle is teaches kids the underlying concept. It also educates them on how to approach unfamiliar problems, how to think creatively and how to persevere and keep working on something difficult. ST Math enables students to learn at their own pace by giving immediate, personalized feedback on every answer — something that’s only possible using software, Peterson says.
Another positive outcome of ST Math is that girls often find more success with it than boys: an uncommon result among math programs. In the U.S., women are underrepresented in science and engineering fields (representing just 29 percent of the workforce compared to 46 percent of all workers), but programs like ST Math can generate the confidence and enthusiasm for girls to pursue jobs in those industries.
Technology not only makes that kind of learning possible in one classroom, it makes it scalable to thousands of them. “It’s not enough to just do a research program to prove that something is effective,” Peterson says. “If you want to change the world you have to make something that is scalable.”
“People use the term ‘innovation’ so often in Silicon Valley, but it is actually extremely rare to come across something that is truly revolutionary and actually effective and scalable,” Cisco’s Belous says. MIND’s technology demonstrates how the potential to scale and replicate is necessary for a solution to be sustainable and successful at addressing social challenges. Not only does ST Math transform math education, but also it has the potential to be applied in many other areas of education. “This completely new, non-language-based approach has the ability to capture every mouse-click of every child to see where kids are most challenged and refine the games appropriately to make them even more effective. It is fantastic for math education and student outcomes, but the fundamental innovation could potentially be applied to a far wider set of subjects.”
MIND’s games certainly have the potential to revolutionize how young children think about themselves. Studies show that most American students possess what’s known as a fixed theory of intelligence: a belief that “intelligence is something that you’re born with,” Peterson says. That mindset can hold kids back from learning math because they think if you can’t solve a problem, you’re not good at it. The kind of self-directed learning in ST Math reinforces the principle that when you stick with a problem, you get better at it.
Lisa Solomon, a principal at Madison Elementary School in Santa Ana, Calif., sees that tenacity in her students. ST Math software is used at three area schools, including Solomon’s, where nearly 100 percent of students are Hispanic and about 90 percent qualify for free or reduced-cost lunches. “It’s helping us to see what our students really can do,” Solomon says.
These days, when the growing opportunity divide reveals the sheer importance of a strong education, MIND Research Institute not only levels the playing field, it helps struggling students bound to the head of the class and achieve their greatest potential.
This was produced in partnership with Cisco, which believes everyone has the potential to become a global problem solver – to innovate as a technologist, think as an entrepreneur, and act as a social change agent.
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How Star Trek Is Inspiring Diversity in the Workplace

The recent tech boom inaugurated an age of invention, but NationSwell Council member Greg Gunn, who founded his own education technology software startup, has been “frustrated” by the sector’s lack of diversity. For the last five years, he had an open-door policy of passing on advice to anyone who asked, but he recently formalized his informal professional coaching into Lingo Ventures, systematizing his advice, researching how programmers enter their chosen field and investing in platforms that connect diverse employees with tech companies.
Across a round dining room table on the first floor of his Brooklyn brownstone, NationSwell spoke to Gunn about how technology is changing our lives, where it falls short and how the future might be different.
What’s the best advice you have ever been given on leadership?
The power of the leader is to provide stability, or even just the feeling of it. When the boss comes in, things don’t go into freak-out [mode], but calm down. There’s the importance of the boss coming in every day with positivity. If you’re freaking out, everybody around you feels the freak-out 10 times as much. So, it’s being conscious, grounding yourself and coming in with positivity and stability every day, no matter how tough things are.
What’s on your nightstand?
I draw a lot of my inspiration from science fiction. I’ve been reading “The Three-Body Problem” series. It’s a science-fiction trilogy by the most award-winning science fiction author in China, Liu Cixin. Only two of the books have come out in English, so [I’m] waiting for the third one. It…starts in the Cultural Revolution in China and ends up in the future in space. It’s got these powerful ideas of how society responds to stability and chaos and how it survives those cycles. Some of the strengths you build during a period of great stability can become not-strengths or liabilities in a moment of chaos, and I’m really thinking of it right now in terms of economic change that our society is going through. Everybody’s worrying what’s happening to the American economy. Is it stable? How do we really know? And I think about it even more in terms of the impact of technology on the economy, which is already starting have profound changes, but people aren’t predicting how profound those changes are going to be. How does our way of thinking about work evolve in the face of that?
What innovations in your field are you most excited about right now?
The most important educational technology today is YouTube, because any time you need to learn something — whether it’s a small thing or a big thing — there are resources out there. Not only can you learn whatever skill it is, but there are 100 different ways out there that people [acquired] it, and you can find the one that actually works for your brain. I don’t know if democratizing is the right word, but that literally makes the best personalized education experience out there and free for everybody.
People talk a lot about Khan Academy, which I think is just a subset of the bigger phenomenon of people sharing how they learn things. More and more learning content is coming out of the universities, so things like EdX, Coursera. The edge of innovation right now is we’ve gone through this great wave of getting a whole bunch of content out there, and now that it’s all out there, we’re figuring out: Where do I actually need human touch again to get the optimal learning experience? How do I bring human tutors, teaching, peer support and coaching back into that? Now we’re remembering what we’ve always known: the content itself motivates to a degree, but having a human really motivates you a lot more.
What do you wish someone had told you when you started this job?
One thing that I started to learn and I think I’m still learning now is to be more open about what you’re working on. I’ve always been a perfectionist and a bit afraid to share what I’m working on or what I’m thinking about until it’s a finished product, especially with what I’m trying to do with Lingo Ventures. I think it’s important that I’m talking to more people, so that I’m both sharing and learning at the same time. It’s taking that personal risk to put the half-baked idea out there so that I can bake it with others.
How do you try to inspire others?
For my coworkers, in the work we do, part of which is diversity related, it’s easy to look at what’s happening in Silicon Valley and be really frustrated. So a big part of the work is how to flip that script. If this thing is wrong, where can we get value to get past it? If I’m working with an entrepreneur of color who feels like they’re constantly at a disadvantage in fundraising, part of the work is figuring out how do we turn those things that you believe are being perceived as disadvantages into things that are competitive for you. It’s not easy work, but you’ve chosen the problem because it’s a hard problem.
What’s your perfect day?
Have breakfast with my son and take him to school. Go to the white board with two or three entrepreneurs. Write a piece on something I’ve been thinking about. Get my team unblocked on whatever the organization needs that day. Then spend the rest of the day doing art: drawing, sculpting, whatever.
What don’t most people know about you that they should?
Star Trek is the vision that guides almost all of my work; it always has. My vision of what I want the future to look like and my companies to look like is really guided by the bridge of the Starship Enterprise in Next Generation: the way people interact, the diversity, the values, the goals, the technology. What would Captain Picard do? It sounds geeky but it really shapes what inspires me and what I want my workplace to look like.
To learn more about the NationSwell Council, click here.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
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Introducing the Newest Innovation in Higher Ed: The NanoDegree

Pick up any newspaper today and you’ll read the doom-and-gloom statistics about out of control student debt.
But despite its problems, higher education still offers the best chance at climbing the economic ladder and helping our country remain competitive. It’s a vital industry, but certainly one ripe for disruption.
Thankfully, ex-Googler Sebastian Thrun and his company, Udacity, are taking a bold step in the right direction with “NanoDegrees,” a new kind of degree that teaches a narrow set of skills online in fields like front- and back-end coding, mobile development and data analysis.
It’s knowledge presented in small, digestible chunks by an expert (you aren’t left to fend for yourself) and, unlike most online options, it offers skills that can be clearly applied to a job for immediate motivation and tangible results. The best part? It takes less time (six to 12 months) and less money ($200 per month) to complete than almost any other type of learning out there.
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For the many young Americans for whom college has become a distant, unaffordable dream, a NanoDegree lets them harness the web to provide effective training and to begin a career. Intended to teach anyone with a mastery of basic math skills for entry-level job at a company like AT&T, it’s a plausible path for those who may not have the time, money or ability to make it through a four- or even two-year program.
NanoDegrees also have implications for the wider workforce. Today’s industries, especially digital ones, change significantly year to year; skills learned in 2009 might be irrelevant by 2014. But even well-educated adults who can afford to update their knowledge might not have the time. With the NanoDegree you can do so through a “stackable” curriculum that allows you to continually learn new, relevant skills as your career progresses.
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What really sets the NanoDegree apart, though, is the corporate partnerships. Engaging with companies in need of high-demand skills sends a strong signal that if you do the work there’s an actual payoff (a light at the end of the tunnel, so to say). Udacity’s first partner in this initiative, AT&T, said it will accept the NanoDegree as a credential for entry-level jobs and has reserved 100 internship slots for its graduates. Udacity promises further programs with corporate partners and AT&T is already encouraging more companies to get in the game to help.
Such an explicit arrangement might make purists cringe, but this isn’t traditional education. And while it may not offer all the advantages of a liberal arts degree, for example, for people seeking a realistic, viable alternative, the NanoDegree has some serious appeal. NanoDegree graduates can always read Shakespeare while on vacation from their new job, right?
 

When This Sixth Grader Couldn’t Go to School, a Robot Took Her Place

When you were a kid, did you ever hope the future would be like The Jetsons? Well, at a middle school in Danville, Pennsylvania, the future is happening right now.
Thanks to the innovations of a Seattle-based company, Double Robotics, Maddie Rarig, a bedridden sixth grader, is able to attend class in real time, the Associated Press reports. The 11-year-old, who is recovering from a spinal injury, is connected to her classes via a robot that’s basically a iPad connected to a Segway. With a simple smartphone, Maddie can control the robot’s movements right from her bedroom.
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Incredibly, this robotized version of Maddie seamlessly interacts with her teachers and classmates and can even join group discussions. “We call the robot Maddie, because it is very much her in the classroom,” her math teacher, Shayna Heitzelman, told the wire service. “We positioned the face of the robot where she can see everything going on in front of the class. Maddie can move closer or farther away as needed. She can turn the robot around to face the class. The thing is, and this is amazing, she has this huge grin on her face, which you can see on the robot. And the kids, her friends, love it.”
Maddie’s mother, Kristin Rarig, told the AP that the robot is helping her daughter “get better faster.”
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Each of these robots costs about $2,100, not including the cost of the iPad. If this sounds a bit expensive, it’s because the technology is still quite new. But once these robots becomes more accessible, it could open a whole new slew of possibilities in the classroom. Not only would it help kids who are stuck at home due to illness or disability, but it could even be used when children can’t attend school due to inclement weather. Robots in the classroom would certainly would’ve been helpful during this particularly long and bitter winter, as it would have virtually eliminate the days school kids missed due to snow.
A world that’s like The Jetsons doesn’t seem so far off now, does it?

This City Has a Bold Plan to Close the Technology Gap

Houston has pulled an Oprah on its high schools. But instead of handing out cars, the Texan city has given nearly 65,000 students and staff members laptops, as part of the PowerUp program, Tech Page One reports. PowerUp is a multimillion-dollar investment that gives Houston’s large population of lower-income students — many who can’t afford a computer — a leg up in our increasingly digital landscape.
It may seem counterintuitive to give high school students easier access to distractions like social media or games, but these particular laptops are loaded with software that blocks inappropriate sites. And it’s not just a boost in technological know-how. According to Tech Page One, Houston is following in the footsteps of North Carolina’s Mooresville Graded School district, which saw an impressive 33 percent jump in test scores after it gave out laptops to every students from 4th to 12th grades.
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Lastly, these machines aren’t as pricey as you might imagine. Use of these laptops sets each student back just $25 for a security deposit, and it saves them money because they don’t have to buy pricey textbooks. Currently, 11 schools have laptops for every student, with plans to expand to all 40 high schools in the Houston district. And if it works out in Houston, the program might come to a district near you.

When This Guy Learned That Students Were Dropping Out Over Textbook Costs, He Vowed to Change the System

Before he became a celebrated inventor and surgeon, Dr. Gary Michelson put himself through medical school by working odd jobs — he drove cabs, washed cars and cleaned animal cages at laboratories. So he knew how hard it can be to get through college, and when he learned some kids who couldn’t afford textbooks were dropping out, he devoted himself to doing something about it.
Through his Los Angeles-based organization 20 Million Minds, Michelson is working to make education more accessible. “When I entered this, I thought I had a problem,” he told The Huffington Post. “And what I realized is, I had one leg of an elephant, and it really wouldn’t matter where you grabbed on, the thing is enormous.” Michelson invented a digital textbook system that would reduce students’ $700-on-average textbook costs to a one-time $60 waterproof reader. He also partnered with Dean Florez, the majority leader of the California State Senate, to create the California Open Source Digital Library. The library holds open source textbooks for the most popular college courses, and, combined with Michelson’s digital reader, could save college students $1,600 a year.
The idea, for Forez, is for students and teachers to cater instruction to their needs without excessive costs. “The premise of all our textbooks is that they are open,” Fores told The Huffington Post. “And open meaning from our perspective that, a faculty member or student could repurpose the information, they could reuse it, they could redirect it, and more importantly they can make it their own.”
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